Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

5th of July 2006 A.D.

"It's pretty obvious I'm different now right?" you pause, looking more towards your mother than the wizard who would actually be able to tell how you are different. You like your power and you like the answers it has already given you, you even like the prim voice of the demon in your head since you are pretty sure that unlike poor Harry your guest works for you, but you don't want things to change with your family you don't want your dad to be mad or Hope to be scared and as unfair as that might be to her you want your mom to say so, just for now,lie to you if she has to.

"You are still you under all that," she manages, stumbling a little over the words. You'll take it, enough to carry on, to drive the point home.

"One of those spiders got me on the leg," you point down to where your lower leg is still covered in some of the stubborn snow of the Nevernever... only it's not really snow anymore. What comes off when you shake your leg is clear gunk... 'ectoplasm' you remember Harry calling it, and a good bit of red from your blood.

Mom gasps as she rushes over. "How did you... Why don't you say anything?"

Inwardly you wince a little at the way you had played at her heartstrings, you knew she would do this, she always does this, even when Leech bruised her knuckles on some bully's face and she gets grounded over it. "I heal faster and don't feel pain as much."

"About as much as the pari when they do not call on their Hunger," Usum offers helpfully though you hesitate to compare yourself to a lust spirit host.

Wait, that is the point, the White Council do not make rules pari either. "I think I heal about as fast as Thomas does when he does not go all out."

"Most kinds of supernatural powers have toughness as part of the package," Harry offers. "Does it feel like it has a weakness, like silver or fire?"

"Nothing can take your health from you forever Wise Soveraign, you may be broken, but not undone by any mortal power or artifice," comes the answer from your guide. While you do not much like the implication that immortals might have some way to do it, now is not the time to worry about that. Sufficient onto the day the evils thereof and all that.

"That might have changed how you do magic then, the sort of themes of it," Harry says,catching on to where you are going with this. He is a detective and not just a wizard after all.

Darkness, Cold, Conviction, Sight, Poison Fire.... It does not really feel like you have a theme at all unless that theme is 'scary witch', but you nod anyway. "So I want to try to cast a spell, just something small, to see what's changed."

Mom looks up from where she had been examining your perfectly healthy though slightly blood-caked leg, The lines around her mouth are deeper as she searches your face for... something. It looks like she finds or maybe doesn't find what she is looking for. "Just... be careful now."

Lost 1 Essence

Harry clears his throat professionally and asks: "What can you do?"

"I'll just try to make myself harder to notice." The last thing you want to do now is offer a list of everything you had ever tried with magic. In hindsight you had tried to do a lot of silly-dangerous things.

The church is loud and filled with memories and starting eyes and judgement. Part of you just wants to shoo them both away, you don't want to look foolish in front of Harry or look... sinful you guess in front of mom, even though you do not think magic is a sin she does. But that is not going to work. So you are quiet and so you are still, the books on meditation had been some of the few useful ones you had found trawling occult bookshops.

When you look close enough light has a sound, a quiet constant harmony, no matter if it is the steady glow of fluorescence or the contained heat of an Edison Light or even the light of sun and stars.
If you listen close enough the sound of everything has a feeling to it, whether its music drifting in from the street, the sound of passing cars, of children playing far away
When you stop to think about it everything glows, just not with its own light, an apple, a door-frame, a cat lounging in the sun, all of them feel the touch of light and all of them cast it back into the world

And so as you had done many times before you try to coax them, to nudge them as you want them to go, like blowing soap bubbles. "I'm not here," you breathe into them...or try to at least.

The moment you touch the magic is surges towards you...through you and falls into the place behind your heart,freezing cold and hotter than the sun. You try again and again...and again and every time it slips through your fingers and right into your soul as Usum puts it. While you grow no more adept at stopping it with every try you become convinced that there is something at the other end more than 'a whole pile of magic', a substance, an essence that is heavier, more real.

Being the reasonable and level headed person that you are you grab for that. You can hold it just fine, it does not go back where it came from, but it just lies there, like a lump of steel or maybe uranium. No amount of whispering at it is going to make this bend this into a spell, at least not in English. You are going to need stronger older tools for this.

How do you feel about this?

[] Relieved, one more argument for the White Council not to try to cut off your head

[] Saddened, as much sense as Lasciel's warning makes you would have liked to be a wizard,maybe learn from Harry in formally

[] Perturbed, what does the Essene in your soul do? What spells could need that kind of power

[] Write in

OOC: So there it is,no easy access to all the flexibility of Dresenverse magic for you unfortunately. You are going to have to make do with your Demon Emperor superpowers for now. To be clear what is happening is your Exaltation is in emergency power mode since there is no Essence out there, there is however this thin denaturated soup of probability that can be used as an Essence precursor so it just slurps that down and produces by its standards a pittance of motes each day. When Molly tries to do mortal sorcery she makes a path of least resistance between the magic she is trying to shape and the cosmic pump in her soul so it just slurps it up.