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trans_92011-05-07 09:37 pm
brustriese.livejournal.com) wrote in trans_92011-05-07 09:37 pm
Her Flight [semi-open]
Somewhere inside the vast dome of the City, Signum floated, transformed into her battle gear, eyes closed and mind reaching out to the ship for magical reactions. The presence of Stacy's mind - not magic per se, but still psychically loud - was a constant buzz, but her senses floated to smaller, brighter sparks, aided by what she held in her hands - the "Book of Darkness" that she had taken up last week. She'd been confused, then, but now that the Administration Program was back in her proper place, it was time to start filling the pages again. She'd dawdled too long on this ship, trusting 'Stacy' to keep Hayate safe (ha!), even socializing with the time-displaced Bureau mages who had been trying to stop her before all this...
She reaches out for magical reactions. People she knew - Nanoha and Testarossa (avoid at all costs), Aibghalien (noted), Hayate (...) - and others she didn't, or whom she was merely acquainted with through the Magic Department.
Ha. A Wolkenritter joining such an organization. That was possibly her least thought-out bit of subterfuge here. They had nothing to offer her, unless some bleeding hearts were willing to sacrifice mana...but that clearly wouldn't happen. No, no, it's definitely time to go back to doing this the old-fashioned way. The very old-fashioned way, since her comrades were all still in the pods.
Yes, she'd have to be careful, but the danger was worth it. To live quietly with her Master, even in this besieged cave of a starship...that was what mattered.
She focuses in on a magical signature and swoops quietly towards it, preparing a Barrier to isolate herself with the victim. Hopefully, they'd fall quickly and painlessly...
((Okay friends, reply to this post if you a) have magical powers and want to have a fight with Signum over them or b) spot Signum and want to stop her. Threads will probably take place in skewed pocket dimensions called Barriers for privacy, but these can be broken into if you like. Expect fighting! Signum isn't in the mood to talk. Further details can be found here. If you signed up to get mugged and want to do it in another post, just let me know.))
She reaches out for magical reactions. People she knew - Nanoha and Testarossa (avoid at all costs), Aibghalien (noted), Hayate (...) - and others she didn't, or whom she was merely acquainted with through the Magic Department.
Ha. A Wolkenritter joining such an organization. That was possibly her least thought-out bit of subterfuge here. They had nothing to offer her, unless some bleeding hearts were willing to sacrifice mana...but that clearly wouldn't happen. No, no, it's definitely time to go back to doing this the old-fashioned way. The very old-fashioned way, since her comrades were all still in the pods.
Yes, she'd have to be careful, but the danger was worth it. To live quietly with her Master, even in this besieged cave of a starship...that was what mattered.
She focuses in on a magical signature and swoops quietly towards it, preparing a Barrier to isolate herself with the victim. Hopefully, they'd fall quickly and painlessly...
((Okay friends, reply to this post if you a) have magical powers and want to have a fight with Signum over them or b) spot Signum and want to stop her. Threads will probably take place in skewed pocket dimensions called Barriers for privacy, but these can be broken into if you like. Expect fighting! Signum isn't in the mood to talk. Further details can be found here. If you signed up to get mugged and want to do it in another post, just let me know.))
He doesn't know the artifact part... and DOES have a Disjunction memorized. So caution is good!
"I find it hard to believe that you'd just attack me out of hand rather than asking me for help," Aibghalien said, brandishing the staff. What had he grabbed, anyway? He glanced at it quickly, and... a staff of conjuration. Well, that was probably near-useless, but hopefully she didn't know that. "Nevertheless, I'm willing to offer you some magical power in exchange for an explanation and just maybe, not attacking me!"
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Getting more agitated, Signum points her sword at the elf. "Now show me what your world's mages can do, and I'll try my best to leave you alive." And with that, she charges, aiming to sever that staff (a wooden staff? In this day and age?) with one blow and put him on the defensive.
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"Damn it, Signum," he said as a crystal -- perfect, about a foot and a half in length, and charged with pure magical energy -- burst out of one of his bags to hover in midair next to him, its aura synching perfectly with his own. "I'm more irritated that you underestimate me than anything!"
From his own memorizations, he invoked spell turning (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/spellTurning.htm); from the depths of the crystal's power, he recklessly spent energy to quicken stoneskin (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/stoneskin.htm). Those two should provide him a measure of protection that wouldn't endanger Signum as well.
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Some mussed hair, a lot of dead locusts, and half a dozen seconds later, she's back on the offensive, flying forward at Aibghalien and slashing away with her sword. Magical protections aside, she knew he was at a serious disadvantage in close quarters, whether he took that as her underestimating him or not.
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No disjunction. No dispels. Most of his defensive spells were inapplicable against sword-to-the-face. What did that leave? Containment.
He spoke a few words, leveled a hand at her, then closed his open fingers into a fist to invoke a resilent sphere (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/resilientSphere.htm) around her.
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She growls, annoyed. This was clearly a simple spell, but very elegant. Trying to overwhelm it with regular damage wasn't going to work, so she's left with three options: use the Book to retreat through dimensions (something told her this would be an insanely bad idea while warping through the Bleed), use a spell from the Book to break the sphere, or go for broke and use Sturm Falke, which would take the last of her Cartridges. Or wait quietly for someone to come arrest her, but that was not an option.
As Signum glares at the sphere and continues testing it with her blade, trying to make a decision, Aibghalien probably has time to do something.
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That was an idea. Aibghalien quickly cast mirror image, surrounding himself with a few duplicates -- then waited a moment. He suspected that Signum would not be so easily balked by a mere fourth-level spell. Not for long. But he'd really prefer she expend her resources smashing out of it.
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Signum closes her eyes and brandishes the heavy tome she's carrying within the bubble, opening it and chanting inaudibly. Text and formulae disappear from five of its pages as they flip in an obviously sourceless wind and fill the sphere with a flash of light, disintegrating the astral fabric of the spell and leaving it shattered, and leaving a very irate Signum standing there and snapping the Book shut.
"I hope you're happy. You cost me five whole pages. That's more people I'm going to need to attack now."
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He had no illusions about Signum's strength of will, but he could hope that whatever had caused her to act so unusual had perhaps weakened her resistance to mental influence. At the very least, maybe she would listen to reason even without the magic.
The much more realistic part of him prepared for another assault.
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"...you'd help me get the magical energy I need?" she asks, seriously considering it. "There's no way to get it but to take it from living creatures. Even willing donors would be in a great deal of discomfort, even if the magical damage wasn't permanent. Would you really accept that?"
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"...very well. Shall we give it a try?" she asks, holding the Book of Darkness forth, but still protectively, not entirely trustingly. It needed to be defended at all costs, after all. That was her primary, and when you got down to it, only purpose. Protect the Book, protect its Master.
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With a gesture, he sent the mostly-empty crystal drifting towards her. No sense in wasting a full one -- situations like this always had the possibility of ending up in explosions. "If you can't access it directly I have an idea," he said, rather grimly, "though I would prefer not to use it if possible."
I am obviously making shit up as I go here
"SAMMELN."
The Book flares with energy and runic triangles hover in the air as it attempts to drain the crystal - not Aibghalien, at Signum's strict mental command. He could get hurt if he tried to struggle out of it, after all.
"Ungültiges Ziel", the Book says as the attempt fails.
"Hmph. So much for that," Signum says. "Obviously it can't take mana from an unliving thing, no matter where the energy originally came from."
So was my DM! It can't get wackier than the game was!
"Ordinarily I'd haul you off to my lab for a few weeks of experimentation on the energy transfer process -- huh, that sounded much more like innuendo than I had intended -- but I'm guessing that time is an issue here." Since she had attacked him and all. "So... please tell me you can time the draining process reasonably precisely, because otherwise I think the obvious answer is going to be very unhappy for me."
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"If you don't struggle, it shouldn't harm you at all beyond not being able to cast spells for a few days. That's why I've been knocking people out," she explains. "Then again, your magic is different, so for all I know it could permanently paralyze your spellcasting."
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Aibghalien fixed her with a firm, intense glare. "My ability to use magic is from training, study, and discipline. It isn't innate. It certainly isn't reflected in a Linker organ, if I've remember the term correctly? The magical ability within me is an elven soul and the blood of a god. Taking those would probably kill me."
He holds up one hand, palm down; another crystal drifts out of his belt pouch to hover beneath it. "But I can draw the energy of these into me. I do so to shape the power in them into spells. If you can time your drain just as I do so, perhaps you can draw the magic from the crystal through me."
It was a reckless gamble, since Signum could simply just drain him entirely while he was vulnerable. He chose to bet on her character and her honor. And his own half-truths. The soul and blood statement was truth, but he hadn't mentioned that even as a wizard, the spells he had memorized but not cast represented a consumable force of arcane energy that would probably serve her purpose quite well.
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"I am not in complete control of the process, but neither is the Book of Darkness autonomous in its current state," Signum says. "I will certainly be able to stop it from killing you."
"...we should probably land, though, just in case."
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"Just wanted I wanted to hear," he said, half-seriously. Taking her statement to heart, he glanced down, then descended towards a reasonably flat and nondescript roof.
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"This should be a fairly simple change to the spell, but hold as still as you can anyway. This usually only causes serious damage when people struggle," Signum advises.
She flips the Book open, preparing the sealing spell. "I'm ready when you are."
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"As soon as the crystal begins to dim," he said. "When it's utterly dark, it will have no more power left, at which point I'd appreciate the Book not continuing to drain my essence if at all possible..."
Without further delay he drew a small portion of the crystal's power into himself, dimming it as he prepared to cast a spell.
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As the energy flows out, the Book picks up the pace, not giving Aibghalien any warning to keep up. Pages fill first gradually, then surprisingly quickly - Signum blinks as she sees just how much magical potential Aibghalien has between himself and those crystals.
However, the Book is impatient, and to be quite frank a glitched piece of hardware. The sealing of Aibghalien's magical energy continues well past the point where the crystal is drained, going for the next-most-convenient source - the spells in his mind, of a perfect format for the Book of Darkness, which is first and foremost a Storage Device for spells, even if its own Knight doesn't remember that.
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Oh well. He let the spells go with only a clenching of his jaw and a growing sense of focused concern; they were just mental patterns of energy, it would take a good night's rest and an hour to refresh them, whereas Signum's need is or at least appears to be that much greater. It's no different than casting them all to help her, which he would gladly do...
But as the last daze spell vanished from his head he readied himself against any further draining. His bloodline he would defend to the death. Had to, since without it he might not even be able to restore Cerilia magically at the end of this journey.
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"Stop, end spell, that's enough," she says, but the single-minded, damaged artifact is ignoring orders as best it can, still searching for a way into that inner reserve of magic in this subject. So many layers...
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