tomes of memory | Glowfic Constellation

For the last decade, maybe the last three, the web of futures has felt strained.

For the last year, it's been worse than that. Tug a strand and you're tugged along a different one; try to focus your attention on a thread and it shivers, wiggles, splinters. Every vision dissolves before too long into sand and noise and white light. Every thread through the darkness of more than negligible width has been grabbed, glued, cut, knotted, until the one thing that protects the future is that every possibility is spread out too finely to merit interference. It's a senseless, agonizing, ever-present haze of strain and uncertainty and confusion and everyone's so angry about it (except Nethys, who seems to have some other way, and except Iomedae, whose blazing conviction that this must be done streaks through every possible future in the same vivid color).

For the last week, there is something like agony when He reaches out to touch the future. Agony and the jolting, disorienting sensation of swimming through a million possible worlds, none of them attainable, none of them a thread it is possible to follow from here to there. Everyone is playing this game, now, and anything clear enough to see is clear enough for someone to sabotage, and something they're doing - He's not sure what, He doesn't think it's Him doing it - is straining not just all of the possible futures but the web of Future itself, the relentless logic by which tomorrow follows from today and the overarching march of history is not ruled by coincidences and butterflies flapping their wings but by decisions, made by people, for reasons that will hold from a hundred different angles -

- He wouldn't have guessed that that was a thing you could strain. But apparently you can. He considers, with the attention of a hundred human minds, of course, whether any of the implications touch on any of the crucial considerations here. He concludes it doesn't change anything. He expected that Foresight would be blurred by a dozen gods tearing at the future from a dozen different angles; he knew all along this would have to be overdetermined to succeed, that it'd have to depend on nothing that could change in the tapestry of possible futures. He will not get a better thing to bet on, and He will not get the chance to bet again, so He should put all of his chips down, here.

(He doesn't need Foresight anyway. He was human, and remembers more than most about how to interpret their actions, their words, their minds. The King of Cheliax is preparing to abdicate, has drawn up detailed documents to ensure the transition goes smoothly. There will be a festival; His people will gather in the streets, waiting for Him, wanting Him, and that will give Him the sudden expansion of attentional capacity and power needed to -)

For the last hour, the future leaves searing scars when He reaches out to touch it. It's no longer fiilled with noise; it's not filled with anything, really, a blank and terrifying vacuum. It is much much worse than having one of your major senses filled with uninterpretable noise; it's more like having one of your major senses filled with TORTURE. He feels it starting, though, feels His attentional capacity expanding and His power increasing and His senses expand to include His people, all of them -

- and He can at last See enough, and -

Total: 879

Posts Per Page:

‹ Previous 1 2 … 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 … 35 36 Next ›

« First ‹ Previous 20 of 36 Next › Last »

She tries to prepare the cantrip; she's not used to trying to hold magic into a stable pattern and it slips away. She looks murderously angry with the magic for about two seconds, tries again. Tries again. Tries again. Tries again. - gets it.

"I was holding it in my head but I think there was something about it I wasn't paying enough attention to," she says, without any satisfaction, the instant the spell is stable. "Can I practice that step again with another spell -"

death-the-only-reward

"Right now? You should try to do some things with it first, and then I can give you Detect Magic, that is usually the next one I teach since it is so very useful for learning more things." Also, that might be fewer tries than it took him to get his first cantrip. He is incredibly impressed.

"It's just that I think the thing I was doing wrong is in my head now." She closes her eyes, thinks. Thinks some more. Her fingers twitch.

Then she opens her eyes again and tries to cast the cantrip; that step is much easier, and works fine, and she can make things colored or nudge them a bit with no more deftness than any of her classmates.

"What's it doing -"

death-the-only-reward

He tries his best to explain, pulling on a god's memories seen dimly and distorted as though through fogged glass; he still has Silent Image up so he can use illustrations.

Then he gets out the ink again and copies the spell for Detect Magic into her new beginning spellbook, though he explains that she won't be able to cast it right away, probably not for a few hours, she's going to be starting out without a lot of magical reserves although he thinks she'll get stronger very fast, and soon she'll be able to learn how to recoup the energy from her cantrips as she casts them and then she can do as many in a day as she likes.

She nods very seriously and eventually her supply of questions is exhausted. "Thank you for teaching me," she does manage to remember to say, eventually.

death-the-only-reward

"It is my pleasure." He hands her the spellbook. "This is yours. Come back tomorrow. Make sure you get a good night's sleep."

She nods very seriously!

death-the-only-reward

He goes and tells his wife about their extremely promising new student. "She will not be able to pay us, but we can write a contract for an apprenticeship arrangement like the one that I did, and - it would be a tragedy for her not to learn magic. She is brilliant."

"Oh, that girl! If you say so. There might be trouble, you know, if we're teaching children without their father's permission now."

death-the-only-reward

"...I had forgotten about that concern. How difficult do you think it would be to obtain her father's permission? Surely it ought to be easier if we agree not to charge for it."

"Probably! He might worry about her marriage prospects but if she's a wizard that's much less of a disaster. You could offer to marry her?"

death-the-only-reward

"Huh! ...That seems rather excessive, I doubt she wants to marry me and - I was not really planning to marry a second wife, at least not without a great deal of thought. Is there any way we can relieve his worries about her marriage prospects - if the difficulty is her being alone with a man, we could say that you are always there for lessons. Unless she recounts her lesson today to him, but I doubt she was planning to."

"That will help somewhat but I think there's also just the worry that if you've been raising your daughter like a son then she won't take to being a wife well? My father used to worry about that with reading but I was like, well, I can always stop."

death-the-only-reward

"I am very confused why a man would not want a wizard for a wife! Magic is so useful. She was planning to learn magic either way, you know. By subterfuge if necessary. More subterfuge than coming here presumably without asking her parents." Sigh. "Probably it will go better if I talk to her father myself? But I think we had better use Charm Person so you can tell me what to say, I am very bad at that sort of thing."

"All right." And she Charms him, smiling fondly.

death-the-only-reward

He kisses her and then Charms her back and heads out to talk to his new student's father.

She feeds him lines. Nefreti showed up at their house to ask for magic lessons. He would like to tutor the girl for free, because she's obviously talented enough to warrant it; his wife is his magic assistant and will chaperone, of course, and maybe also set a good example.

The man is somewhat indignant and glowers a bit and mutters about charlatans without any real magical talent and impressionable young children.

death-the-only-reward

Any help? he asks Parmida. I could point out that she will be able to show him more spells tomorrow - maybe even today, if her reserves are recovered from the first casting.

Probably worth pointing out. You might also do some magic yourself, so he knows you at least are genuinely capable of it.

death-the-only-reward

So he points this out, hoping Nefreti has in fact saved her energy rather than immediately casting another spell as soon as she could, and he tells the man the wizard he apprenticed with (not that he even learned most of his magic there), and offers to demonstrate some magic for him; he has his focus and can cast a spell he hasn't prepared for today, even, to show he knows more than just cantrips.

Nefreti comes to the door and shoots a murderous glare at him and then can, in fact, cast Prestidigitation for her father, who grumbles that that's very impressive and he'll consider whether she may continue in her lessons. And then shuts the door in their faces.

death-the-only-reward

...Well, that could have gone better but it could also have gone worse, and it seems a lot less fraught than doing a secret under-the-table apprenticeship with a twelve-year-old girl in an extremely patriarchal society.

And she does in fact show up the next day, though she glares at him. "He would never have noticed, you know. He has twelve."

death-the-only-reward

"I am not comfortable on principle with plans that require subterfuge and might explode in my face if the subterfuge ever fails. I apologize that I did not discuss it with you first, though, I am not from Osirion and it only occurred to me that your father might object when my wife mentioned it. I think he should be very proud of you and feel honoured. Anyway, have you figured out what you thought you were doing wrong on the first try?"