ORIGIN

"Mm, I do go there a lot--to the Spire, to Polaris. Its magic is quite chaotic, so it is a good place to hone your skills; if you can consistently use it there, I think you can use it anywhere. Except the swamp," he added darkly. His magic had never damn worked in Cetus.

"If it helps, any, I do have the ability to see into the past at a touch--I may be able to use it to help you with the bones? And--yes. Simply fling it. Imagine as you did prior--the magic that you used but a moment ago; but will the wisp to do as you tell it. To hurl into your target. It will obey," he added, matter-of-factly--as if the wisp were somehow sentient.

Then he waited, and cast out his senses--attempting to 'watch,' via magicka alone, precisely what Aure was doing.

Pride peered over at Aure. Terrible joke..? Whatever it was, he didn't get it. He was unsure why vandalism would be a joke, exactly.

"Vandalism? Have others used the bones in that way before?" he asked, after a moment, with faint confusion.

Pride watched the wisp, then, hurtle into the boulder--and felt the magic pulse correctly, a noticeable surge that resonated with his own and echoed his own use of the same spell. He noticed Aure's brief tail-wag, too, and felt a little warmed--Aure was clearly young, but joy was a wonderful thing. "Very good," he praised, and then answered the question--"I do not know. How does any magic work, truly? We imagine, we will it into being, and it becomes. I suspect the wisps have more to them, however--possibly a link to the Merchant. He seems able to summon them at our locations, and control their actions himself; hopefully it does not become too great an issue."

Pride paused, thinking. "Well, now that you know that one, you can practice it; but tell me--what other magics, precisely, do you know?" An inquisitive, pale gaze turned to regard Aure.

Pride watched, and looked rather startled--backing up a swift couple of paces, and narrowing his eyes against the light.

"That looks a rather dangerous magic," he observed at once, shaking himself a bit. "Certainly useful to defend your home, however! It reminds me of something similar, in fact--equally dangerous," he warned, glancing at Aure, briefly. "I have seen Gembound torn apart, or even destroyed utterly--crushed into nothing in an instant--with this magic."

Pride approached the stone only by a pace or two, then lifted his head, falling still for a very long moment. He was concentrating deeply, and giving it time--this wasn't a spell to rush, let alone when one was ill, as he was.

When he was ready, he released it. A dark space--a nothing where light and air and rock should have been--appeared in the side of the stone. There were a rapid, sharp series of cracks, the sound of sucking, only lasting a few seconds--but in those few seconds, a good chunk (though not all, as he'd hoped) of the boulder had shattered away, sucked forever into the nothing of the black hole.

When the magic faltered and faded, Pride was left near exhausted. ...Damn. I did not realize just how weak that had left me, he thought to himself, Amazon in his mind. Then he turned to Aure, the shattered half-boulder behind him with no sign of the vanished material.

"More than only the magic itself, practice is important--and creativity with it. It can do whatever you will it do, however you shape it; it is limited only by your own mind. How often do you practice? Your magic itself looks quite capable of defending your family." There was a touch of weariness in his voice, but he ignored it, forcing past it with strength of will alone.

"Are you all right?" Pride eyed Aure uncertainly. The hybrid was coughing, seemingly sickened--and the stag glanced off at the boulder, then back to Aure. Had the spell actively harmed its own caster-?

Pride tilted his head at the rest of Aure's words, curiously. "Fungal magic--I've little experience with that, but I know some very little about it. You're capable of creating spores, yes? If you are capable of magics of the mind, or simple bursts of power, perhaps you can use that to move these spores where you see fit? Ahh--as you were doing with the shell, prior," he explained. "I imagine it would be rather an effective strategy, procuring a near-certain infection of the enemy, even at a distance. Perhaps," he went on, thoughtful, "even in secret."

"Alternatively, fungal magic could perhaps be combined with something like-..." Pride glanced up, and around. He had an idea, one he'd never tried before, and for a few moments (his weariness near-forgotten in his enthusiasm) he used his front hooves to scrape together sand and rocks. He did this quite a safe distance from Aure, then turned, and called out to him.

"I am going to try something--but imagine that you had coated all of these things in spores, or fungus--something to infect the blood, perhaps, with whatever you wished."

He'd meant to lift up merely sand and rocks, but apparently his mental image of 'sharp' inadvertantly shaped the spell more specifically than he'd imagined: shards of razor-sharp glass began to form around him, raising and whirling in a deadly dervish. He looked a bit surprised, maintaining it only for a few moments--enough to show Aure--before the taxing nature and his own tiredness forced him to drop it once more.

The glass clattered to the ground around him, and he explained. "Or even a single, sharp object, really--hurled with your mind, but coated in spores? It might be enough to truly sicken or even kill an attacker," he mused.

At the mention of not killing, Pride glanced at the glass shards with doubt.

"I would not trust that these would not kill someone," he warned. "And I did not realize that--about fungus? Perhaps I shall have to look into it more deeply. As for the meeting, I wish you luck with it, and I shall ask Livius if they wish me to come as a representative? As for the ancients, I'd suggest as much. I know that Dragon wanted the meeting itself, the knowledge-sharing and the wariness as a whole, to remain secret... at least from the Ancients. Whether you choose to adhere to that is your decision, of course, but I see little harm in it, and great potential gain--depending on how wholly one embraces conspiracy theories," he added, with humor.

Pride paused, thinking, eyeing Aure curiously. "Tell me--does the Bonebound have any sort of defenses? I--know how terribly suspicious that question sounds, but for your own sake. For example, scouts, sentries--there are magics that could be useful there; and to hide you, to defend, should you require it? Ahh-... There is a spell that allows me, for example, to split another... version of myself away. I can use this to scout and look ahead without putting my true physical body in danger. And as for hiding--" He focused, for a moment.

After a beat, the shadows around and beneath Pride and Aure faded. Then the shadows beneath the pebbles, the stones, the boulders. Even the sea seemed brightly-lit, its glittering surface bright. There was no way anything could hide; it was as if Pride had deleted all shadows in Fornax from existence. He squinted around, lifting one forehoof.

"Ahhh... Maybe I should... Rest, for a moment--that had rather the opposite effect than I had intended--err. Shadows can be summoned, to hide, not... removed, that was unintentional-..." As the natural darkness--such small bits, so easily missed, but so obvious when missing--began to return, Pride sighed. "Magic is a fickle thing."