Magic Under Construction: TOMU #480
Jan. 10th, 2011 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinStarted: 1/10/2011, 4:30 PM
Status: In Progress (10:45 PM)
Word Count: ~2000
Hours Writing: 2
Progress After 2 Hours:
Progress After 1.5 Hours:
I found myself wishing I'd know about Iona's disappearance... and the weekend plans she'd made with Feejee... before lunch, so I could have talked about it with the others and made some kind of plans or arrangements. Now everybody was scattered to their afternoon classes, and I was the only one who carried a mirror.
I was glad at least that Steff shared my last class with me. I wouldn't have to walk back to the dorms alone. I didn't know... and didn't really want to find out... if a mermaid on land could move and react faster than a half-elf, but I trusted Steff to see an attack coming and respond to it before I could.
After some debate about whether it would be worse to go out unprotected or stay in the dorm and miss it, I set out for my logic class alone. I reasoned that the dorm was not necessarily a place of safety, especially as it would be fairly empty during the height of the afternoon, whereas there would be many students out and about between classes. Spending an hour sitting in the middle of a room full of witnesses sounded like a better idea than spending it cooped up in my dorm room, jumping at noises. And if my scent had changed enough that Feejee couldn't recognize it, then it seemed like a better idea to be moving around than to stay in a place that Iona might check first if she were looking for a trail.
I was also curious to see if Sooni would make an appearance in the flesh in our shared logic class... though it kind of pained me to think of Sooni and I sharing logic. Thus far she'd been attending remotely or by proxy.
Once I was thinking about Sooni, it occurred to me that I had some direct knowledge that Sooni was a technically competent magic blaster, at least when it came to cramming the impressive-looking off-the-shelf spells... and while Maliko lacked Pala or Dee's looming presence, she was a trained fighter.
Assuming that Sooni's television-influenced senses of friendship and heroism would hold out if she saw me being attacked by something recognizable as a monster... and that Maliko would either obey her or jump into a fray to protect her... then it was just possible that I'd find some protection if I were attacked close enough to the logic class, in time and space.
It really sucked to be looking at the world that way, blocking out my day in terms that amounted to darting from one piece of cover to another like a hunted animal. In a real sense, though, that's what I was... the hunted part, at least. The fact that my predator had gone missing brought no real relief. All it really meant was that I didn't know where she was.
The only thing worse than living a life like that, I decided, was living it halfway like that. Where Ian had arranged a bodyguard during what we'd assumed was the most dangerous time, when the whole campus had been on edge, I'd made no real provisions for my safety against the threat that I knew was targeting me personally.
There I was relying on the happenstance of sharing classes with people who would be better than I in a fight. I'd been learning how to use a staff to take down opponents and keep them away from me, but I hadn't even thought to bring it with me on the walk between classes. At least I had spells ready for projecting elemental fire, and some limited experience with improvising elemental effects in combat.
I felt like maybe I should thank Sooni for that, but chances were excellent that she had already worked it around in her head until I'd expressed my gratitude to her for the magic brawl that had put me in the healing center.
I decided that if Iona attacked me, I would not hesitate to lash out with everything I had available. I was unarmed, but I could magically sharpen my nails and even my teeth if I had to. I was sure I could make some sort of ground-based eruption of earth, at least outside the protected paths. Though they would sadly do absolutely nothing to prevent another student from attacking me, I knew they would act out against me if I used magic in a way that would directly damage them.
Setting myself on fire would probably be more efficacious than trying to do the same to her directly. I was pretty sure that fire would hurt her, but sea life tended to be very low in fire quotient and possessing of a high balance of water, not surprisingly. It would be an uphill battle to pull fire out of her under stress, which I certainly would be.
I could surround myself with fire and throw that at her, but people didn't burn very well, as a rule. She wouldn't have clothes or even necessarily hair to catch on fire. Magically produced fire was a little better at burning things that were too stubborn to ignite for mundane fire, being closer to pure elemental fire and thus more of an embodiment of burningness than anything you could produce through mundane reactions, but that would again run into the problem of there not being a lot of fire in a mermaid's body to release.
Thinking about fighting off Iona with fire was making me doubt my ability to actually follow through with it. It was one thing to coldly contemplate the best method of setting a living, thinking being on fire, but it was another to... well, it was actually another thing to coldly contemplate the best method of setting a living, thinking being on fire.
If the time came, I'd be prepared to act. That was probably the best I could do, since I didn't know where or how she would end up coming after me, if she did. I couldn't guess how she would arm herself, or if she'd think to find some kind of additional countermeasures against fire. Evey if that was outside her expertise... and I had no idea if it was... someone willing to kill for enjoyment wouldn't balk at swiping some of the magical items that were lying around.
So I'd just be ready to fight, and I'd do more to be prepared in the future... I'd carry the borrowed staff with me to my next class, and I would make arrangements with my more capable friends to not be alone.
And I would not spend the time walking to classes lost in thought instead of paying attention to my surroundings, as I realized I'd just done when I arrived outside the building for my logic class. At least it meant that nothing interesting had happened to me on the way, which could only be a good thing.
"[] the Case of the Killed Princess Of A Not Very Important Kingdom," Sooni said.
"What in the world are you talking about?" I asked.
"Well, I mean... it's not as though she was from a very large or powerful kingdom, with a big military or any industry to speak of," Sooni said. "So while she was a princess, technically, when compared to the only daughter of an important man from a larger and more prosperous empire..."
"Sooni, are you actually trying to pull rank on a dead girl?" I asked.
"I am just saying that if Yokano were as lawless and fractured a place as the Shift, my father would probably be a king, too," Sooni said. "It is only because he is wise enough to yield to the rule of our just and powerful god-emperor that I am not a princess. But don't you think the vassal of a god outranks any other mortal ruler?"
"So that's a yes, then," I said. "And being that my emperor is very pointedly mortal and I may or may not be under surveillance by some of his sketchier enforcement agencies right now, I'm going to say no."
"I do not see how you can venerate a mortal emperor," Sooni said.
"We don't," I said. "That's kind of the point of having a mortal ruler. We fought a couple of wars over it, actually. The Magisterian system holds that absolute temporal power is enough for anybody. Anything more would be too much."
"And it is no wonder you have so many problems," Sooni said. "Racisms and murders and sexual deviancies and so on."
"Like you don't have those things in Yokano."
"We do not," she said. "There can be no racism when each race has its own honored place to be celebrated in turn."
I had to imagine that some of the other yokai would bristle at that kind of talk the way Steff had at Dee's talk of people's place in her society... though I imagined they would do it quietly, considering how completely cowed Kai was around Sooni. I also had to wonder how long the nekos and other races whose honored place was below foxes had been waiting for their turns to celebrate.
I didn't say any of this, of course.
Progress At 1 Hour Mark:
I found myself wishing I'd know about Iona's disappearance... and the weekend plans she'd made with Feejee... before lunch, so I could have talked about it with the others and made some kind of plans or arrangements. Now everybody was scattered to their afternoon classes, and I was the only one who carried a mirror.
I was glad at least that Steff shared my last class with me. I wouldn't have to walk back to the dorms alone. I didn't know... and didn't really want to find out... if a mermaid on land could move and react faster than a half-elf, but I trusted Steff to see an attack coming and respond to it before I could.
After some debate about whether it would be worse to go out unprotected or stay in the dorm and miss it, I set out for my logic class alone. I reasoned that the dorm was not necessarily a place of safety, especially as it would be fairly empty during the height of the afternoon, whereas there would be many students out and about between classes. Spending an hour sitting in the middle of a room full of witnesses sounded like a better idea than spending it cooped up in my dorm room, jumping at noises. And if my scent had changed enough that Feejee couldn't recognize it, then it seemed like a better idea to be moving around than to stay in a place that Iona might check first if she were looking for a trail.
I was curious to see if Sooni would make an appearance in the flesh in our shared logic class... though it kind of pained me to think of Sooni and I sharing logic. Thus far she'd been attending remotely or by proxy.
It occurred to me that I had some direct knowledge that Sooni was a technically competent magic blaster, at least when it came to cramming the impressive-looking off-the-shelf spells... and while Maliko lacked Pala or Dee's looming presence, she was a trained fighter.
Assuming that Sooni's television-influenced senses of friendship and heroism would hold out if she saw me being attacked by something recognizable as a monster... and that Maliko would either obey her or jump into a fray to protect her... then it was just possible that I'd find some protection if I were attacked close enough to the logic class, in time and space.
It really sucked to be looking at the world that way, blocking out my day in terms that amounted to darting from one piece of cover to another like a hunted animal. In a real sense, though, that's what I was... the hunted part, at least. The fact that my predator had gone missing brought no real relief. All it really meant was that I didn't know where she was.
The only thing worse than living a life like that, I decided, was living it halfway like that. Where Ian had arranged a bodyguard during what we'd assumed was the most dangerous time, when the whole campus had been on edge, I'd made no real provisions for my safety against the threat that I knew was targeting me personally.
There I was relying on the happenstance of sharing classes with people who would be better than I in a fight. I'd been learning how to use a staff to take down opponents and keep them away from me, but I hadn't even thought to bring it with me on the walk between classes. At least I had spells ready for projecting elemental fire, and some limited experience with improvising elemental effects in combat.
I felt like maybe I should thank Sooni for that, but chances were excellent that she had already worked it around in her head until I'd expressed my gratitude to her for the magic brawl that had put me in the healing center.
[][][][][]
"[] the Case of the Killed Princess Of A Not Very Important Kingdom," Sooni said.
"What in the world are you talking about?" I asked.
"Well, I mean... it's not as though she was from a very large or powerful kingdom, with a big military or any industry to speak of," Sooni said. "So while she was a princess, technically, when compared to the only daughter of an important man from a larger and more prosperous empire..."
"Sooni, are you actually trying to pull rank on a dead girl?" I asked.
"I am just saying that if Yokano were as lawless and fractured a place as the Shift, my father would probably be a king, too," Sooni said. "It is only because he is wise enough to yield to the rule of our just and powerful god-emperor that I am not a princess. But don't you think the vassal of a god outranks any other mortal ruler?"
"So that's a yes, then," I said. "And being that my emperor is very pointedly mortal and I may or may not be under surveillance by some of his sketchier enforcement agencies right now, I'm going to say no."
"I do not see how you can venerate a mortal emperor," Sooni said.
"We don't," I said. "That's kind of the point of having a mortal ruler. We fought a couple of wars over it, actually. The Magisterian system holds that absolute temporal power is enough for anybody. Anything more would be too much."
"And it is no wonder you have so many problems," Sooni said. "Racisms and murders and sexual deviancies and so on."
"Like you don't have those things in Yokano."
"We do not," she said. "There can be no racism when each race has its own honored place to be celebrated in turn."
I had to imagine that some of the other yokai would bristle at that kind of talk the way Steff had at Dee's talk of people's place in her society... though I imagined they would do it quietly, considering how completely cowed Kai was around Sooni. I also had to wonder how long the nekos and other races whose honored place was below foxes had been waiting for their turns to celebrate.
I didn't say any of this, of course.
Status: In Progress (10:45 PM)
Word Count: ~2000
Hours Writing: 2
Progress After 2 Hours:
Progress After 1.5 Hours:
I found myself wishing I'd know about Iona's disappearance... and the weekend plans she'd made with Feejee... before lunch, so I could have talked about it with the others and made some kind of plans or arrangements. Now everybody was scattered to their afternoon classes, and I was the only one who carried a mirror.
I was glad at least that Steff shared my last class with me. I wouldn't have to walk back to the dorms alone. I didn't know... and didn't really want to find out... if a mermaid on land could move and react faster than a half-elf, but I trusted Steff to see an attack coming and respond to it before I could.
After some debate about whether it would be worse to go out unprotected or stay in the dorm and miss it, I set out for my logic class alone. I reasoned that the dorm was not necessarily a place of safety, especially as it would be fairly empty during the height of the afternoon, whereas there would be many students out and about between classes. Spending an hour sitting in the middle of a room full of witnesses sounded like a better idea than spending it cooped up in my dorm room, jumping at noises. And if my scent had changed enough that Feejee couldn't recognize it, then it seemed like a better idea to be moving around than to stay in a place that Iona might check first if she were looking for a trail.
I was also curious to see if Sooni would make an appearance in the flesh in our shared logic class... though it kind of pained me to think of Sooni and I sharing logic. Thus far she'd been attending remotely or by proxy.
Once I was thinking about Sooni, it occurred to me that I had some direct knowledge that Sooni was a technically competent magic blaster, at least when it came to cramming the impressive-looking off-the-shelf spells... and while Maliko lacked Pala or Dee's looming presence, she was a trained fighter.
Assuming that Sooni's television-influenced senses of friendship and heroism would hold out if she saw me being attacked by something recognizable as a monster... and that Maliko would either obey her or jump into a fray to protect her... then it was just possible that I'd find some protection if I were attacked close enough to the logic class, in time and space.
It really sucked to be looking at the world that way, blocking out my day in terms that amounted to darting from one piece of cover to another like a hunted animal. In a real sense, though, that's what I was... the hunted part, at least. The fact that my predator had gone missing brought no real relief. All it really meant was that I didn't know where she was.
The only thing worse than living a life like that, I decided, was living it halfway like that. Where Ian had arranged a bodyguard during what we'd assumed was the most dangerous time, when the whole campus had been on edge, I'd made no real provisions for my safety against the threat that I knew was targeting me personally.
There I was relying on the happenstance of sharing classes with people who would be better than I in a fight. I'd been learning how to use a staff to take down opponents and keep them away from me, but I hadn't even thought to bring it with me on the walk between classes. At least I had spells ready for projecting elemental fire, and some limited experience with improvising elemental effects in combat.
I felt like maybe I should thank Sooni for that, but chances were excellent that she had already worked it around in her head until I'd expressed my gratitude to her for the magic brawl that had put me in the healing center.
I decided that if Iona attacked me, I would not hesitate to lash out with everything I had available. I was unarmed, but I could magically sharpen my nails and even my teeth if I had to. I was sure I could make some sort of ground-based eruption of earth, at least outside the protected paths. Though they would sadly do absolutely nothing to prevent another student from attacking me, I knew they would act out against me if I used magic in a way that would directly damage them.
Setting myself on fire would probably be more efficacious than trying to do the same to her directly. I was pretty sure that fire would hurt her, but sea life tended to be very low in fire quotient and possessing of a high balance of water, not surprisingly. It would be an uphill battle to pull fire out of her under stress, which I certainly would be.
I could surround myself with fire and throw that at her, but people didn't burn very well, as a rule. She wouldn't have clothes or even necessarily hair to catch on fire. Magically produced fire was a little better at burning things that were too stubborn to ignite for mundane fire, being closer to pure elemental fire and thus more of an embodiment of burningness than anything you could produce through mundane reactions, but that would again run into the problem of there not being a lot of fire in a mermaid's body to release.
Thinking about fighting off Iona with fire was making me doubt my ability to actually follow through with it. It was one thing to coldly contemplate the best method of setting a living, thinking being on fire, but it was another to... well, it was actually another thing to coldly contemplate the best method of setting a living, thinking being on fire.
If the time came, I'd be prepared to act. That was probably the best I could do, since I didn't know where or how she would end up coming after me, if she did. I couldn't guess how she would arm herself, or if she'd think to find some kind of additional countermeasures against fire. Evey if that was outside her expertise... and I had no idea if it was... someone willing to kill for enjoyment wouldn't balk at swiping some of the magical items that were lying around.
So I'd just be ready to fight, and I'd do more to be prepared in the future... I'd carry the borrowed staff with me to my next class, and I would make arrangements with my more capable friends to not be alone.
And I would not spend the time walking to classes lost in thought instead of paying attention to my surroundings, as I realized I'd just done when I arrived outside the building for my logic class. At least it meant that nothing interesting had happened to me on the way, which could only be a good thing.
"[] the Case of the Killed Princess Of A Not Very Important Kingdom," Sooni said.
"What in the world are you talking about?" I asked.
"Well, I mean... it's not as though she was from a very large or powerful kingdom, with a big military or any industry to speak of," Sooni said. "So while she was a princess, technically, when compared to the only daughter of an important man from a larger and more prosperous empire..."
"Sooni, are you actually trying to pull rank on a dead girl?" I asked.
"I am just saying that if Yokano were as lawless and fractured a place as the Shift, my father would probably be a king, too," Sooni said. "It is only because he is wise enough to yield to the rule of our just and powerful god-emperor that I am not a princess. But don't you think the vassal of a god outranks any other mortal ruler?"
"So that's a yes, then," I said. "And being that my emperor is very pointedly mortal and I may or may not be under surveillance by some of his sketchier enforcement agencies right now, I'm going to say no."
"I do not see how you can venerate a mortal emperor," Sooni said.
"We don't," I said. "That's kind of the point of having a mortal ruler. We fought a couple of wars over it, actually. The Magisterian system holds that absolute temporal power is enough for anybody. Anything more would be too much."
"And it is no wonder you have so many problems," Sooni said. "Racisms and murders and sexual deviancies and so on."
"Like you don't have those things in Yokano."
"We do not," she said. "There can be no racism when each race has its own honored place to be celebrated in turn."
I had to imagine that some of the other yokai would bristle at that kind of talk the way Steff had at Dee's talk of people's place in her society... though I imagined they would do it quietly, considering how completely cowed Kai was around Sooni. I also had to wonder how long the nekos and other races whose honored place was below foxes had been waiting for their turns to celebrate.
I didn't say any of this, of course.
Progress At 1 Hour Mark:
I found myself wishing I'd know about Iona's disappearance... and the weekend plans she'd made with Feejee... before lunch, so I could have talked about it with the others and made some kind of plans or arrangements. Now everybody was scattered to their afternoon classes, and I was the only one who carried a mirror.
I was glad at least that Steff shared my last class with me. I wouldn't have to walk back to the dorms alone. I didn't know... and didn't really want to find out... if a mermaid on land could move and react faster than a half-elf, but I trusted Steff to see an attack coming and respond to it before I could.
After some debate about whether it would be worse to go out unprotected or stay in the dorm and miss it, I set out for my logic class alone. I reasoned that the dorm was not necessarily a place of safety, especially as it would be fairly empty during the height of the afternoon, whereas there would be many students out and about between classes. Spending an hour sitting in the middle of a room full of witnesses sounded like a better idea than spending it cooped up in my dorm room, jumping at noises. And if my scent had changed enough that Feejee couldn't recognize it, then it seemed like a better idea to be moving around than to stay in a place that Iona might check first if she were looking for a trail.
I was curious to see if Sooni would make an appearance in the flesh in our shared logic class... though it kind of pained me to think of Sooni and I sharing logic. Thus far she'd been attending remotely or by proxy.
It occurred to me that I had some direct knowledge that Sooni was a technically competent magic blaster, at least when it came to cramming the impressive-looking off-the-shelf spells... and while Maliko lacked Pala or Dee's looming presence, she was a trained fighter.
Assuming that Sooni's television-influenced senses of friendship and heroism would hold out if she saw me being attacked by something recognizable as a monster... and that Maliko would either obey her or jump into a fray to protect her... then it was just possible that I'd find some protection if I were attacked close enough to the logic class, in time and space.
It really sucked to be looking at the world that way, blocking out my day in terms that amounted to darting from one piece of cover to another like a hunted animal. In a real sense, though, that's what I was... the hunted part, at least. The fact that my predator had gone missing brought no real relief. All it really meant was that I didn't know where she was.
The only thing worse than living a life like that, I decided, was living it halfway like that. Where Ian had arranged a bodyguard during what we'd assumed was the most dangerous time, when the whole campus had been on edge, I'd made no real provisions for my safety against the threat that I knew was targeting me personally.
There I was relying on the happenstance of sharing classes with people who would be better than I in a fight. I'd been learning how to use a staff to take down opponents and keep them away from me, but I hadn't even thought to bring it with me on the walk between classes. At least I had spells ready for projecting elemental fire, and some limited experience with improvising elemental effects in combat.
I felt like maybe I should thank Sooni for that, but chances were excellent that she had already worked it around in her head until I'd expressed my gratitude to her for the magic brawl that had put me in the healing center.
[][][][][]
"[] the Case of the Killed Princess Of A Not Very Important Kingdom," Sooni said.
"What in the world are you talking about?" I asked.
"Well, I mean... it's not as though she was from a very large or powerful kingdom, with a big military or any industry to speak of," Sooni said. "So while she was a princess, technically, when compared to the only daughter of an important man from a larger and more prosperous empire..."
"Sooni, are you actually trying to pull rank on a dead girl?" I asked.
"I am just saying that if Yokano were as lawless and fractured a place as the Shift, my father would probably be a king, too," Sooni said. "It is only because he is wise enough to yield to the rule of our just and powerful god-emperor that I am not a princess. But don't you think the vassal of a god outranks any other mortal ruler?"
"So that's a yes, then," I said. "And being that my emperor is very pointedly mortal and I may or may not be under surveillance by some of his sketchier enforcement agencies right now, I'm going to say no."
"I do not see how you can venerate a mortal emperor," Sooni said.
"We don't," I said. "That's kind of the point of having a mortal ruler. We fought a couple of wars over it, actually. The Magisterian system holds that absolute temporal power is enough for anybody. Anything more would be too much."
"And it is no wonder you have so many problems," Sooni said. "Racisms and murders and sexual deviancies and so on."
"Like you don't have those things in Yokano."
"We do not," she said. "There can be no racism when each race has its own honored place to be celebrated in turn."
I had to imagine that some of the other yokai would bristle at that kind of talk the way Steff had at Dee's talk of people's place in her society... though I imagined they would do it quietly, considering how completely cowed Kai was around Sooni. I also had to wonder how long the nekos and other races whose honored place was below foxes had been waiting for their turns to celebrate.
I didn't say any of this, of course.