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Inavet hisses a creative curseword, and slams the door shut, and reaches for her magic. The door to the building she's hiding in becomes to all appearances an ordinary wall. It'll take her pursuers time to find it - none of their arcanists are any good at crystal craft, from what she can tell. It won't buy her enough time, but it'll buy her some, and every second counts.
She starts trying to patch herself up while she looks for an escape route they're not covering. Blood craft's not her best, but she's gotten a lot of practice at it, lately. Enough to stop herself from bleeding out from the wound in her side (because of course it's deep) and keep herself from collapsing from exhaustion. Too slow - one of these days it'll kill her.
But not yet, she thinks, as she spots a window to an alley. Out go her magic senses - no one's alive and breathing in that alley but a cat rummaging through the garbage.
She dumps an illusion over the alley, to appear exactly as it was before she entered it. She can't get the cat right in a rush, but she doesn't need this to hold out for very long. Just long enough to get away. Song disguises the sound of the window opening and her scrambling out of it. She's conscientious enough to close it behind her. Easier than another illusion. Maybe they won't notice the blood.
Which way? Mm. One that way, two to her left, three are - oh look they found the door, she needs to hurry. She takes a right, and runs.
And comes face to face with - a snake? With a mirror for a head? What, how in the -
It's very fast. She was not expecting it. She didn't even sense it, like it appeared from nowhere, she raises her knife but she's not fast enough -
And then there is darkness.
Darkness and pain.
She'd scream, but the air's sucked out of her lungs in a whoosh. She snaps her mouth shut and flails, lashing out with something, anything - but she feels nothing around her. Nothing at all. Not even air. It's like a pressure, on all of her, but instead of pressing in it's pulling out -
Is this how she's going to die? Some Ministry snake monster thing?
Not. Likely.
She isn't the best at blood craft, but she knows enough to keep herself alive. She knows enough to snap her eyes shut and cover her nose and mouth and push magic at herself so her body doesn't shut down. It's hard - there's so much to monitor, she has no air... But she can keep herself alive. If she doesn't move and she focuses near entirely on self preservation. For - for a little while, anyway. Not forever.
Time crunch, then. Well. She was always good at those.
Her lesser crafts won't do her any good here. No way to make sound with song, no air to ignite in fire with heat, no time for aura anything, nothing to move and change with breath. Forget stone and metal, even when she's not in a crisis she's awful with both, not to mention there's nothing around for either.
But she is good at crystal, and crystal deals in light.
If she's not the brightest fucking beacon the world has ever seen, it won't be for lack of trying.
Maybe someone will find her. Or maybe she'll blind the bastards who put her here. Either way, it won't hurt to try.
Inavet and T'Mir
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"Heh. Um. Yeah. They - actually had a kill order on me, hence the stabbing. They took offense to me taking offense to them and giving other people magic. It was a tightly kept secret."
"It - didn't take very long for me to realize that there was something wrong with how they did things, and that I didn't want to be a part of it. So. Yep."
warpfairy
"Can you keep a secret, or were you on the run because you weren't good at that part?"
Blink, blink. "... Yes. To the first. I was on the run because they knew me. Because I'd technically betrayed them and made it personal. Why?"
warpfairy
"When I'm doing survey runs, sometimes I find inhabited planets. If they're at a high enough technology level that they have data nets I can analyze from space, I find a physicist on their planet who shows signs of liking to plagiarize, and then I transport down and leave plans for warp drive on their desk, and then I fly away and wait for their warp signature to pop up and let them into the Federation if they want to join."
warpfairy
"Computer, what's my current estimate?"
"Twenty-one billion, seven hundred and six million, one hundred fifty-nine thousand, six hundred sixty eight, plus or minus two point eight billion."
"That," says Isabella, "is an estimate of how many lives I've saved, based on the level of improvement represented by Federation standard of living or where applicable the effect of interplanetary commerce, how long they seemed likely to take to invent warp drive on their own, and how many times I've done this. I'm going to get arrested at some point, but they've already got warp."
"Twenty-one billion, seven hundred and six million, one hundred fifty-nine thousand, six hundred sixty eight, plus or minus two point eight billion."
"That," says Isabella, "is an estimate of how many lives I've saved, based on the level of improvement represented by Federation standard of living or where applicable the effect of interplanetary commerce, how long they seemed likely to take to invent warp drive on their own, and how many times I've done this. I'm going to get arrested at some point, but they've already got warp."
"That is an absurdly large number. Do you want magic? I am much more willing to give you magic now."
warpfairy
"Yes, I would like magic. Once I get arrested I'll be a political prisoner, and I bet they put me in a nice low-security place and let me practice magic medicine."
She nods. "That'd be nice. Well. There's a standard procedure for the ritual to get magic, but you are likely kind of weird, so I'll have to tweak it. Um - I actually need physical touch to check and likely tweak the ritual."
Inavet takes it, and closes her eyes.
Nothing obvious happens.
Until:
"... Definitely possible," she pronounces. "I don't think I'll have to do much of any tweaking."
Nothing obvious happens.
Until:
"... Definitely possible," she pronounces. "I don't think I'll have to do much of any tweaking."
"The standard ritual procedure - please don't fling this to the heavens - is to get a wooden bowl, draw abstract drawings on it in graphite that vaguely attempt to represent the one who is doing the ritual. Then to put a quartz crystal into the center of the bowl, fill the bowl with distilled water, prod yourself with a sentimentally significant sharp object, and bleed into the water. Then you put your dominant hand onto the quartz, put about a gram of copper onto that hand, and then your other hand on top of that. Then think about who you are as a person and what makes you you. You - might need the bowl-drawing to be in something other than graphite. I'll look for something that works just as well."
warpfairy
"That's... weird," says Isabella. "We should be able to get most of the materials at the next largish station we stop at, if the quartz and copper can be harvested from jewelry. Does it matter the way in which the sharp object is sentimentally significant?"
"It definitely needs to matter to you. I would take a knife that was involved in something unpleasant that happened in your life over something you found and thought was pretty. I actually recommend trying to get things that all matter to you in some way, whether it's abstract or more direct. The ritual is very much about directing the magic to you. The more you can do that, the better, I think."
warpfairy
"...We could go back to Earth. I don't have a lot of sentimentality attached to my possessions - I still have a cloakpin that I was wearing the day I found out about Vulcan, that my father gave me? That could be my sharp object - but my mother probably owns some more of the relevant things and she's important to me, if that counts?"
"I think so, yes. And we couldn't do the ritual on a spaceship, anyway, there's - the ritual needs to be done outside. Preferably at a time and place you like or find special to you in some form."
warpfairy
"Which would also seem to suggest Earth. I'll let my mother know I'm coming for a visit."
"The graphite would likely work to get you magic. But it wouldn't - give you the best chance to get the most amount of magic possible, I think. It's - I think it has something to do with you being Vulcan, but there's more something of what's associated with heat craft in you than an ordinary person. Just sort of floating about. Graphite in particular is useful because it's conductive, among other things - I will need to replace it with something that isn't as conductive, to balance out the whatever is in you, and replicate the other things graphite's contributing to the ritual."
warpfairy
"My blood is copper-based rather than iron-based, if that's what you mean?"
"I guess, I don't get chemical compositions, though, just - how stuff feels through magic. Which I suppose is partially based on chemical compositions, but.... I wouldn't say entirely."