Safe Harbour sounds like an American holiday destination. Dropping hints about Christmas plans? :)
Safe harbour The Recorder was a man who was probably, it was hard to tell, just past middle age. His hair was greying at the temples and along the sides, and his skin was lined and wrinkled, but it was also tanned as though he'd spent a lot of time outside. He walked with a limp, favouring his right leg, but disdained a walking stick, and his eyes had a penetrating gaze that made people he looked at for longer than a few seconds feel uncomfortably like they were being judged. He limped across the casting circle avoiding the pillars and the dishes and at one point stopping, staring at seemingly nothing, and then making a detour round something perhaps only he could see. He took up position at the edge of the circle, and one of the attendant women brought over a tiny table on which she set a stack of yellowed paper, the corners brittle and fragmenting, and a nickel rod as long as the Recorder's forearm on top of that -- even the stack of paper was too large for the table and flopped over the edges. "Ready?" Labdaris's voice sounded as though he spent a lot of time laughing, and it echoed very faintly back from the crystalline walls of the cavern. The Recorder nodded carefully, as though consideration of that question had taken real effort, and unbuttoned his trousers. He lowered the waistband ten centimetres, enough to reveal a hand-sized flat crystal of tourmaline set into his left hip. Firelight danced in it, seeming to be a second or two out of step with the flames it was reflecting. The Recorder picked up the nickel rod, placed one hand on the stack of paper, and braced himself.
Labdaris smiled, showing off even white teeth, and picked up the flow of Power as casually as a child picks a skipping rope off the ground. The attendant women drew back against the walls, still and watching, and the crackle of the fires became the dominant sound in the cavern at last. Slowly, carefully, Labdaris structured the Power, using the eight pewter pillars like pins on a board to bend the Power into the necessary shapes. As he worked the ceramic dishes, brought one-by-one into the casting, glowed brightly or dully, shivered, or hummed with vibrations too fast for the human eye to perceive, and their contents lifted into the air into strange sculptures. Smells passed around the room; first a sweet cloying smell like warmed cough mixture, which was overtaken by fresh asparagus. A wintry note of bare earth seeped underneath that, followed by aniseed that made the attendant women wrinkle their noses at the strength of it. The sculptures of mineral crystals twisted as the Power infused them and Labdaris adjusted its flow and its position, first becoming inhuman figures writhing in possibly agony, then becoming animal like, predatory and hungry. A smell of butchery wafted across the circle for a few seconds, and the light in the room turned ruby before flickering, hesitantly, back to orange-yellow. The tourmaline plate in the Recorder's hip shimmered as though seen through a heat-haze, and beneath his hand the pages writhed. A scritching, like a fountain pen over rough paper, tickled his ears, and a smell of swamp fought in his nostrils over the rest of the odours from the spellcasting. Labdaris, practically insensate to the rest of the room now, looked at the spell-structure from the inside, where he was at the precise centre, checking it for flaws, for miscasting, for weaknesses. Then he re-checked, and checked a third time, before he was satisfied that everything was right.
He released the Power from his control, and it snapped to an entropic configuration in half the space of a heartbeat. There was a brilliant flash of light, like seven days sunlight concentrated into a single second, and everything in the casting circle except for Labdaris, his wheelchair, and the pewter pillars, evaporated.
"I think I'm blind," said one of the attendant women. She sounded curious, not upset. "I think I have seen the future," said Labdaris.
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Safe Harbour sounds like an American holiday destination. Dropping hints about Christmas plans? :)
Safe harbour
The Recorder was a man who was probably, it was hard to tell, just past middle age. His hair was greying at the temples and along the sides, and his skin was lined and wrinkled, but it was also tanned as though he'd spent a lot of time outside. He walked with a limp, favouring his right leg, but disdained a walking stick, and his eyes had a penetrating gaze that made people he looked at for longer than a few seconds feel uncomfortably like they were being judged.
He limped across the casting circle avoiding the pillars and the dishes and at one point stopping, staring at seemingly nothing, and then making a detour round something perhaps only he could see. He took up position at the edge of the circle, and one of the attendant women brought over a tiny table on which she set a stack of yellowed paper, the corners brittle and fragmenting, and a nickel rod as long as the Recorder's forearm on top of that -- even the stack of paper was too large for the table and flopped over the edges.
"Ready?" Labdaris's voice sounded as though he spent a lot of time laughing, and it echoed very faintly back from the crystalline walls of the cavern.
The Recorder nodded carefully, as though consideration of that question had taken real effort, and unbuttoned his trousers. He lowered the waistband ten centimetres, enough to reveal a hand-sized flat crystal of tourmaline set into his left hip. Firelight danced in it, seeming to be a second or two out of step with the flames it was reflecting. The Recorder picked up the nickel rod, placed one hand on the stack of paper, and braced himself.
Labdaris smiled, showing off even white teeth, and picked up the flow of Power as casually as a child picks a skipping rope off the ground. The attendant women drew back against the walls, still and watching, and the crackle of the fires became the dominant sound in the cavern at last. Slowly, carefully, Labdaris structured the Power, using the eight pewter pillars like pins on a board to bend the Power into the necessary shapes. As he worked the ceramic dishes, brought one-by-one into the casting, glowed brightly or dully, shivered, or hummed with vibrations too fast for the human eye to perceive, and their contents lifted into the air into strange sculptures. Smells passed around the room; first a sweet cloying smell like warmed cough mixture, which was overtaken by fresh asparagus. A wintry note of bare earth seeped underneath that, followed by aniseed that made the attendant women wrinkle their noses at the strength of it.
The sculptures of mineral crystals twisted as the Power infused them and Labdaris adjusted its flow and its position, first becoming inhuman figures writhing in possibly agony, then becoming animal like, predatory and hungry. A smell of butchery wafted across the circle for a few seconds, and the light in the room turned ruby before flickering, hesitantly, back to orange-yellow.
The tourmaline plate in the Recorder's hip shimmered as though seen through a heat-haze, and beneath his hand the pages writhed. A scritching, like a fountain pen over rough paper, tickled his ears, and a smell of swamp fought in his nostrils over the rest of the odours from the spellcasting.
Labdaris, practically insensate to the rest of the room now, looked at the spell-structure from the inside, where he was at the precise centre, checking it for flaws, for miscasting, for weaknesses. Then he re-checked, and checked a third time, before he was satisfied that everything was right.
He released the Power from his control, and it snapped to an entropic configuration in half the space of a heartbeat. There was a brilliant flash of light, like seven days sunlight concentrated into a single second, and everything in the casting circle except for Labdaris, his wheelchair, and the pewter pillars, evaporated.
"I think I'm blind," said one of the attendant women. She sounded curious, not upset.
"I think I have seen the future," said Labdaris.
Greg - now that you mention it, it really does. Hrmm.
Ah, so the treat continues on. I shall consider this an early Christmas present :)
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