Hi Bean! First, thank you and Robert (Hi Bob!) and everyone else for further filling us in on everything that’s happened. You’ve all been busy, that’s for sure. And it makes me happy to know that you’ve grown your ranks despite the wall.
Avis Green is new to me. The idea that not only events were changed, but people may have also been erased is hard to get my head around.
And yes, re: memory recall, I just wondered if your exploration of memories and imagination produced any new ideas about the affinities. We’ve been attempting to do the same, without much luck. However, that’s just recently changed. Alison and Port are here. Alison has quite a lot of thoughts on what we could be doing and what we should be doing. And Port, well Port seems happy that her abilities don’t seem to be working. She’s basically a normal (now tween) girl. There was some kind of threat she saw when she could still see into the future, something in the shadows looking for people like her and her friends, which led to her searching for the sanctuary. They don’t know what happened to Aether or where he went. He left them a letter telling them he was safe but couldn’t come to the sanctuary because he had other work to do. That’s all he wrote.
But one of Alison’s ancestors was a “Thorinth,” and she has vague genetic memories about their study of affinities, and of one affinity in particular. Peering Arts. It turns out, according to her ancestor, Peering Arts was at one point believed to be an entire field of study , with one of the linchpins of the field being a spell using something called a peering tome. (Apparently, other guild affinities might also be fields of study/practice.)
Peering Arts center around gaining insight into and additional context from works of literature and other works of art. Basically, what was the artist/author thinking, feeling, or hoping to accomplish/express. Like how Sullivan’s intentions were wrapped up in the spell he cast on Deirdre. Alison says that Peering Arts might have revealed that, or his surroundings, his fears, and thoughts, or maybe even who it was he cast the grounding hex with.
It’s a long shot, but this might be our best bet to find out who cast the spell hiding you, why, and possibly how we can undo it. The problem is that you have to have the physical object to use a peering tome on it because it entails binding a blank book, parchment, canvas, etc. to the work you’re hoping to gain insight into, and asking in the peering tome what you’d like to gather from it.
Anyway, back to Peering Arts. How do we perform this on a spell? Can we perform this on a spell? Especially when we need to bind a blank tome or journal to a physical object to implement it?
A member of the sanctuary who can sense magimystic currents (and helped find you during the cataclysm, go Yuridia) thinks she has a way for you to do it.
She believes a grounding hex was cast to create the spell hiding you. Sometimes, splinters of the six elements become a part of the spell to help support the spell(s) and the caster(s) inside it. Those splinters are forever bound to the spell.
Essentially, you’d need to mashup two spells into one. One of which we already know is dangerous, and one we know next to nothing about, and who knows what will happen with them smashed together, but here goes…
We think you could rework the existing grounding hex wording to gather any possible elemental splinters in the wall spell, and then metaphorically bind peering tomes to those splinters to gain insight into the spell and the caster.
Yuri says she can’t see potential splinters because they don’t exist or they’re on the other side of the wall, or maybe even a part of it. Like mortar in between the bricks. So the best and possibly only chance of this working is from the inside.
Yuridia and Ali broke it down to some general (and highly hypothetical) base steps, but we’re in uncharted territory here, and this is putting you all at terrible risk. We know affinities are workable loopholes through the wall, for now, but in the bigger scheme of things we have no idea how much longer we can use them or any other magiq. Ultimately, this has to be your decision and by your own design.
What might work:
- Alter the existing grounding hex verbiage and intention to call any elemental splinters bound to the spell that hid you. Call them to an object that is representative of each element.
- Physically bind that object to a “peering tome,” like a journal or notebook. It should be blank except for your addition of as much context about the spell as you know. In Peering Arts you would typically have the physical book or art which would have the date, title, author, and the actual work. So you’d need to reference as much as you know about the spell at the beginning of the peering tome. The timeframe the spell was cast, that the Guide to Magiq is now a part of it, etc.
- The peering tome spell itself isn’t actually written, it’s… thought. (Thornmouths.) You hold the bound tome, focusing on your intention to know more about the work it’s bound to, in this case, the splinter used to hide you.
- Wait for something to hopefully happen. Opening the bound tome before the spell has done will break the spell, but Ali’s unsure what will signal the completion of the peering tome.
Yuridia and Ali both seem equal parts frantically excited about coming up with what could be a solution, and scared out of their gourds for you.
I wish I had more ideas or information to share, and they’re still hashing it out to see if they can help, but I have to be honest, it is really hard to open this connection to you. And each time I do could be the last time for all I know. I want to tell you whatever we know or think as soon as possible, even if it’s incomplete. If you have questions or ideas, please send them back, otherwise, let us know if you’ve cast the spell and what you’ve found.
We’re with you. And guide willing, this will work.