|
Post by ch00beh on Jan 12, 2011 19:01:35 GMT -5
A young boy, twelvish at best, ran as fast as he could move his legs without tripping over his uniform robes. His curly brown hair rose and fell in time with the taps of his shoes. Since picking up his books and stuffing them into his satchel five minutes ago, he could not have seen more than two or three people walking down the hall, not counting the people who had quickly slipped into various rooms along the way. The first classes of the first day of this new school year had definitely begun.
The boy had multiple memories competing for space in his head. On the short side of things, he was trying to memorize the names of the creatures he had been reading about, or at least the names of the books he had been looking at. The library wouldn't let him take any of the older tomes, and those were the hardest to read and longest to process.
At the same time, the boy was recalling the tour his older sister had given him of the smoothed stone halls a few months ago, before the previous semester had even ended. He made a right turn from the smaller corridor into a main thoroughfare, also fairly empty of people. In a second he would come upon Haley's Cloister, and his Introduction to Magic classroom would only be three rooms after that.
Suddenly, sharp morning sunlight fell the boy's face, the rays streaming in over the cloister's open courtyard. Pallus had already claimed its spot in the sky while Corinth lazily followed. The smaller sun had not yet risen above the rooftops, but it still painted the horizon a hazy orange under the otherwise blue sky.
The boy rounded another corner, nearly colliding with the fourth not-rushing person he had seen since the library, then counted the doors. That one should be it. He came to a stop, took a moment to catch his breath and straighten his robes, then slowly opened the door.
“Jacob Agnés, I presume?” was the first thing he heard. He didn't even have a chance to open the door past a crack. “Don't be shy, child, take a seat.”
Jacob opened the door all the way to see an auditorium that he had not been in before. There were about fifty seats in the room, and all of them looked full. He also did no recognize the tall, smiling professor with a salt and pepper mustache standing at the head of the room below the sloped seating arrangements.
“Right there,” the professor said, pointing at an empty chair near the middle of the room. “Please! Take your time. It's not like I was in the middle of lecturing or anything.”
The teacher's smile had faded and his expression had turned into a full glare. Jacob ducked his head and hurried to the seat, muttering insincere expected apologies to the several kids he bumped into. As he walked, the teacher again spoke. “I don't know what your sister has told you about Pelantesque Keep, but in my class you will be on time.”
As he took his seat and pulled out his books, the boy dared to look up and saw that the professor had turned around already and was looking at a half drawn circle near the words “Dr. Perennial.” On the other side of the board was a schedule saying that the next hour would be “lecture,” then the hour after would be “practice.”
“Now, as I was saying,” the teacher pressed his chalk to the blackboard, completing a half drawn circle, “the atom is the smallest particle that makes up the world around us.” He punctuated the remark by scribbling a filled circle within the larger ellipse.
Hydrogen. Boring.
Dr. Perennial was probably going to start talking about how magic works by fiddling with atoms and the “flow” of the world. Jacob had read the introduction to his book and enjoyed the general idea of it all, but his interest had faded as soon as the chapter started explaining basic technical stuff instead of telling stories of interesting applications and history.
As the boy's mind continued to wander, he began scribbling and doodling on the blank page of his notebook. He began looking around the room at his other classmates, then his gaze shifted back to the board, noting a triangle had been drawn. He was about to go back to doodling when the professor pressed his hand to the board. A moment ago, the bluish chalk lines looked just like bluish chalk lines. Now the edges had become the clearest thing in the room. It was as if everything had become duller, but nothing had; the spell array had only stolen the focus. Suddenly, a flame appeared, floating behind the professor's head.
Dr. Perennial turned around and started waving his chalk at the flame, and it danced back and forth in response. Jacob also noticed that the amulet around the professor's neck was completely in focus as well, but the boy's attention was quickly arrested by the floating flame again.
“Pelantesque Keep's symbol is the flame for a reason,” the professor began. “When man learned how to control fire, we learned how to make light and heat. Technology and society leaped forward. When man learned how to use magite, the same happened.”
The professor flicked his wrist, and the flame disappeared as suddenly as it had been summoned. The children in the class, who had been entranced by the display of magic, started murmuring excitedly amongst themselves.
“Silence!”
There was a hush.
“We will now be move on to fundamentals with magite chalk. I will be passing these out, and I expect every one of them back by the end of class.”
As the professor began handing out small pieces of bluish chalk, the class again exploded in discussion and excitement.
|
|
|
Post by Tout-Perd on Jan 14, 2011 5:49:46 GMT -5
Something cold and wet nibbled at the nape of Jacob’s neck. He slapped at it reflexively, and felt the scaly and slimy unknown writhe away from him. This prompted his attention somewhat moreso. He turned in his seat, careful not to warrant more attention from the class. He already was on thin ice. A dark shape undulated through the air, something that took the brain a moment to go “Oh, I know that.” It was a black fish of respectable size, hovering in the air as if the classroom was underwater. Faint blue lines zigzagged across its silhouette, clearly outlining its scales. Some of them glittered like crystal. “Natterjack, back off. You’re not even supposed to be out right now,” The voice was faint, and stern. It came from directly behind the curly haired youth, just barely within his field of vision. A girl was sprawled in her seat, legs crossed carefully in contrast with the rest of her posture. A spike gleamed on the heel of her boot, roughly the size of a thumb and projecting back like a raptor’s talon. “Hey, Agnes. You’re pretty new here, right?” Her words were punctuated with a loud, vulgar smacking. She was chawing away at something, probably chicle. Her hair was dark and cut short, except for a lock on each side that swept past her ears and curled up towards her jaw, reminiscent of boar’s tusks. They bounced with every chomp. “I need an extra stick of chalk. Think you’ll get one for me?” Her heel that rested on the floor clicked loudly, alluding to a nasty spike that matched its twin. OOC: Sorry about the auto, but forcing somebody to do something they didn’t want to just felt so right for this character, as you can probably guess by now. Another attempt at a vulgar personality, though this one’s a contrast to Maydell, who is vulgar in response to her perceived helplessness, whereas G.G. here is moreso vulgar as a power play/intimidation factor
|
|
|
Post by ch00beh on Mar 5, 2011 22:22:18 GMT -5
Jacob lurched forward as gently as he could. It still caused his chair to scrape audibly, but thankfully it was masked by the general commotion of children quietly murmuring to one another as they past pieces of chalk along, their collective hushed voices and active movements amalgamating into a muffled cacophony of soft hisses. Before he decided to shoot an angry-inquisitive look back, he glanced up at Dr. Perennial. He was not glaring back.
The boy then looked back at the slouching girl and her... fish.
"I don't even know who you are," he said, his voice and face not hiding his annoyed state. Everything was going fairly terribly this morning.
|
|
|
Post by {WW}BetaBloodWolf7 on Apr 5, 2011 2:09:24 GMT -5
"G.G., just leave him alone. You torment enough people as is." said a tanned girl with short black hair and patched robes. As the chalk reached her she glanced at Dr. Perennial, pulled two pieces of chalk and passed the box Jacob. A moment later she tossed a piece chalk behind her to G.G.
"Just ignore her, she can't do much in here." she said quietly, a hint of annoyance hidden in her voice.
"My name is Senka. Today is your first day, right? Leave for class early next time and avoid Dr. Perennial for a little while. Your name is Jacob, right? Mine is Senka.
OOC: In case you're curious, it's pronounced Sen-kay. Yes, it's Necronian.
|
|
|
Post by Tout-Perd on Apr 5, 2011 18:33:31 GMT -5
"I don't torment people. I just politely request help, so that I can better perfect my craft. I've got so much potential-" Gigi leaned forwards, her fish gliding up to bump against her affectionately.
"That it really isn't fair to constrain me to the limits of these other folk."
She tossed the two pieces of chalk into the air, catching them between her knuckles. Turning her palm upwards, she began working her knuckles to manipulate the chalk. A bluish white outline quickly took form, reminiscent of the star maps of woven twigs made by the Honetai.
"See? None of these schmucks here could produce a glyph with such clarity and potency. And that's not even using my signature methods... I could probably have done that layout in under a second, then."
"This complexity... The array of triangles flowing outwards from a central diamond shape, warping and playing with the aspect of control... And the final touch..." Gigi flipped her hand over, enclosing the array in a decagon with precisely swooping lines between each outer point. Her strokes were hard, grinding extra dust from the chalk as it pushed against the desktop.
"This design is beyond the grasp of most fourth-year students here, even some of the ones in the honors program," Gigi studiously avoided mentioning that she'd be a third year student if not for being held back.
"But anyways, whatever. If you want to make like all the other little people and get in the way of my blossoming genius, I could care less. It just means that you shouldn't be asking me for any favors..." Her heel clicked again.
|
|
|
Post by ch00beh on Aug 11, 2011 22:01:27 GMT -5
Jacob was trying his hardest to ignore the girl, Gigi or something according to the other girl who was sitting next to him, even though she kept talking to the back of his head. He didn't like how she kept going on about how great she was.
If she's so great, why's she still in this class? She even looks old.
Despite his thoughts, the boy kept his eyes on the professor. He wasn't going to get in a fight with some stranger after coming in late on the first day of class. He had a feeling Perennial was going to keep the grudge anyway, especially with how he seemed to regard his older sister, but the boy wasn't going to act out. After all, he might get held back and end up like Gigi.
Jacob saw Perennial keeping a watchful eye over the class as the pieces of chalk were passed around, and once the boxes of chalk had gone past the middle of the room, the professor motioned to his two teaching assistants and said something that Jacob couldn't hear over the rest of the class' shuffling. One of the aids, an older boy dressed in the university's student robes, went behind the front desk and, with a little visible effort, hefted up another box. He walked to the first row following the other aid, an older girl in the same attire. Once there, the girl reached into the box and pulled out some dull, dark lumps and passed them along. As the two came closer, Jacob realized they were lumps of metal.
Soon, Jacob got his hands one of the lumps and began looking at it a bit more closely. It was cool to the touch, as untouched metal usually was, and it was unevenly smoothed, as if it had been worked with then discarded. Iron, probably? His sister had worked with it a lot before when she was smithing, but Jacob only really ever saw the stuff when it was red hot.
The boy looked up. The aids were still passing the lumps of iron out to the back of the room, and Perennial was still watching the classroom like a hawk.
|
|
Prime
Saeptum Agent
1%
Agent of Truth
Posts: 399
|
Post by Prime on Aug 24, 2011 23:51:53 GMT -5
"Its iron, the raw element," Vincent said to Jacob, seeing his mild confusion. "We'll be using the iron in conjunction with chalk symbols to reshape it, similar to a blacksmith but without the fire." He said, gesturing at the chalk.
"Its like drawing an outline of something that already exists, its a lot easier than trying to create a fresh image out of thin air." He smiled, casually breaking off a small piece of his own chalk. He slipped it in his pocket, and moved on, looking for anyone who needed help or had a question.
He wasn't exactly the easiest person to talk to though, he always had a thoughtful half there look on his face. Like he was contemplating an important issue in a room a thousand miles away. It just made you feel rude for wanting to distract him, not that he'd mind. He just didn't realize what he looked like.
He returned to the corner and waited for all the shuffling to subside and the class to at last get underway. You could learn different things from different mages, everyone had their own slight variations that could teach you new things, if you were paying attention. So he was looking forward to the class, along with the students around him, even though he was currently functioning as a Jr Instructor himself.
|
|
|
Post by Tout-Perd on Aug 25, 2011 1:29:42 GMT -5
"It's simply a chunk of boring, unless you know how to use it right," G.G. gave the lump a bored prodding with a sturdy finger. It grated on her desk, the first thing in the room that had proven equally abrasive to her personality.
She took her chalk, and dashed a quick series of evenly spaced isoceles triangles across the desktop. Betwixt each wedge, she added a hastily scrawled but astoundingly steady set of curved lines.
The wet smacking of her jaws intensified as she focused her whole attention on the process. The chalked clicked loudly, and her knuckles were rendered pale with dust by the time she'd finished the array.
"Now, take a look at how right gets done around here," G.G. declared this to nobody in particular, and then leaned in over the glyphs. She hefted the lump of iron with her left hand, and positioned it so that it covered virtually all of the markings.
With a loud sigh, she exhaled directly at the setup. There was a momentary pause, a quiet rustling seemingly arising from the thin air itself. Bands of the iron seemed to narrow, pushed into central segments. With several quiet clicks, the lumps parted. They continued narrowing until they'd become a series of small iron bars, layed out precisely in a row.
"And now, stage two..." Each bar began bending steadily in a single direction, as if they were plants turning to face the sun. They slipped above the bar to their left, and beneath the one to their right. In a matter of seconds, they had managed to curl themselves into a rudimentary chain, roughly a cubit long.
G.G. picked it up with her fingertips, and simply grinned, showing a considerable number of teeth. The beige of the chicle was visible at the very edge of her smile, poking out between her teeth. With a jangling, she set to twirling her newest work.
"Of course, that was the easy way of doing it. I mean, I could've added ashes for carbon, to make the chain out of steel, or a slight tweak in the glyphs in order to produce spikes, or pretty much anything else I'd want to do with it. It's just too easy for me, really."
|
|
|
Post by {WW}BetaBloodWolf7 on Aug 25, 2011 1:52:43 GMT -5
Senka watched G.G. as she quickly transformed the simple iron chunk into a chain. It always bothered her that she was pushy, rude, bossy, but seemed to have a natural skill this type of magic. That was something that she truly envied, skills like those were useful among the nomadic tribes. Most of the iron equipment had to be purchased or traded for in the small market villages, or in Pal-Ovora itself. If one of the tools was broken, then they did without.
"That's great and all, but do you really need to waste that iron? You know Dr. Perennial is going to be angry about that." she said, her annoyance plainly shown in her voice.
She then turned around, picked up her own piece of chalk, and started to copy one of the more simple diagrams on the board. The lines were more like squiggles than clear shapes. She frowned at them, hastily erased the outermost circle and tried again. The newer circle was a little better, but not much.
|
|
|
Post by ch00beh on Aug 25, 2011 2:57:01 GMT -5
The teaching aide was gone before Jacob could even think about muttering a thanks to his unsaid question. So it is iron.
The boy turned the lump of slowly warming metal over in his hands and briefly considered throwing it at Gigi's head. It would be super satisfying... if the stupid girl didn't just magic away the lump, or if stupid Perennial didn't expel him from the keep. And then Kali would have to pick him up, and she would laugh about the iron, but she was no good at taking care of people.
Forget it, Jacob thought. He set the iron down on the desk, then picked up his chalk and glared at the board. As he looked at the symbols and read the words tersely explaining what the glyphs did to the iron's shape, Jacob unconsciously fiddled with the chalk piece, rolling it around between his fingers. The words on the board simply explained how each drawn glyph would make a different shape, like a square or a circle or whatever.
Perennial wasn't telling the class everything. The shapes on the board were just symbols with their effect spelled out. Maybe the professor mentioned them while Jacob wasn't paying attention? Judging by how the rest of the class was working, Perennial hadn't, and the aides were doing most of the work teaching one on one. If Kali hadn't mentioned some pointers to Jacob over the summer, the boy would have probably been as lost as the rest of the kids who hadn't taken out their books as references. That girl Senka next to him seemed especially lost.
Jacob opened up his own tome and flipped to a page with many, more primitive, glyphs drawn on it. "Hey, Senka, look. That inner circle is the one you need to worry about more." He pointed to an upside down F inside a rounded diamond in the book. "That's the binding symbol for iron, and if you mess that up, you won't get any reaction. The outside circle is just, um... the shape, I think? Or I think it's for defining harmony. But anyway, don't worry too much about making it too perfect."
Jacob pressed his own chalk to the table, noticing that you had to really push to get it to leave a mark. He drew the binding symbol, then set a circle around it. The boy paused, looked up at the board, looked down again, thought for a second, then drew three triangles to connect the binding symbol and circle.
Jacob stopped again and looked up. He needed something more than just a simple shape. He wasn't going to let some stupid girl be better than him, even if she was old. Gigi wasn't the only one who had magic in the family.
The boy drew a couple more triangles on the table with arrows pointing into and around them. Finally he finished with a relatively simple array his sister taught him that would turn his touch into energy. Then the boy tapped the lump of iron.
Suddenly, the lump sprang into a bar. Jacob tapped it again and it instantly bent once, following the first arrow so that the corners lined up. Another tap and bent iron rod split unevenly lengthwise and unfolded to form a jagged, lopsided square.
That doesn't look good.
Jacob hesitated a moment before tapping the metal one more time, but instead of the corners extruding upward to form a box, they just quivered and snapped apart. Flustered, Jacob quickly gathered the pieces and erased the glyphs with his sleeve so he could draw the array that would meld the pieces back together.
|
|
Prime
Saeptum Agent
1%
Agent of Truth
Posts: 399
|
Post by Prime on Oct 18, 2011 10:56:02 GMT -5
Vincent smirked as he looked around the room, quite a few of the pupils were having some trouble, but that was nothing new. A few rivalries were developing, but that was fine too, reasons to push harder were still reasons, no matter what the origin. He was far less amused by the rigid rules the Instructor had everyone following, but he knew few took well to his rather ratically different methods.
He noticed Jacob having some trouble, so dipped down beside him to look at his work.
"Don't sweat it," Vincent said, trying to relax the kids nerves a little. "Here, I'll teach you a little bit of a cheat, but don't tell anyone eh? You aren't suppost to learn this for a few years."
Next to Jacobs array, Vincent drew a much smaller version. He drew an infinity symbol, with a circle in the center and the symbol for iron within. The drew branches out of the top, and the symbol for a pool of water at the bottom. Each denoting growth and change.
"Here look, this infinity symbol is a loose interpretation for mind. You draw it, then put iron at the center denoting the focus. Draw rough guides for what you wish to do, then limit them." He said, drawing two short lines, cutting off the top of the branches and the bottom of the pool.
"That to make sure nothing goes crazy if your mind wanders. To keep this balanced, since we're keeping the array simple," He drew to slight lines cutting through the farthermost portions of the infinity symbol. "We have to introduce power from both sides."
Two curving lines came down from either of the infinity cutoffs, aligning at a point below the array after traveling a perfectly even distance. Then Vincent drew the triangle inside inverse triangle, surrounded by a long topped diamond, and connected it up to the lines sweeping down from the array.
"Now when you touch, keep the image of what you want in your mind. The mind symbol converts the thought into action, via the creation and change symbols, and focuses it only on the iron because that's where its anchored." Vincent said, tapping it and turning Jacobs scrap into a small, thick iron ring.
"Remember everything has to be balance, an even distance from an even distance always. Having uneven distances effects the timing, and thus begins to skew the intention. A dozen little mistakes can add up to an explosion, so think carefully before you put chalk to thought." Vincent said, smiling as he erased the glyph.
"Keep trying, you'll get it eventually. It'll become second nature soon enough, the drawing bit at least." Vincent grinned, "Gets more complicated when you start dealing with the elemental tables."
|
|
|
Post by {WW}BetaBloodWolf7 on Feb 16, 2012 14:18:30 GMT -5
It didn't matter whether the inner circle was more important or not, it was still difficult for her to draw. After a few minutes of erasing and redrawing it, she finally had a somewhat sloppy version of what the teacher drew on the board. Next to her, Vincent was drawing a rather intricate one for Jacob to learn.
Quietly she sighed, such diagrams were forever beyond her. Ovoran nomads weren't like others, writing was something that came slowly to her people. But, the elders believed it was important that someone be sent away to the school.
"Hey, um, is there a way to just improve drawing the basics?" she asked the man showing Jacob the diagram.
|
|