Phew.

OVER OVER

"Alright, we've got orders for tomorrow's march.  We're making for this crossroads," she can show on the map where it is, "where it is intended that we rendezvous with four phalanx of Disfavored in two days.  At that point, we - or at the very least, the Earthshakers - will likely be returning to central command.  ...I half wonder, given our showing thus far, whether it would be a good idea to continue giving the Chorus trouble as a detached force...  Though that plays to their strengths perhaps overmuch, especially without local assistance.  Perhaps it would be prudent to seek to speak to the Vendrien Guard, while we're out here."

"We did alright with the first set," says Colus, "The second set would probably have been beyond our ability to take in a straightforward fight, I'd estimate three dozen and possibly as many as sixty. They do tend to be skilled at asymmetric combat, but not universally, and if we had the luxury of nibbling off parts of their gang in sequence rather than a fixed position our chances would have been... relatively favorable, I think. Verse?"

"Yeah, gangs that big - even if it was two of them, which it probably was, maybe not if it was three - aren't usually spec'ed for hunting or spying. Approach them around the edges and try to pull off pieces to kill... I'd give us two out of three. But probably not four out of five."

He nods with a smile. "A little worse than I'd guess; appreciated. I'd say it's worth sniffing around places where the Vendrien Guard are based. If they have Chorus watching or sieging, that's a good opportunity for us both militarily and, I think, diplomatically. Roaming freely looking for targets of opportunity, while it will amuse Verse, is less obviously a good idea."

She nods.  "I do think that your amended plan would be more strategically effective, if perhaps less nostalgic."

"...Mmmm.  I do find myself wondering, though, about how the Earthshakers are going to be deployed in this context - we already know that the Scarlet Chorus doesn't have decent mage doctrine when faced with equivalent forces, and the Earthshakers' primary method of operations was siege rather than battlefield control, last I saw.  And...Well, the Chorus doesn't do sieges.  Not attacking and most certainly not defending.  They wouldn't even repair the walls of their chosen fortification, last I was there.

"Then again, I have to imagine that Graven Ashe has been preparing for this war ever since he took up his Archonate, and you're actually capable of coordination on a doctrinal scale.  Is this sort of war something that the Earthshakers have plans for, thaumaturgically speaking?"

"A squad of Earthshakers working in concert can give a decent impression of Cairn's ripping-the-earth attacks, at least on some ground. Other than that, they mostly fall back on enhancing the legion, they can do a lot to enhance our existing strengths. They haven't been thoroughly integrated, though."

Hmm.

"I wonder how difficult it would be to create a spellform for the Sigil of Stone that is more akin to a volley of fire than a siege shot.  ...Well, I do suppose Chaotic Descent exists, but that's asking for trouble when you're working alongside proper lines.  It's hard to shift the area, and not really worth the way it makes forming lines harder once it's been cast, even if it is pretty dangerous - if it hits the wrong spot, you'll just bleed out, and it has a good angle.  On the other hand, people make arrowheads out of some types of rock; I've seen it done.  Lantry, you've spent longer talking about their spells than I have - have they fit something into Channeled Strength yet?  I have something in mind for that position - and it rather ought to fill that hole."

The moment Cairn screamed, feeling rage at the pain she had brought upon him, and flung stone upon stone at all and sundry, at the masses massed against him, to be exact.

If anyone can capture that moment and distil it into a coherent spell...  She gives herself a good chance of succeeding.

(Her stylus idly sketches something, as she speaks - a glyph that perhaps could be a sigil - the Sigil of Stone's eponymous stone, pierced by the Y-shaped pall of Channeled Strength...with an interesting variance from the forms she knows of, all of them centering the circles she has always thought of as 'impact lines' upon the stone; this glyph draws them skewed outwards, the circles aligned at the place where Channeled Strength impacts this imagined boulder, ringing the prongs of the expression sigil, rippling outwards like an explosion - like the force of Cairn, wrecking mighty stone walls in a single blow, crushing the puny humans behind them.)

"I don't think they have, they have the Chaotic - well, Ascent, in this case - and the slow Directed Force that gathers a boulder and shoves it, but not a straightforward arc. I think the squad-size ritual does do something like what I'd expect, there, so I don't know why they haven't gotten it as a pure sigil."

"They're not using the right metaphor.", she says, the full stop at the end of her sentence impacting like a catapult stone.  "You should start with Directed Force as a framework for gathering ammunition, then shatter the boulder like Cairn shattered fortress walls, holding in mind the moment where Cairn, blinded and hurt by puny mortals, could do nothing but throw great shards of stone in an approximate direction."

"That does seem promising. We can ask who here was present for that and see if the initial fit works, from what I know of specialist schools they'll have an intuition for that much more quickly than generalists."

"I was, if nothing else.  And if they've gotten their stone shaping to be that effective, it's about time I tried to learn Stone properly, rather than looking at Cairn, finding very little in common between an agent of civilization and a mountain man who likes wrecking it, and figuring I just can't get the appropriate headspace.

"I'll certainly give him credit for his determination, if nothing else suits."

"For new work, even with a likely candidate, it'll be slow going, and doubly so for someone new to the core sigil. Being able to work more intuitively with their specialist discipline is, to my mind, the primary benefit of specializing like the Earthshakers or the Winter Guild up with the triplets, rather than the generalists like Sages and Fatebinders. I'm sure you could get it eventually, having been there, but - you might work for three fists and only then learn it's doomed and won't work for one reason or another."

She nods.  "We'll see.  It will be an interesting conversation for the march, to be sure."

"True. I think I'll go ask."

"Perhaps I'll come with.  I've been meaning to find the time to ask you what the emotional difference is between Preservation and Life, while I'm thinking of talking to people about magic."

"If you like. I'd say my emotions are usually.... comfortable and relaxed, mostly. I've been using Preservation regularly longer than you've been alive, recalling the right scenes doesn't take getting worked up anymore... not that it was ever as demonstrative as Fire or Tides."

"I wouldn't say I've ever made a habit of getting worked up, per se; mostly I just sort of..."

"Hmm.  I know exactly the shape of the mental motions in question, but there simply aren't good words for it.

"Perhaps -

"The difference between standing upon Terratus and looking up at the greater moon, and standing upon the greater moon and looking up at Terratus."

"...Also, I know I said 'emotional difference', but I meant...Mm.  The whole mental component to the average invocation.  I've got a feeling for Life and Vigor, and I want to see if Preservation mixes well."

She's always felt like her casting is more art than science - no matter the clear evidence of someone who could have written some very impressive reference-scrolls, judging by the way the Spires exist.

"It's certainly related - the sigil looks a lot like you overlaid Vigor and Life, looked at it for five seconds, and then did a blind sketch of it a minute later. The set of events shares a lot with Vigor, though rarely the same perspective - things that as Vigor you might picture being caused, Preservation you usually picture in progress, having endured. Brynn the Orator stirring up a crowd for the Seven Day March versus Brynn at the head of his mob, still riotous at the end of the March. With Life, the analogies are less direct, but they often exist as well."

She nods.  "I daresay that all I'm missing to cast Preservation successfully is knowledge of the particular spellforms, then.  I have an anomalously good grasp of Life and Vigor.  And given that you can sort of 'cheat' the modulation process by tracing the aspect sigil and the expression in different hands - I didn't bring the guide with me, alas, but I've done it many times - maybe not even that."

"Which would make it slower but not too much different; yes, I'm familiar in theory. Well, the easiest analogy is Renewal, if you know the Material Force for Vigor, 'Polish Arms' we called it. Renewal focuses on repairing all damage and wear, works for armor as well, and it's a very direct doublet, picturing the tools worn but strong after much use. Sigil looks like this-" and he casts it on his own knives and padded doublet.

"Oh, not even slower, that's 'trace them one at a time in order'.  Doing the target with one hand and the energy with the other."

She has not usually tended to get into situations where her equipment is visibly worn, to see it mended, but there are certainly a few things that she can test - her staff is about due for new wood oil, and there is that ding on her scabbard.

It helps even if they aren't really damaged, making them closer to the idea of a tool, but it's most visible for things that are a little worn-down. Her first cast feels like it's channeling the energy inefficiently, but the sigils glow properly and the staff and scabbard look a little healthier.

"You must be good with those, that was far better than a first try has any right to expect. Probably you'll need to vary what you're visualizing for full effect, and putting more juice into it is harder than with the more common sigils, but you have the basics of Renewal down."

"Wonderful," she murmurs, feeling the new sort of magic flowing through her - because indeed this is wondrous, as it ever has been and ever will be.  It is a balm unto her soul.

Once she's recovered from her self-inflicted awe, she chuffs a bit of a laugh at the rest of Lantry's comment.  "I've certainly been told it's unusual to have been able to cast the Sigil of Life from a theoretical basis of only the Orphan Midwife's trial record, for all that it was not my first spell ever."

"Yes, that does sound fairly unprecedented. Life's generally considered fairly hard. Hmm, I've always suspected it works better if you know some ordinary medicine and perhaps surgery - did you?"