"Only so much we could carry without sacrificing our own necessary gear. And better to do it now than while we travel."

"I'm not enormously worried, and this is still a solid defensible position. But they know where we are, so precautions against being picked off while foraging are standard procedure."

She nods.  "If the spell isn't sufficient, then you should do it."

Are the Earthshakers ready for her to cast, now that she has the area marked out?

Yep, everything's set up smoothly.

Then she will cast, and cast again, and cast again, until there's nobody who feels like they're not in as good health as they think the spell can get them.

They're looking better, and moving around more, but everyone still looks very tired.

...She'll give it a bit to work through their systems, but she's sure enough that they're going to need to run that hunt that they should do it now.

...While the Crescent Runners (and Verse) are doing that, though, she's going to see if she can invoke multiple 'energy' sigils at once, and then, if she can, try to work them both into a single magical expression.  Life and Vigor commingled will surely help more than Life alone.... she has to hope.

Surely this will not be the only time she runs into this problem - and she doesn't expect she'll have such high-quality scouts on hand for most future instances thereof.

They will be off doing that for an hour or two.

She doesn't make any definite progress today, but that's not too surprising, experimenting is usually slow.

Does Lantry have any thoughts on the matter?

"I've never heard of it done. I think the fundamental obstacle is you have to be of two minds about it - almost literally. Holding two very different events in your head and maintaining the proper connection. ...Now that I mention it, the Voices might be able to do it. Not one of their publicized abilities, but that's obviously not saying much."

"Hm.  I do believe I'm good at holding things."

Like being an entirely genuinely loyal servant of Kyros and absolutely despising most actions she is called to undertake by his will, she doesn't say.  Like despising the fruits of Nerat's labor but finding most individual Choristers no particular issue to work with.  Like knowing what the law demands and what ethics requires, even as she threads the needle between.

Perhaps meditation upon that dichotomous mindset will help this next dual invocation.

Feels vaguely like it might be helping, but on the other hand it might just be harder to notice the ways it's failing when her attention is split.

She's been mostly trying distinct - stories, events, mentalities - because it's easier to hold them as two separate things, but, come to think of it, that's probably backwards of how you want to try and learn the process, no matter if it would work in a spell...

Does she feel like she gets closer to having things click into place, if she tries with very similar stories?  If, to return to her earlier analogy, she focuses more on the needle she's threading, the overlap between what is possible and what is permitted, than what must be held apart?

For instance, if she tried - Stone and Lightning, to name two Sigils that rightly have little in common between them...

If she called upon the sudden shock of an earthquake unleashed, and the roiling tumult of a thunderous lightning-strike, as her visualization aids...Not that she would actually test this hypothesis with anything but Life and Vigor yet, especially if it might end up an actual spell instead of simple aspected mana, but...

Does it feel more correct that way?  Or does it feel worse, somehow?

Ophelia has always been rather an intuitive caster, in a way - oh, don't get her wrong, she studies the lore, but when she's done that, she flips it inside-out, and rather than focusing upon an Archon's particular deeds, on the rote menorization of historical events - she tries to focus upon what they could have been feeling in the moment their fervent desire for a miracle was answered by none other than themselves.

What sort of people these Archons could have been, beneath the mantle of myth and might.  What they wanted, what they needed, what they were thinking - what they knew they could do, and what pushed them beyond the boundaries of the known.

She usually finds this more effective than simply reiterating the results, in generating the appropriate mental state to cast from a known sigil.

And she thinks that when she thinks about the sigils of Life and Vigor, she finds that they push many of the same boundaries, for the same sorts of reasons.

(She hopes that she'll be able to break through this one - to honor those who came before her, and aid those who will come after.)

It's not worse. It feels approximately like it should for trying to hold a spell with several associated mental images in her head. But it's definitely not clicking with any of the pieces the way a working or almost-working spell does.

Probably if she's going to get this, she'll need to start with two concepts which are even more similar. Likely that wouldn't produce an actually useful pair of spells, but this is experimentation - a useless existence proof is useful in its own right.

Well.  She did, originally, start with the idea of commingling certain spells she already knows.

Well, maybe that will work faster. Not much progress today, but it's always a slow process.

And she has learned that the Sigil of Life can, if not necessarily outright cure, still somewhat mitigate Vigor exhaustion.  She finds herself wondering if it would work better applied 'fresh', as was, and drafts a memorandum:

Vigor Exhaustion, Starvation, and the Sigil of Life: A Mitigation Strategy

It is known that the Sigil of Vigor, in addition to causing some mental dependence upon its effects for those of certain sorts of mind, is not truly sufficient to march upon, no matter how powerful the caster.  Those who march under it are, as of yet, inevitably depleted of some vital resource, much as long-term seafarers must be sure to carry citrus.

I have recently had an opportunity to work with certain persons with no choice but to rely upon Vigor spells and the Aegis of Graven Ashe for their survival, in the absence of reliable access to supply, and have thusly had an opportunity to test a long-held belief of mine about the Sigil of Life - to wit, that it restores what is otherwise depleted in a Vigor-march.

...The random and slightly absurd idea she's had about raising Ashe's ghosts to a new Legion with Sufficient Magic, thus relieving him of their burden somewhat, will rather have to wait.  She's a bit busy right now.

To put it simply, observational study suggests that invoking the Sigil of Life in even its simplest stable expression can produce meaningful improvement in patient conditions, both as perceived and as measured; while it would be a failure to uphold Kyros' Peace to wilfully avoid pursuing ways of feeding the starved or starving, and clearly bring Kyros no glory - beware the follies of magic! - I was able to produce improvement both noticed and felt, by observers and participants, before the provision of, well, provisions, hopelessly confounded future investigations.

Further questions remain:

- What proportion of the damage so healed was caused by Vigor overuse, compared to starvation?

- What characterizes the things that are taxed by overreliance upon the Sigil of Vigor?

- Do persons without the benefit of Ashe's Aegis suffer different damages?  What characterizes this, if so, and does it then heal differently?

- Does active invocation of Life concurrent with Vigor suffice to prevent damage from accruing to the point of depletion in the first place?

- Does the Sigil of Preservation - an offshoot of the Sigil of Life, by some tellings - produce the same effects in the same situations?

- If not, how does it differ, and - if any answer presents itself - why?

- Can a spell be created that commingles the essences of Life and Vigor, ideally preventing even the initial damage from occurring?

 

I continue to investigate the lattermost question, and hope that I am not alone in seeking answers.

 

In Kyros' name I do attest that what I have written is a true accounting of my research, and that to the best of my knowledge this scroll does not contain knowledge forbidden to any denizens of Kyros' Empire.  Any hand may copy it, though none shall take this copy from the Fatebinders' Library save by sealed or in-person authorization of:

- The sitting Fatebinder of Lore (or successor),

- The Archon Tunon (or such others as Tunon may designate,)

- Myself, 

Written on this the EIGHTH day of the month of BLOOD, in the year 431 by Kyros' TRUE RECKONING,

-- Fatebinder Ophelia Vaudelle

And soon the scouts will be back with four braces* of ground birds and one deer. Soon they will be roasting over several fires and all the remaining jerky will be being eaten by salivating Earthshakers.

(And, this being obvious, half the birds are set aside to smoke overnight, in strips. The venison's richer and tastier anyway.)

*surprisingly, this means eight

"Hey, boss, sunset's coming up. Got the message figured out yet?"

She absolutely does!

...The author of this post does not, structly speaking, have the capacity to render it as it would have been drafted.

Nonetheless:

CONTACT EARTHSHAKERS 22 EXACT CHORUS 40 APPROXIMATE STOP

CHORUS ROUTED NO CASUALTIES STOP

MANY PAST SKIRMISHES TWO EARTHSHAKERS CASUALTIES STOP

EARTHSHAKERS CONDITION POOR BUT STRENGTHENING STOP

GOOD FORTIFICATION PRESENT STOP

REQUEST BEARING EARTHSHAKERS STOP

REQUEST BEARING FATEBINDER STOP

OVER

The key response is

EARTHSHAKERS CONTACT ACKNOWLEDGED STOP CONDITION ACKNOWLEDGED STOP

VENDRIEN-GUARD COMMAND SCOUTED <approximate location> NO-ORDERS STOP

SCARLET-CHORUS SCOUTED YOUR VICINITY NIL STOP

There's then a digression into known engagements, which probably isn't comprehensive but is probably good to know, before it returns to the topic of them:

EARTHSHAKERS MOVE DISFAVORED COMMAND ORDER STOP SPEED NO-ORDERS STOP

FATEBINDER MOVE EARTHSHAKERS ORDER STOP

RENDEZVOUS DISFAVORED FOUR PHALANXES CROSSROADS <approximate location> STOP REQUEST RENDEZVOUS TWO DAYS STOP

And then a wait for acknowledgement.

ACKNOWLEDGE FATEBINDER EARTHSHAKERS RENDEZVOUS [LOCATION] TWO DAYS STOP

ACKNOWLEDGE EXPECT FOUR DISFAVORED PHALANXES STOP

ACKNOWLEDGE DISTANT RENDEZVOUS DISFAVORED COMMAND STOP

REQUEST REPEAT QUOTE VENDRIEN-GUARD COMMAND SCOUTED NO-ORDERS UNQUOTE UNCLEAR NONCOMBATANT STOP

OVER

NONCOMBATANT UNKNOWN STOP DISFAVORED CONTACT NIL STOP FATEBINDER CONTACT NO-ORDERS STOP

(It's possible that the Iron Marshal is regretting not making "You're the diplomat here, you make the call" part of the code.)

Oh, is that what she meant?

ACKNOWLEDGE STOP

QUOTE NO-ORDERS UNQUOTE UNCLEAR LOCATION STOP

ACKNOWLEDGE NO-ORDERS FATEBINDER CONTACT VENDRIEN-GUARD STOP

OVER

That should make things much clearer.

Communication: It's actually pretty hard!

ACKNOWLEDGE OVER OVER

And that's the end of exchange signal.