the smoke and the spark | Glowfic Constellation

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Luthien enjoys her creative writing class, which is honestly a bit of a hazard sometimes - she gets into the flow of writing really easily, words pouring from her pencil like her hands have been possessed. That's safe to do in her dorm room, mostly, and she normally tries to limit the actual writing to that and keep to reading and analysis when she's actually in class. But, well.

Sometimes inspiration hits her like a freight train, like hunger, and she needs to either run or fight or, if she's in the middle of class and can't do either, write.

Like now. The paper might actually be heating up a little. Luthien has a tune stuck in her head, an idea for a new song-spell, and it's demanding to twist and weave between languages, the same tune in interwoven different words, set up like a one person round which will be fiendishly complicated to actually sing since she only has the one mouth, but she doubts she'll get someone else to sing this particular monstrosity of a song with her...

She's humming the tune as she writes, jumping between musical notation and phonetic scribbles and little sketches indicating movements or other instruments she might want to work in.

She's so caught up in her project that she doesn't notice the mal until it's nearly on top of her, and she needs to swallow her song-spell before she can actually cast something not half-finished -

And next - the hectic tumble towards graduation, controlled only on a technicality in the way a truck with failed brakes racing down a mountainside technically still has a steering wheel. People take over Luthien and El's final exams -

But Luthien insists on finishing her creative writing term project herself, because -

Because it's useful here she realizes - a lot of her and El's spells normally rendered useless by their sheer excessiveness are now useful. The way La Main de la Mort is a stupid spell to cast until you find yourself in a mawmouth. (Luthien teaches her insights on that spell to the team.) Turns out, when you're planning to stare down a hall full of the worst mals with several powerful enclaves' worth of mana on your wrist - that doesn't exactly call for a supervolcano, but it calls for everything short of an apocalypse.

Because Clarita, who's second place in the rankings despite not having been visibly going for valedictorian shares a spell with their group like her teeth are being pulled - a shield spell, a round that weaves between English and Spanish, a song for many singers, one that requires just rhythm and meaning and not precise wordings, one where they shield each other and not just themselves -

Because Luthien realizes that song-spells are made stronger by harmony, and that there's a synergy here -

Because her spell is the offensive mirror to Clarita's. Not a shield held to protect her companion, but teeth bared in defense of another. A song sung when she stands between her enemy and those she protects. A song of victory before victory is won, because you'll have to go through me, bitch, and my teeth are sharper than yours. A challenge like a hissing cat or snarling wolf.

Like the incanters on the team, standing between the graduation hoard and the maintenance crew. Between death and every other student behind their shield, because if they can't fix the machinery then everyone is screwed -

And the two spells together are a rattle of spears on shields, a phalanx woven from song and mana.

It's tricky, though, and has issues with mana use - but the biggest issue in most of the seniors' minds is that it leaves conceptual gaps. The incanters will be relatively exposed if one falls, and it really only works offensively if they let the mals get right up to the shield to be stabbed... Though probably some of their powerful offensive incanters like El can stand back and attack from shelter.

- Which, really, a lot of the incanters aren't eager to volunteer as a shield and spear protecting their ranged support. Aren't eager to have someone else doing the glory work while they take the risk. The idea of protected, ranged attacks causes an explosion of arguing -

And Luthien sits back.

See, the thing is - she's good at languages. Very, very good.

And she's already read the Golden Stone Sutras cover to cover, though she hasn't finished all the finicky translations, and she hasn't chewed over the very complicated spells enough to really have them down enough to cast, other than the phase change spell.

But there was one at the end that resonated in her chest - that snapped in her head faster than any spell ever has - stay, be our shelter, be loved - and she can't actually use it without all the other spells she's struggling with more, but -

But her mom has spells cast in a round, cast from pure intent, to heal and protect others - and Luthien has always been talented at that -

Luthien looks at all the ideas they have lined up before them, all the fragments of protective spells, and realizes -

Oh.

She's never pinned down her affinity - it's big and dramatic like El's, but not quite the same, and she gets a confusing spread of spells from the school -

But everything clicks in her head, now.

This is her affinity. To shelter, and be loved. To stand between danger and safety, teeth bared, a snarl in her throat and a thunder in her voice - not of anger or vengeance or even her terrible hunger, but of you shall not pass.

And El has always been the first and foremost one she protects. Strong, offensive El, who gets spells to cast down cities and not a single one to shield herself, let alone others. Strong El, who will always protect her Lu with anything and everything she has.

She picks up a pen like she's in a trance, and begins to write, and the spell pours from her fingers like it's been always waiting.

It's deceptively simple. It takes elements of all their spells - Clarita's shield, her spear, the Sutras' shelter, Gwen's healing circles - and creates something new from their fragments. A song driven purely by intent, that can be sung in the speaker's native language, in any words they wish so long as they keep to the rhythm and the meaning - that's meant to be sung by many mouths in many tongues, that's made stronger by the coming together of disparate parts. A harmony emerging from chaos.

(She'd always liked the opening of the Silmarillion, the part of the Fellowship where Gandalf faces the Balrog, the part of the Lay of Leithian where Luthien stands defiant between Beren and Morgoth. She'd named herself as a mirror to her sister when Gwen took her in - Tinuviel, which El never actually goes by but which Luthien had wanted to merge herself into. Two sides of one whole, two parts of one name.)

(She weaves some of the wordings in rather shamelessly, at least into her part of the spell. Their meaning to her makes it stronger.)

It feels incomplete, like something isn't gelling properly, but it's designed really well for shields with ranged support, weaving their offensive incanters into the main shield. A shield-bearer and an archer, more than a tight phalanx.

It needs more work. A lot. But she has the sense that'll take more than a week, and... This is good enough, she thinks. Good enough for this threat, and she's honestly unsure what kind of threat would require the distant, hazy shape she feels like this spell could become - whatever the supervolcano equivalent of a shield is.

She sets her pen down, and looks up at Jiana who's watching her intently like a puzzle to be solved, and says, voice strong and clear, "I have a new idea."