Aethril, for lack of a better term, had gotten a little lazy.

There was plenty to do. The map for Elayne needed to be finished up, Pollen had a whole investigation that she wanted to conduct. Aethril always worked better when she had plenty of different things to do, to occupy her mind, but even she could feel overwhelmed.

The new Altar in the Palace helped keep her mind... sane. Sane enough. But there was only one real outlet that worked for getting rid of that little voice of Chaos in her head. Aethril set out early in the morning to cross the river and walked to the far side of Cepheus, an hour out, until she was far from the Palace and the tunnels and people.

Set it all ablaze, she was told, and in silence, she obeyed.

Violet-black flames erupted from her fingertips. Where it went, Aethril had little care for. It came in a thick wave around her left side and scorched the grass beneath it, leaving smoke drifting into the air. It felt... good. It was a relief. How long had she been resisting the urge?

Wisps of fire disappeared into the morning air and Aethril's hands dropped to her sides for a moment. A circle of smoldering, corrupted ground surrounded her and carefully, she stepped forward and continued moving along.

The tree she passed by was old, with a thick trunk weathered by age. A little breath and she steadied herself out and began to focus instead, mouth twisting a little with concentration.

Lightning crackled.

Static rose in the air that send the ends of Aethril's hair on edge. With an explosion of roaring thunder, fingers of violet lightning grasped the tree and it exploded into splinters of wood and flaming leaves. Aethril's arms lifted to shield her face in an effort to protect herself from the debris.

It was a good start. It was a very good start, if you ignored the shrapnel that scratched up her arms and her legs. Her chest heaved briefly, though the adrenaline still ran through her veins and burned into her fingertips.

Despite the smoldering remains, the smoke lifting to the ceiling, the taste of ash in her mouth, it didn't feel like enough. It was an improvement, but it wasn't enough-- not while splintered remains were there, not while the hollowed-out corpse of a tree trunk still stood.

The next strike of lighting was just as violent (what was that phrase about it striking twice again?) as it chipped away at the last of the log settled in the grass. In its wake, it left nothing but the blackened ground and woodchips glowing amaranthine with corrupted embers.

Aethril could feel the sweat running down the back of her neck. She settled into a squat with her elbows on her knees and breathed with her lips parted, observing her work. Destroying trees in the middle of nowhere was a good method of training for her, apparently-- this must have been the third or fourth, now.

It also must have been the fastest she'd removed any recognizable feature from it.

Slowly, the Hand lowered herself down to sit properly. Her legs spread out in front of her, and before long her back hit the grass and she started at the ceiling, with smoke glittering in Voidlight. More magic flickered-- not the Creator's, but something else.

Her joints were aching. She didn't realise it until the pain burned and then smoothed out with the spell. The magic had turned her hands ashen, almost black with burns. Her eyes were only half-open as she watched-- watched as the blisters smoothed into inflamed skin.

Disgusting. It reminded her of rope unravelling, but it was a relief nonetheless. Aethril felt her eyes closing, for just a moment.

It must've only been a few minutes before Aethril was opening her eyes again. Internally, she was scolding herself-- don't take a nap mid-training, and she was pushing up again, rubbing her face. Just get it over with, the Hand urged, and her arms were stretching out above her head.

A new attempt to reach out to the Creator's magic ended in failure. A brief, sharp pain rode up the underside of Aethril's forearm and she found herself scolding herself again while shaking out the sore limb. Focus. She could do better than this. She had to do better than this.

She stole a breath and the joints of her shoulders clicked back into place. She just had to try it again-- another attempt to reach out rode in a success, but Aethril knew that there was no intense power in this spell as there had been before. She promptly let this disappoint her.

Still, corruption crawled into the very ground. It bit into the earth and from it, a sapling began to grow-- shiny, oil-slick black peering from the ground and extending upwards. As it grew taller, stem hardening into bark, streaks of violet cascaded along down its trunk and into the roots that threatened to upturn the soil it grew out of.

Aethril studied it critically. It wasn't going to make much of a replacement to the burning tree that was there minutes ago, but perhaps she got points for replanting trees. Even if the new ones were fucked up.

Aethril studied the tree for a moment and shook her hair out. It was fine. It was a black tree. It could be better.
Her magic still felt weak, but it was gripping the sapling regardless. The trunk slowly began to twist in on itself, slowly spiraling. It only spiraled once or twice in a wide loop, but it was unique. It was different. It was a little creation of her own.

Though, it didn't stop that voice from urging her to burn this one down, too, no matter how much she liked it with its twisted branches and dripping leaves.

For a moment, Aethril was only studying the tree. Then, she was shaking herself out again with a hard breath. Practice, she was urging herself, trying to push by the feeling of getting easily distracted. Perhaps she was just too tired.

Just a few quick spells. Then she could go back to sitting in the theatre twiddling her thumbs while watching Nemean bang various kitchen utensils against each other.

Predictably, her mind lingered on Nemean's musical choices as a small vacuum opened, sending corrupted wind lashing through her. With a muffled grunt, the Hand twisted it shut and was quickly moving onto the next.

Her hand barely touched the ground. The magic seeping out of her was weak, but it was spreading nonetheless-- it scattered across the soil like teeth grinding through fresh meat; turning the peat and grass the kind of black that absorbs the very light itself.

Aethril leaned over, for a moment, to inspect her work. She'd wanted to expose the cave underneath it, but the spell hadn't been strong enough.

It was time to go back to ol' reliable.

A crack of her fingers and mere beats after the last spell, Aethril was conjuring another.

Lightning was good. Familiar. It came to her easier than any other spell, and when she summoned it, it hit the corrupted earth in front of her and broke right through it. Smoke billowed from where the fingers of violet had hit, and the ground began to fell away.

The smell of ash was caught in Aethril's sinuses, but it brought her some twisted comfort. As the cave floor crumbled into a shallow ravine it revealed an ocean of crystals underneath, shining lilac in the Voidlight.

It'd mend itself over in a few days, but she found herself quietly appreciating it anyway.