ORIGIN

The winds of the tornado howled in the distance as near the edge of the great room of Monoceros a single figure stood, as blue as the most brilliant flower. Around his waist was tied a leather strap and a number of pouches- a haul brought in from his previous adventures out into the newly lit world of the caves. A new vigor cemented itself onto the youthful gryphon's face as his mind reflected upon the great mysteries he'd witnessed with the light's arrival. Even so, no matter how awe-inspiring the rest of the cave was this was still his home- the only place he'd known for most of his life.

After visiting the ruined building full of leather goods and outfitting himself with a means to carry items around he'd returned to his tunnel and grabbed whatever random items were around to fill the pouches with: a talon full of small smooth pebbles, a large wind-polished orb that looked remarkably like his gem, a pouch full of dust from the relatively soft black rocks that he had learned not to try to tunnel through if he wanted to breathe, and a few chunks of said rock in his fourth and final pouch. These items, while seeming random, would all help him with his practice in the art of magic. The pebbles and smoky quartz orb would be prime targets for his newly-discovered light spell, and in fact even now a very dim white light escaped from the pouch the orb was contained within. The black dust, while not directly magical in nature, would allow him to draw mundane lines on the wall to practice his precision with another spell. The black rocks that had produced the dust... well that pouch would be empty soon as he was currently occupied taking them one at a time and throwing them into the wind where they were caught and thrown a different direction, making the perfect mobile targets.

"Okay, I've got this." He spoke aloud to himself, a new habit he'd picked up as he realized how critical the ability to use language now was in the cave system. The gryphon reared his talon back and flung the rock with purpose. Just as it had done every couple minutes for the past hour the wind picked up into a powerful gust and flung the rock diagonally away from the readied trainee. Amras kept a flat palm toward the rock, his silver eyes looking down the crystal on his forearm toward the target as though looking through a scope, and trust the talon forward in a pushing motion. A wave of raw force shot out from his hand and nicked the edge of the rock, sending a dust cloud into the wind and a few fragmented pieces of the rock different directions in the breeze.

"A bit sloppy, but better than some of my last attempts." he spoke again as he reached for another rock.

Just as the grypon reared his talon back to hurl the black stone into the wind once more a thought occured to him. He'd had plenty of practice using his raw force spells. He'd spent his whole life using them. Really his earliest memories of this cave involved using the force of magic to break out of his shell and into the raging winds. While it was beneficial to learn to aim now that sight was a constant thing there was so much more that he could be working on.

Amras placed the black stone back in the far left pouch along with the others and reached for the orb in the far right pouch of his crudely made belt. Even now, hours after experimenting with it, the perfectly smooth cloudy quartz orb glowed with a faint light. This was proof that he was capable of more than just digging and huddling away from the wind. This was to be a reminder of the life-changing day that light flooded the caves and he met one who taught him that there was so much more that could be done with magic.

But would it always have that glow he had cast upon it? He had been timid with the spell so its colorless light glowed only weakly. What would happen if he dropped it and it chipped? What would happen if it shattered into pieces? Questions about the nature of this magic danced around inside the gryphon's mind. He wanted to test it.

Not with the orb though. Sure he could always go back and find another orb to recreate the symbol of that time, but this had been the most spherical sample of his wind-blasted chrysalis that he'd found. No, he'd have to experiment with something else. Orb was placed gently back in its pouch and once again Amras withdrew a black stone, this time with intent to test on it before hurling it to the wind.

Holding the stone in his left talon and placing his right talon over it, two fingers bent as he had done before, Amras began to build up magic. Soft white light began to emit from the quartz rod on the back of his forearm, changing to a pale yellow as his gesture twisted the energies into a new form. He held the charge for just a second, adjusting the flow to really pump up the saturation of yellow; he wanted the light to be as visible as possible when he tried the next step. Slowly the light faded and transferred into the black stone in his hand.

Take hold of the power within
"And shape the fabric of reality around you"
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He let his arm lower, shaking it a few times to clear some of the tension that had arisen. Twisting the energy of his magic was still a new concept to him, and it felt a good bit stranger to build up and hold onto light energy than to just push the energy out in one big burst. He’d played around with changing the magic before, otherwise his force magic would never have been compact enough to chip away at the tunnel walls rather than just thud against them in one high pressure shockwave. Surely it would get easier over time; it had in that case so it probably would in this case too.

Once more the gryphon reared the stone back, but this time just before flinging it into the wind he stopped. A moving target was useful for practicing his aim, but if he missed this time he would either have chase after the rock or make a new glowing rock, neither of which sounded conducive to the experiment he was trying to do. No, it would work just as well moving to a sheltered spot and breaking the rock while it was resting on the ground.

Still holding the rock in his left talon Amras folded his wings neatly to his side and dropped to three feet. With less chance of losing balance to a sudden gust of wind now he began to hobble toward an outcropping of rocks nearby. Here at the edge of the cavern the wind was already low intensity, and with a wall between him and the airflow it was almost as calm as the environment of Orion. Here he would test out his question as to whether the magic would stay in a broken object or not.

His gut instinct was that the magic that made the rock glow acted as a single pattern imbued into the object itself. If the object the pattern was bound to was chipped the pattern might survive depending on the damage, but would be more susceptible to the next bit of damage unless the magic pattern were repaired or it had some kind of property to repair itself. If the object were completely vaporized then the pattern would have no chance to hold its shape even if it did have a self-repairing property.

The other possibility was that magic was like water; once the object got wet it stayed wet, no matter how much you broke it down. If you took a wet rock and pulverized it you would just have a bunch of wet sand left. The only way to remove the magic in that case would be to apply some other kind of magic to “dry” it out or wait for it to fade on its own.

Amras placed the glowing rock down in a corner and planted his left talon back on the ground, allowing him to lift his magic-using arm without having to reposition his wings again. Both models of magic sounded viable, and the conundrum led to a slightly unfortunately drastic course of action. The quickest method to test which model best represented the behavior of magic would be to completely obliterate the rock in one blow and see if the choking dust cloud was dark or glowy.

With some hesitation the gryphon once more built up magic in his stone, this time holding his talon flat and making no attempts to manipulate the magic any more than just shaping it into a concentrated shockwave. After his previous attempts practicing with light magic this attempt worked out beautifully, with the energy acting just how he wanted it to. Not wanting to get dust in his eyes, glowing or not, Amras closed his eyelids and released the charge into the glowing black rock, his ears picking up the satisfying sound of the rock being pulverized and the familiar unpleasant taste of dust filling the air.

Take hold of the power within
"And shape the fabric of reality around you"
Tags: @Game Master CJ

The gryphon hesitantly began to open his eyes again. It was a bit sooner than he might have liked with the chalky taste still hanging in the air, but if he waited for all the dust to dissipate there was a possibility he would lose out on data. The scene that persisted in front of him was better than he could have hoped for. The stone had been perfectly crushed into a fine mist, which caused the whole section to glow as though there were a luminescent cloud in the area. The ground, the rock, his feathers, everything had bits of illumined dust stuck to it.

Amras halfway wondered if his breath would glow for a few seconds after inhaling the stuff.

Not wanting to stay in the area for too long the gryphon backed away and stepped into the open, allowing a gust of wind to help remove most of the glittery dust from his downy blue feathers. A few larger specs remained even after the blast of air, but he'd be here all day if he tried to remove every speck of glitter. Slowly the cloud in the corner was dissipating as well, leaving only a glowing patch on the ground where the dust had lodged itself into the rock below.

Now that the test was over the bright blue and now somewhat sparkly gryphon had a chance to relax and examine the results. Amras lifted a talon to brush a few of his feathers back into place and sauntered back to the glowing patch of ground. Initially he had expected the light to dissipate at some point of destruction, but this was proof that magic didn't work quite the way he expected. His water-like magic theory might have been closer to the truth than he had initially given it credit for.

Then again this was only proof for one spell under one set of conditions. It was support for a theory but he wasn't so rash as to think that disproving one theory was the same as confirming the counter-theory. Beyond that the very presence of this dust opened up a wide range of possible practical applications! He might be able to mix it with something like sap or mud to enable him to make murals that wouldn't fade over time. Wouldn't the blacksmith be impressed with him then! This also meant he could probably bauble one item and then split it into shards, which would help tremendously with lighting his tunnels enough to see.

Of course if he was going to learn to make longer-lasting murals he'd have to learn to draw in the first place. If he wanted to continue to make tunnels he'd likely have to keep mastering his basic magic skills. Beyond that he felt like he had only begun to see what he was capable of. What would happen if after twisting his magic until its properties shifted to light he tried to continue to twist it? Would it change into something else or would something stop him before he got to that point?

The tension in his arm from his usage of light magic had mostly faded by now, and even if it hadn't curiosity was gripping Amras hard. He reached into his leftmost pouch and extracted his second-to-last stone, sitting back and transferring it to his right talon. He'd probably have to take a break from testing after this experiment... assuming he could convince himself to. There was more cave left to explore, that could be a good thing to look into while he was recovering, right?

Amras inhaled deeply, exhaling a breath of mostly-clean-and-not-glowing air as he began to focus on his magic. The gem in his right forearm began to glow in pure white light as his natural energy magic awakened, holding steady as he refused to allow it to escape containment and explode into a shockwave. His eyes narrowed as he twisted the energy, condensing it and changing its nature until the light it gave off was a pale yellow. Light magic, and this time a lot easier to accomplish than it had been before. Using the same focus he had used to keep the energy magic from exploding he contained the light magic lest it seep into the black stone or dissipate in a useless crackle of flashes.

The light magic didn't seem to like to be bent like the energy magic had allowed. It pushed back and grew more vicious with each attempted twist. The light become brighter and hotter until finally after a few seconds of struggle something clicked into place and it changed form once again into a hot orange light. By the time this was accomplished Amras was completely out of concentration, and he released his grip on the magic, allowing it to flow out into the palm of his talon where it produced a series of flickering flames.

It hurt a little bit, but not nearly as much as Amras might have expected. A wonderful heat radiated from the small handheld flame, slightly warming up the rock in his hand but not causing it to catch fire. Without continued support from either the gryphon's magic or a source of fuel the fire flickered out within seconds.

"Energy can produce force, or be reutilized into light." he observed out loud, his breath short from the effort exerted, "Light, in turn, can be amplified into fire."

Something told him that there was at least a bit more that could be done, but his skill level was far too low right now to even begin to try to find it. No, if he attempted to push himself much farther today he'd probably hurt himself, which would delay future tests even more. Today's tests and training had been wildly successful though; he'd improved his ability to aim with dispel, had discovered an intriguing property of bauble, and had learned the basic concept of using a new element. If he'd made this kind of project every day before he might have been an absolute master of magic by now.

- Exit Amras -

Pouch 1: Black stones x1 (medium)

Pouch 2: Black dust 50 in3

Pouch 3: Quartz sphere x1 (large, soft glow)

Pouch 4: Quartz spheres x10 (small)

Take hold of the power within
"And shape the fabric of reality around you"
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