4. The Search For Magiq: Peering Arts

[Fury]

Yeah. Not to big a fan of the big black witch… I honestly feel bad for Ascender though just thinking of be trapped inside himself while that thing controls and uses his body.

[Tinker]

So…I feel a little bad bringing this up while it’s still fresh and settling…but I think we’ve gotta get that message to Eaves going soon. We don’t know what’s coming and how long we have, and someone at the Sanctuary needs to know what we’ve learned…

[BrokenVoid]

Yeah… you’re right. I think this new information is cause for more hurry than ever.

Also, I know Ascender said the veil is nearly unbreakable, but it’s obviously using magiq to do so, and if magiq is running thin it’s possible that the veil could start to falter as well. That means we need to learn as much as we can about the Silver’s plans and hopefully about that witch as fast as we can. I know none of us like the veil keeping us from everyone on the outside, but for the moment it is protecting us from the Silver so we should use this time to do research before we try to break it.

[Augustus_Octavian]

Unless we get something from Eaves soon (just checked, no posts from him since 8/15), I would like to try to use my guild’s Communion Arts affinity like he has been to try to send a first, “outgoing message” to him. I’m going to start reserving my energy, meditating, and focusing (you know, in between my 50-60 hour a week job and three young kids ). Does someone want to start a draft of what we should send?

[Hekate]

I agree; if it took this much energy and sacrifice to create, destroying it seems… wrong… cruel, almost. I don’t like the side effects, and I don’t like that we don’t know what this witch’s prerogative is, but it feels sacrilegious, almost, to try to tear it down.

However…
Unbreakable is not the same as unchangeable.

If we can figure out which twelve spells were used (and maybe Eaves or someone else in the sanctuary might be able to give us a lead?) maybe we can augment it without risking the security measures. Like going into a firewall code and deleting or patching the corrupt drivers; maybe even figure out how to expand the protections to reach the Sanctuary and the other Lodges, or at least throw in some sort of… Magiqal virus scan to make some of these negative entities reveal themselves?
I’m not a coder, but I think the analogy fits based on how Ascender was describing their process.

[BrokenVoid]

I like that idea a lot better than outright breaking it. We may be able to manipulate it into a more advanced form of safeguard.

[Robert]

We never replied to his last message where he lost it on Ascender. The connection should still be open, but with magiq dwindling your affinity may be essential to it working.

[Augustus_Octavian]

I overlooked that detail. Ok. Let’s still draft something to Eaves, and I’ll still conserve my energy for if we need it.

[Hekate]

Things Eaves should know;

• We have all the runes
• “The Veil” is a protection measure, but may be corrupt
• Ascender sacrificed himself to make the spell work (should we include all the bits about his dishonesty, or is that “speaking ill of the dead”?)
• Twelve spells were used to create a triple layer protection
• We want to figure out how it works so we can expand the barrier instead of break it down
• “@Robert”: “one of his last thoughts was to meet his daughter. I think that is a key hole in the veil.”

What else?

[Ashburn]

I think we’ve shared (at least some of) the memories verbatim before, but should probably do a sum up of the important bits at the beginning as a tl;dr of sorts. Since we know how Eaves feels about Ascender, I don’t see how mentioning Ascender’s own acknowledgement of several of the hate points would hurt.

[Robert]

We want to mention one of his last thoughts was to meet his daughter. I think that is a key hole in the veil.

[grimangel53]

while we are doing that, im gonna start brainstorming some ways to possibly set up a 12 way casting circle, at least to help lighten the load.
maybe we can do a two fold Calling again, but using the new runes as foci and our elements as the filter.
Then we may just need a third layer of protection…maybe by using our improved jordians? we still have those from the last time we needed them against the storm right?
6 Amped Jordians, 6 elements, and 6 runes.
that should mix well to a 3 layer spell right? (even outside the normal connotation of 3 sixes.)

[Cj_Heighton]

ive been sitting this one out to give the newbies a bit more of a chance, and can i just say im so proud of all of you for jumping into this with such vigor? Absolutely stunning work so far, guys. Lets bring it home.

[Sapphire]

If the message hasn’t been sent to Eaves yet, can we hurry up and get on with it!
Eaves has kept the channel open for 10days so far, the more we delay replying the more sick Eaves is gonna be.

@SpiritSeer

And speaking of spell sickness…

I’m just starting to turn the corner.

The after-effects of the communion affinity are already tough to handle, but Yuridia thinks it hit me especially hard this time because I left the last “passage” open for eleven days so I could make sure I heard from you.

[Ashburn]

Okay, @Augustus_Octavian wanted to send this time to try and mitigate how bad the spell sickness is going to hit Eaves, right? I put together a thing, if it’s okay; left space to personalize.

(Insert sender’s personal introductory pleasantries)

Ascender’s gone. The veil spell (called Determiner 12) had a history of being volatile enough to destroy the caster, and the recent changes that were made in an attempt to stabilize it did not change that. The memories that Peering Arts dug up were what got caught up in what we assume was the calling the corners part of Determiner 12 as it was cast.

Other important things from the last two journals:

• Determiner 12 is made of pieces of twelve spells, making a three-tier protection against what the spell deems a threat/unnecessary with occasional allowances for messengers to come in and out.
• A long meeting decided that they would use the spell, and that the Mountain and the Mounties in the forum would be within the protections of it.
• Ascender spent two weeks “looking for a magiq ring to protect him from the spell”, which we read as “set his affairs in order.”
• Endri knew that the creepy mirror lady was coming for Ascender and called him on his BS before he cast the spell.
• Endri was the one that requested that the Guide be the determiner, and that the forum folks be the primary target for protection should things look like both groups couldn’t safely be boxed in together.
• Ascender has a daughter out there somewhere whom he’s never met (perhaps some of what he did during that two weeks relates to her?)
• Knowing now that D-12 wasn’t a unilateral decision of one person, maybe find a way to allow more communication through without taking a block of magiqal C4 to it and leaving us completely exposed.

Here are the full contents for the Light and Aether journals:

@Cirydae

It’s been over a month since the lighthouse. Most have chalked it up to a one-off attempt to topple our confidence, a blind swipe to get at us and what’s left of Monarch’s Mountain, and that the informant was left behind at the lighthouse. They’ve all gone back to research, excavation, and unraveling the mysteries of the Mountain and what they knew.

But I’m not sleeping. I can’t.

Yesterday, Endri, Bash and their team cracked it. They managed to salvage the safeguard from one of the dead drives. It’s a complicated piece of magic the Mountain called “Determiner 12.”

It’s a proxy. A magimystic doorman of sorts that’s imbued with all manner of telemantic spells as well as leaving room for the practitioner’s intention and discretion. If performed correctly, it’s believed to provide three-tier protection against both physical and virtual places and groups. It will protect those allowed within the walls of the spell. It will continuously determine who at any given time should be kept out (or doesn’t absolutely require access), and will also in rare occasions allow “messengers” that exist outside the wall to communicate through the wall without having direct access.

They’ve been building this for the better part of a decade. At first, like all things, I thought the Mountain was overthinking it instead of performing it, but the few who stayed behind with us told us stories about a handful of attempts to cast the spell in preparation for Silver raids or the Joradians failing. In each preparation, the practitioner was killed. The spell is made of pieces of twelve spells, and because of that, there are unseen flaws and narrative conflicts that cause echoes and reverberations which end up catching the practitioner in wave after wave of magimystic energy. It is costly, messy, incomplete, and extremely dangerous. Endri, Bash, their team, and their unnamed accomplice (I’ve told them not to tell me their name) have spent weeks trying to find the flaws and patch them. In partial tests, new defects always appear, new conflicts arise between the different spell types. With what little we know, and what little power is left, this may be the best we can do.

It was always considered a worst-case scenario. Not only because of its level of authority and that it’s nigh-unbreakable, but also because you’re putting your life in the hands of some external object that makes the determination for you. They first considered making a person the determiner, to better control and humanize the spell, but they feared that a human would be mentally torn apart by the countless variables and choices flooding through them.

We had a long meeting about it in the front sitting room. I was the last to arrive.

Questions were bandied. Could we fix the flaws? Should we even try? Is there some alternative? Could we protect the caster? Who should we protect behind the wall? There was unanimous agreement that the physical manor and the virtual collection of mountaineers should be behind the wall. I didn’t say anything. I just watched the room, full of those who followed me here. How long this road has been, and no one knowing what would happen next now that we “saved the world.”

Finally, I spoke up. I admitted that I knew of something that could protect the practitioner. An object the '94s found when they tried to open The Book of Briars. It’s called a bearer’s band. Similar to the charmed tokens we found, it’s a ring that can withstand magic for a brief period before needing to recharge for years. Only a few of us knew about it, and it was never used because the mountaineer who kept it safe was caught by the Storm. I told them I thought I knew where to find it. I told them I would wear it and perform Determiner 12. They debated and discussed, but I’d already made up my mind. I left that night without anyone knowing.

————
Two weeks. That’s how long it took to do what I needed to do. When I came back, I told them about my search. How it was hidden, where I feared it would be, how difficult it was to obtain, but how I managed, in the end, to find it and bring it back. I told them I was ready to perform the spell.

Every word a lie.

@Cirydae

@SabineBean

Knatz heard glass shatter in the middle of the night and found Wyckstrand in the basement, dead. Starved, withered, his bare feet nearly worn to the bone. We found blood all over the back walls of the manor garden. He’d been clawing against the protections for what looked like weeks. And he finally got in. The Joradians had failed. Maybe just the manor. Maybe everywhere. Maybe not completely. But enough. There was no way of knowing given what little time we now had to act.

Endri, Knatz, and I buried him in the garden without waking anyone. Endri asked me to meet her in the library to go over the particulars of the Determiner one more time. I sat with her in the dark, in the middle of what’s become her base of operations. She slid a cracked hand mirror across the book-crowded table.

Of course she knew.

It’s not just dreams, the woman with the claws. She’s been trying to reach me. Reach into me. I could hear her, looking for ways past the protections. It started when Wyckstrand first came to the door, and I answered. She must’ve been inside him, and sensed me, reached out for me. I could feel hints of her, hear her whispers, and now that we’re exposed, there would be nothing to stop her from coming for me. She wants something, needs something. She’s desperate, and she believes either the monarchs, the mountaineers, or both can help her get whatever it is she’s hunting.

She knew why I lied. Everything we’ve tried to do here, every potential solution we have at our disposal, it will all shatter if their leader falls to the Silver. I made them trust me. Reassured them. I told her I never let on that my storm-wracked mind could be especially ripe for manipulation. Maybe I never really believed it myself. I should’ve planned for this. After all the '94s, after Augernon, I should’ve known.

All I wanted was to guide them, find our way to the top of the mountain. But I was a liability to them now, for no other reason than answering the door. Simple as that, and it’s all done. The ring I brought back is powerless. It’s a lie to reassure them, and Endri knew it from the moment I brought it up. The last lie I’ll tell them. The last truth I hide.

I thought she might try to fight me, try and come up with an alternative to me performing the spell, knowing it will kill me, but she knows how dark the path we’re climbing is about to become, and one weak link could destroy us all.

We agreed. The spell has to be cast, to give them all a chance at making something of the new age. And I can’t be on this side of the wall given what I know, or how well I can hide and lie and convince. I’ll compromise everything. And it just so happens that someone has to cast a spell that kills. It has to be me.

Endri had one request. If the spell starts to fail, if anything goes wrong, she wants me to focus on the mountaineers and the Guide to Magiq as the determiner. Given the chaotic nature of the spell, any number of things could go wrong and not splitting my focus between the manor and the mountaineers could be the key to it working, if it works at all. I didn’t have to ask who would protect everyone else. She will. She has become more of a leader than I ever was. Brave and just, but also compassionate and honest in a way I was always too afraid to be.

I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave without ever having seen a magical world realized, without ever having met my daughter. But I can’t risk whoever is out there getting in and destroying it all. I’ve been touched by the Storm itself, but I have never felt a darkness like the shadow in the mirror — the shadow in me.

I wanted to sit there for hours. Share stories and secrets. Talk about old friends. Everyone we lost. There was so much more to say. So much I wanted to do.

But it was time to go — one last bit of magic. A final climb, and then —

[BrokenVoid]

That looks like a really thorough summary to me, I’m good with it if everyone else is.

[Hekate]

I think we also want to add that we want to figure out how to expand the Determiner twelve to try to reach the Sanctuary, or at the very least include a “negative entity” scan for people trying to make contact with the forum so that it’s easier for our allies to weed out the Mirror Hag and other mal-intents in their midsts.
Everything else looks perfect! Thanks for drafting this so thoroughly!

[Ashburn]

Good point, added to the bullet list that we’d like to not blow the protections to the six corners if possible.

[Fury]

It all sounds very good. I think @Augustus_Octavian should send it as soon as he can.

[Augustus_Octavian]

Okay. I’ve been resting and hydrating. I’ve also been reflecting on how to actually perform Communion Arts, and I think that I’ve figured out how to do it: It’s like being your individual self’s own best friend, but you’re also someone else at the same time. Or like photosynthesis, except you’re both the sunshine and the leaves, and the other person is both, too.

Here goes.