Whelp, my beta didn't get back to me in time, but here goes anyway.
AN: I do appreciate people pointing out when I made a mistake, but do note that some of the changes in this chapter are intentional, due to the nature of the Xover/AU.
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Introductions 1.3
The morning comes bright and early the next day.
"Ungh," you moan, rolling over in bed.
Does it
have to come
so bright and
so early?
You try to get back to sleep, but you can hear the radio playing in the bathroom as your dad showers. That's what normally wakes you up, and it seems like today is no exception. You vainly try to fall asleep for the next two minutes, at which point your alarm clock goes off. You give up and heave yourself out of bed, only to slip on something in your fatigue. You barely catch yourself before you faceplant on the floor.
"What time did I get to sleep last night?" you blearily ask yourself, covering your face with the hand not holding you up.
"I'm pretty sure it was around 4:00, or thereabouts," a boy's voice says out of nowhere.
You gasp in surprise, your entire body flinching away from the intruder that got into your bedroom, landing on your side as you lose your balance. You start to scramble backwards, hands scrabbling for your glasses as your blurry vision looks frantically for the stranger, when the voice speaks up again.
"Taylor? Are you okay?"
You slow as you continue to see no threat, and that accented voice seems rather familiar…oh. You stop making a fool of yourself as the memories from the past day flood back into your recollection. That's right, you and Blake had stayed up pretty late last night. You just had so many questions, and once you had the time to explore them—and a notebook handy to record what he was saying—you couldn't resist asking question after question, running down everything that didn't make sense. Or at least, you did until you were too tired to make sense of it.
Remembering where you are, you slowly straighten up, shoulders tensing again as you look at the guy in the mirror. The desk is close enough to your bed that you can make him out clearly. Here it is, this is the point where the mocking would begin, the teasing at how foolishly you are acting…
And yet there is nothing. He is just looking at you through his own mirror, propped up on the desk to have a view of most of the room (although not your bed). His expression contains nothing more malicious than concern.
Slowly, you relax. "I'm fine," you say carefully. "I just forgot that you were here for a second."
"Oh," Blake says ruefully, a small smile creasing his face for a moment. It doesn't look derisive. "I think I remember doing that, a time or two, when I was in your shoes."
The tension finishes sliding out of your shoulders, but something's bothering you about this, even as you finally find your glasses and absently put them on. You struggle to pull up your last memories from the night before—or two hours ago, really. "Wait," you say slowly. "Didn't I ask you to spend the night elsewhere?" Indeed, you can vaguely remember stumbling into the bathroom to flip on the light for him, which he needed to stay there for some reason, and saying something about him spending the night out of your room.
"Ah…yeah," Blake says, looking away for a few moments. "Well, I was doing that for most of the night—I don't' know if you remember, but I borrowed a few of your books to keep me occupied, and the literature you have here is pretty weird—but then, uh…"
You stare at him silently, waiting for him to continue.
"…then your dad came into the bathroom and started getting ready for the shower." Blake looks back at you, a little frustrated and embarrassed, but mostly just expectant.
For your part, you merely rub your face with your hands, hoping to get some more of the sleepiness out. "Okay," you say, reminding yourself that the bed was out of sight of the mirror. "That's fine. I should have thought of that last night, but—"
"—but you were exhausted," Blake cut in, another small smile on his face. "Don't worry about it for now. Just, maybe we can find a different plan for tonight?"
"Because you can't go to sleep. Right. Crap," you mutter. "That sounds pretty awesome right now, honestly."
"I can see how you might think that," Blake says politely. Your ears prick up at the phrasing, but you say nothing in response. He's not making a big deal out of it, so you won't either.
You cast your mind out for something else to talk about despite your muddled mind. "You know," you say slowly when you remember something. "I've been considering taking up running." Ever since a certain exercise of sadism and social pressure a week or so ago. Thinking about that soured your mood even more, but you push through it. "Feel up for a jog this morning?"
"Sure," Blake says after a beat. He glances down at his clothing, unchanged from the night before. "Jeans aren't really the best for running, but I'm sure I can make do."
You nod, and a few minutes later you found yourself dressed in sweats, collecting Blake from where he is waiting in the pictures on the stairs. You go into the kitchen to make yourself some breakfast. Often you or your dad will put together something fancier for breakfast, even on a normal morning, but today you are too tired to bother. You pour some cereal in a bowl, splash in some milk, and start shoveling it into your mouth.
"So what's the plan for the day?" Blake asks from the window he's reflecting in.
You stop shoving the cereal into your mouth, holding up a finger as you finish chewing the food already in your mouth. By the time you reduce the obstruction to manageable levels, you can clearly hear the shower shut off upstairs.
You know that you don't have much time, if your dad is already finished with his shower. "I was planning on spending at least part of today trying to see if my power would let me replicate any of those kinds of magic that you told me about last night."
Blake's eyebrows jumped up. "Does it feel that way to you?"
You hesitate for a few seconds. "Not really," you say, "but the kinds of things you were talking about sound like they would be incredibly useful. And I am certain that my power lets me do more than make a man in a mirror." You gesture to Blake, the thought that you know at least one other thing that it does keeping you from realizing that he might take your phrasing poorly until after you finish speaking.
"Okay," Blake says, not seeming to take any offense. "When will we be working on this?"
But by this point, you can hear your dad coming down the stairs. "I'll tell you on the run," you murmur, shooting him a quick glance. At his brief nod, you resume demolishing the bowl of cereal, trusting Blake to hide from your dad.
You finish the bowl by the time your dad comes downstairs, clad in his bathrobe. He raises his eyebrows when he sees you out of your normal pajamas. "Kiddo?" he asks inquisitively.
The conversation that follows is…less than pleasant.
Your dad understands that you're just trying to be healthy, and that you don't intend to be reckless. You understand that he's just trying to make sure that you stay safe, and not intending to impinge on your freedom. And yet the space between these two understandings can be surprisingly vast.
You two finally settle on you promising to carry a tube of pepper spray every time you run as soon as he gets one to you, along with a few other precautions, like sticking to the Boardwalk and varying your routes. The discussion took up much of the time that you set aside for running. As you go down the stairs and onto your yard, reflexively avoiding the step that still needing fixing, you wonder if that was intentional on his part.
"So which way are we going?" Blake asks from his spot in his mirror, smuggled out of the house under your outermost layer of clothing.
You pull the mirror out now, holding it in one hand. "Good question," you say quietly, trying to talk without moving your lips in case anyone happens to be watching. Shrugging, you turn to the left once you reach the sidewalk and start to jog.
After you finish trying to remember the best way to hold the mirror so Blake won't be shoved around as much—which basically amounted to holding it more at the floor than the sky and keeping it from shaking around—you finally answer Blake's question.
"I'm going to skip school today," you say in a voice that jars with every step, ready for his retorts about why you should go. You've had your powers for a month already and you haven't done anything with them. You finally found out something new about them, and you don't want to lose that momentum. Your powers can talk back now, and you have so much to learn.
The fact that there are lots of students at school who seem to be invested in making your life hell doesn't really factor into the equation. Honest.
If that doesn't sway him, you are ready to inform him of the volatile situation with the local gangs and how things seem to be heating up, with your school in the center of it. You don't know if it's heating up just because the hellhole that is Winslow High School is gang recruitment central or if there are other territorial concerns, but things have been way more violent there lately.
That should be enough to convince anybody.
"Hm," Blake says after a few moments. "Okay."
Well, that was anticlimactic.
"Anything else you wanted to tell me right now?" Blake asks, not sounding hindered by the jogging in the slightest.
It's only been a block and you're already feeling winded. "Not now," you pant out, shoving down another ripple of jealousy. "Tell me more—about things—like the mirror—while we jog?"
"Sure," Blake says. "You're not comfortable calling it a fetish?"
You would have expected to hear some amusement in his voice, an older guy talking about something rude with a younger girl, but again, nothing. "No," you say shortly, not telling him your suspicions that he was messing with you.
"I think there was another word for it if you don't want to use 'fetish,'" Blake says. "Gimme a minute, I'll think on it." The rest of the current block passes in silence but for the harsh gasps of breath from you. "Ah, I know. It's also called a
n'kisi. African origin, I think."
You let a groan through gritted teeth. "Ne-kissy? That's hardly—any better…"
"So picky," Blake says. This time there
is some humor underlying his words.
You jerk the mirror somewhat, trying to get a glance at his face. You don't see anything you shouldn't, but his previous expression is quickly consumed in surprise as the world he inhabits jerks along with the mirror's angle. You ignore the yelp of surprise and the grumbling that follows.
"Anyway," he says once he gets the grumbles out of his system, "it's a variation on the standard vessel that's used for containing Others. Except while those are more temporary, fetishes or
n'kisi are bound more strongly to their Others and vice-versa. I hesitate to say 'unbreakable,' because absolutes are dangerous, but it's definitely along that line. So what I'm thinking is that your 'superpower' created a
n'kisi to house me, or give me some kind of anchor. Though I can't be certain that I understand how
this system works, especially considering I am still a novice to the one that I knew of before."
You might comment here, but you are even more of a novice than he is, in basically every way, so you just concentrate on breathing through the stitch building in your side.
"Do you need a break?" Blake asks abruptly.
"No!" you gasp out, pushing your flagging limbs a little harder.
"Let me rephrase," Blake says before you reach the end of this block. "Talking about the
n'kisi gave me an idea that I want to try out, and it would work out better if you aren't moving. Would you mind stopping for a minute or two?"
Oh. Well, when he puts it that way…you slow to a stop at the intersection, keeping the mirror in its position despite bending over to try to catch your breath while Blake works on his idea, whatever it is. Speaking of which…
"What's…idea…?" you ask.
"Just double-checking the range," he says absently as he—you peek at the mirror—looks around at the windows of surrounding houses. "Oh, you shouldn't be entirely still for long, or your limbs will cramp up. Keep moving, at least a little, like pacing in place. And your lungs can pull in more air if you're upright."
Blake takes a step or two forward and then disappears from the reflection before you could say anything. Lacking the breath to grumble yourself, you decide to try to take his advice, walking in tiny circles to minimize how much you're moving for the test, trying to keep upright.
"Huh," Blake's voice says from the feti—
n'kisi.
"What?" you ask, your breath finally returning.
"Do you remember how far I was able to get from you last night, when we tested it from your room?"
That was pretty early on in the night, just after he finished explaining the basics about familiars, so your memories of the event are clear. "I think it was around…30 feet, wasn't it?"
"Something like that," the vestige agrees. "It was hard to gauge with all of the walls in the way, but I think that was it. How far away would you say that window is?"
You check the mirror to see where he's gesturing, then look at the window that he seems to be gesturing at. You're really not good at judging distances like that, but one thing at least is clear.
"That's a lot more…than 30 feet."
"Yes," Blake nods. "More like 50. And yet—" He disappears out of the mirror. More than able to follow along, you turn to see the window he had just gestured towards. You have to squint through your glasses to see, but you can make out his image in that mirror, waving at you for a moment before disappearing again, back into the
n'kisi in your hand.
Your mind is whirling. "How…?" you ask, but you're already putting it together, a combination of what Blake just said and what's different between last night and now. "Because I have the mirror now?"
"I think so," Blake says, satisfaction strong in his voice. "The fact that the fetish acts like an anchor would have made me think that I could stay there even if I got too far away from you, but last night clearly showed that that isn't the case. So I thought that if it didn't act as an anchor for me from the familiar bond—"
"—it acts as, as an extension of you?" you ask, brow furrowed as you try to figure out the logic behind this strange 'magic.'
"More or less," he says with a broad smile. "Or it serves as an anchor for me, grounded in range of you and allowing me to extend further than the familiar bond normally would? I'm not certain of the details, but it's
very good news, and definitely worth further experimentation."
You're unsure of just how good this news is and you're still confused—he said last night that familiars are extensions of their practitioners, which is why they can't get that far from each other, so would that make the mirror an extension of yours by proxy?—but his happiness is infectious, and you feel your mouth start to tug up just a bit on one side. His smile just gets wider at the sight.
Soon enough, however, you realize that you don't really have time to continue your jog, so you turn around to get ready for school. Or rather, to pretend to go to school.
Ugh. You'd feel even guiltier about this if you hadn't skipped some days after the Incident.
After you finish getting ready, you leave for the same bus stop as usual.
"So," you mutter to Blake under your breath while trying not to move your lips, "you want to know what the plans for the day are with a little more detail."
"Yeah, I would," Blake says quietly from his place in the
n'kisi. You wouldn't dare take it to school, given what the trio has done to your things in the past, and so would have had to scrounge up a disposable mirror from somewhere, if you were really going to school. Since you aren't, that isn't a problem.
"Okay," you continue, keeping an eye out for anyone coming near you. "So the first thing we're going to need to do is get me Awakened."
Or was it Awoken?
"What?" Blake blurts out, forgetting to keep himself quiet for the moment.
"Shh," you shush, glancing around quickly. "What's the problem?"
"There's lots of problems," Blake says, his voice strained. "The biggest problem is also insurmountable, though. The ritual calls for a fair amount of reading specific words, setting up a deal with the spirits, trading access to power for honesty in word. What are those words? I don't know, because it was all written in a foreign language that I
didn't even recognize. I had to read it from a phonetic script. The best case scenario for trying to recreate the awakening ritual from nothing but my memories is nothing happening at all, and I think we'd be lucky to get it."
Despite your disappointment, you reluctantly have to agree. Considering how important words seem to be with this 'magic,' mangling them while Awakening seems like a terrible idea.
"Well," you say after a while spent coming to terms with the sudden change in plans. "That's going to be a little better for my spending money, then, at least."
"Probably," Blake agrees, his voice notably calmer now. You aren't sure what it is, but you're clearly still missing something. "Besides, I'm not sure how much it would have done."
"How do you mean?" you ask curiously, shelving but not forgetting your thoughts on the matter.
"I mentioned last night that you didn't have a practitioner connection, but you do have a bond that's pretty close to one. It's possible that you basically
already count as a practitioner, at least as far as using magic goes."
As the occupied bus stop came into sight, you let another smile—your second in one day—cross your face.
"Then I guess we know what we're going to be doing next," you whisper, before you get too close to other people to risk further talk.
You and Blake don't really talk on the first bus. Blake mentioned previously that he wasn't sure if other people would be able to see or hear him—which was a surprise to you, since you could see him plain as day—but apparently that had been a factor with his companion. Or at least, he thinks that it was, though he also has memories of talking to normal people from inside of mirrors.
Yeah, those fuzzy memories of his are really annoying.
Regardless, while it is
definitely something that needs to be tested, now isn't the time…or is it?
Making up your mind, you whisper quick instructions to your mirror-dwelling companion as you switch buses in the first visible deviation from your morning path to school.
For the next step in your new plan, your part is…to sit in the bus being bored. On the other hand, Blake is experimenting with how far from you he could get. There are a lot of variables to test, like how far he can go in a single leap or whether there is a difference between Blake moving away from you and him staying in place while you moved further away. After he finishes figuring that out, you'll plot out a way for him to check to see if others could see him without giving away your position. You don't want people to be able to trace a man in a mirror to anywhere near your house, after all.
Rather than actually succumbing to boredom on the bus, if that is even possible on a day like today, you plan out the next steps of the day. If you are going to spend part of the day trying to see if you could do "magic," then you definitely don't want to do it in your house, so it's convenient that you already left it. You considered trying it out somewhere more abandoned yesterday; rather than breaking into a foreclosed house, you think you would rather try your hand at an uninhibited warehouse. The local economic troubles mean that there are more than enough of those, around. Unfortunately, you aren't the only one who would be interested in an enclosed space away from prying eyes. Keeping that in mind, it makes sense to start the day with the testing in a warehouse, since most of the kinds of people who would want those spaces tend to sleep in late. As long as they didn't spend the night there, you will hopefully be done and gone before they return.
You don't know how long testing to see if you have any of the other powers Blake described will take, which makes it hard to plan the rest of the day, but you have ideas for what else you could look into, assuming you have any time left afterwards. Visiting the Central Library to do some research is also high on your to-do list. Everything else…you are pretty sure you could do everything else at home without risk. You spend the rest of the time before Blake returns trying to mentally detail exactly what those other things will be.
"I'm back." You are pulled from your thoughts with a jerk of surprise when Blake speaks from the mirror angled on your lap without any forewarning. Your hurried glances around and harsh shushing noises are halted at Blake's next words. "Don't worry, I checked if people could detect me while I was out and about. Want to guess what I found?"
You shift in place, frustrated.
That wasn't the plan! Now isn't the time to saying anything though, since even the few people around you is too many for that kind of conversation. Still, you do want to know what he found out, so you reluctantly nod. Then you realize that because you set the mirror so that the bus seat would be more prominently visible, he can't see your head. You give him a thumbs up instead.
"So far, it looks like no one else can see or hear me, even when I was being really obvious about my movements or deliberately trying to get their attention. I can't deny that there might be additional unknowns messing things up, however."
You briefly angle the mirror up enough for him to see your raised eyebrows.
"Well, you remember how I could see your connections when I got within about six feet of you?"
You flash another thumbs up impatiently.
"Okay, well I could see your dad's, too, before he started getting ready for the shower and I took off. The thing is, almost nobody that I saw when I tested it just now had any connections at all, that I could see, no matter how close I got. Just one woman, putting on some makeup as she got ready for work, at one of the first places I jumped to."
You hold still, considering this for a moment, then trying to figure out how to communicate your next thought. Your hand turns palm-up for a moment, then one finger makes a small spinning motion.
Come on, understand what I mean.
"…do you want me to check to see if the people on this bus have visible connections? Oh, to see if proximity to you is a factor? Sure, I can do that."
You blink as Blake vanishes from the mirror, honestly surprised that he managed to pick up your meaning and impressed that he was able to figure out why so quickly. He seems to think like you do, in at least a couple of ways. You stare at the back of the seat in front of you, determined not to act any more suspiciously while Blake is getting closer to the people around you, and spend the time trying to figure out how to communicate more easily with Blake in these kinds of situations. Maybe hand signs of some sort?
Aha. That's an obvious idea. You should have thought of it earlier.
Soon enough, Blake returns to the
n'kisi. "Nope, nobody else here has visible connections."
You show him another thumbs up, then drum your fingers on your lap to indicate thought. The unknown limitations to Blake's ability to see connections are an interesting discovery, if not necessarily a welcome one, but it's also not the information that you sent him out to find.
Time to move on, for now.
You shift position, resting your head on one hand, fingers splayed across your lower face to obstruct your mouth, wide as it is, from the other passengers. Once properly obscured, you breathe a quick question to Blake: "Range?"
"Oh, right," Blake says, at a volume that still seems far too loud, even with what he just told you. "So it looks like I don't really have a hard range limit."
…what? No, seriously, what? That doesn't seem consistent with what you know about capes at all.
Everyone has some sort of limit to the range of their power. Even
Eidolon, widely acknowledged as the strongest cape on the planet, has different limits to how far his powers will extend. You furiously suppress the urge to get out your notebook to start writing things down. What on earth—
And then you catch Blake's phrasing. No
hard limit isn't the same thing as no limit at all. Your mouth still covered, you ask, "Soft limits?" in the same way as before.
"Well, yeah," Blake says, a grimace audible in his voice. Now that you think about it, he hadn't sounded too happy in his previous statement. You probably should have noticed it then. "It seems like while you have the mirror, I'm not limited to the 30-ish feet around you, but it starts costing me extra energy once I step outside of that range. The further away I go, the faster I can feel it disappearing."
Your brow furrows. "How bad?"
"Oh, it didn't seem that it was draining me too badly until I started getting quite a ways away. Or did you mean how bad would it be for me to run out of energy? That would be quite bad, actually. I recall that it was the primary concern of my companion, from before, or at least one of the primary concerns. Vestiges can be rather fragile."
You frown behind your hand at the nonchalance in his voice.
It doesn't seem faked. Rather than wondering why it isn't bothering him, you just ask. "Not worried?"
"Hm? Oh, no, not too worried about that. I have you, after all. If I start to run low on power, I'll just tap into yours. Assuming that the familiar bond works the same way here, too."
You purse your lips. That seems…presumptuous, you guess? But it's not like you were using power in any amount right now, so it's not too bad, you suppose, and you can hardly begrudge him something he needs to live. "How much more…can you do?" you breath carefully.
"Today? I'm just fine. What'd you have in mind for next?"
You're still irritated with Blake, because he didn't go
according to plan, but you really don't have the opportunity to
talk him about it. And you suppose knowing that most people can't see him does make the next part easier. Quietly, taking far too long for your preference, you explain your idea about having him scout out abandoned warehouses for you to practice in. You also mentioned some of your considerations and concerns to ensure that he could pick the best place.
"Shouldn't be a problem. Just point me in the direction of the warehouse district and I'll be off."
You point and he disappears from the mirror.
"Wow, this is pretty perfect," you say, looking around the unoccupied warehouse.
It is cluttered with various pieces of detritus and junk, but there are enough clear spaces that you don't have to worry about tripping over stuff while you are experimenting. There are windows in the building, which is good because it would be pitch-black otherwise, but they were set up high on the side of the walls, so you don't have to worry about people peeking inside. Unless they could fly, of course, but that seems pretty unlikely. The door is boarded over, but rather shoddily; you had to take off your backpack to fit through the slats after you opened the door, but you had managed to fit your pack and yourself well enough after that.
"Thanks," Blake says from one of the shards of glass scattered off to the side. You find a nice spot near an open space and place his mirror there, giving him a full—and steady—view of where you were going to practice. "Alright, now that you've found me a good watching spot, let's get started."
"Where should we begin?" you ask, eager to get started.
"With the Sight," Blake says confidently. "I'm been thinking about it, since you told me your plans for the day. The thing is, virtually every kind of magic requires the use of Others, and so far as I can tell, I'm the only Other that exists here. So I've thought about what kinds of magic you should be able to do even without any of the larger, sentient Others, and the first thing that comes to mind is the Sight. It's
the basic ability of practitioners; not to mention, it doesn't require Others to function, after the Awakening ritual. If it does work, then we can use it to try to find out if there are Others here.
"We start with the Sight."
You rub one thumb along the outside of your fingers, suppressing your instinctive suspicion that this is all a prank. Though Blake has not shown any real signs of that kind of personality, the possibility lingers in your mind. "I look like an idiot."
His sigh is audible from where the mirror is, five feet away. "You don't look like an idiot. Just—just try again, please."
You sigh yourself. You close your eyes, inhaling deeply, then open your eyes. Looking around, you see nothing different, not even the mirror, which really should have changed if you are activating the Sight. You try to reverse the process, closing your eyes, exhaling, then opening again. Nothing.
Growling to yourself, you just try to force it, trying to push whatever change should lurk beneath the surface.
"Look, maybe we should shelve this part and try some of the other ideas I had for magic in a world that doesn't seem to have Others in it."
You turn your head to glare at the person in the mirror.
"Hey, okay," Blake says placatingly, his hands raised up. "Go ahead and continue, then. I'll keep an eye out, to see if anything changes."
Scowling, you turn your focus back to your eyes.
Come on, Sight! It sounds way too awesome to give up so easily. Being able to see things for what they were, the concepts attached to things, the connections between everything, and more besides.
It is also the basic attribute of any practitioner. You just have to keep trying…
"Just because you can't see the connections between people," Blake says cheerfully, "doesn't necessarily mean that you can't alter them. Heck, for all we know, that's why I do have this strange sort of Sight, and we're just meant to work together for this."
You give a sincere effort to dial back the intensity of your glare. Really, you do. Judging from his less-than-pleased expression, you clearly haven't succeeded.
"Well," Blake coughs, "connections for beginners. Skipping over everything we've already covered, one important detail is that a connection is forged between two people just by looking at them."
"Really?" you ask, surprise knocking you from your grumpi—or rather, from your understandable frustration with a malfunctioning power. "From something as little as looking at someone?"
"Sure," he says easily, "though it's naturally a very weak and temporary bond. But if you strengthen it, then you can keep tracking someone, even when they are out of sight. By the same token, if you weaken it…?"
"Then you can avoid notice, even when they should be able to keep following?" you ask, perking up. That sounds even more useful than it had when you first discussed it, and being able to manipulate people's relationships sounded ludicrously useful. Though you would have to careful about who you share that information with, if this works.
"Exactly right," Blake says with a smile. "So right now, I'm looking at you, creating a connection between us, which is quite distinct from the familiar bond. I want you to try to break it. If you weaken or break it, then I'll let you know."
You nod seriously. "How do I do that?"
"Essentially, you're taking the flow of power and interrupting it. If you want to strengthen a bond, then you run power along or parallel to the direction of the connection. To weaken a connection, then, what direction should you run the power?"
You think for a moment. "Well, my first inclination would be to run along the connection but in the opposite direction, but given your phrasing, that's not the right answer. In that case, I would go with the opposite of parallel, so I run the power…perpendicular to the connection?"
"Right again," he says. "So let's try it."
You nod again, preparing yourself for the test.
"Shamanism," Blake says calmly, "is the manipulation of the spirits in the world around you. Because there are all kinds of spirits everywhere, shamanism can be incredibly effective. Now, neither of us can perceive these spirits right now, so I really don't know if this will work. It's hard to entreat them without being able to see them or directly communicate with them."
"So why do you think that this will work?" you ask, equally calm.
No point in getting upset, not before trying everything. You really shouldn't have gotten upset with him after using the Sight failed; you'll make it up to him afterwards.
"Because we will be communicating with the spirits indirectly, sorta," he replies, "by using runes. Runes," he continues before you could ask, "are basically shapes that tell the spirits what you want them to do."
You tilt your head. "Do you know how it works? Do the shapes have some sort of metaphysical significance or something?" Those kinds of plot elements have always bugged you in fantasy stories.
Blake shifted a bit inside his mirror. "No…" he says slowly. "My understanding is that the shapes are taught to them. The spirits are trained into what each symbol means, essentially."
You cross your arms, but remember what you just told yourself, and so remain calm. "If the spirits need to be trained, how is it supposed to work here, without practitioners to train them?"
"It shouldn't be a problem," Blake said confidently. "I did a fair amount of traveling before I came here, and the spirits reacted the same way everywhere I went. I'm pretty sure it's a consistent effect."
On your world, you think, but do not say. "Okay," you say instead. "Show me a rune to try. Something definitive. Please."
Under Blake's instruction, you take a marker from your bag, pick up a piece of the junk lying around, and proceed to test runes on it.
"Illusions," Blake says in a level tone, "is exactly what it sounds like, for the most part. It involves creating images of things that aren't there, or creating absences where things are. They can be designed to affect only the people you want, or everyone around you. They can even be powerful enough to fool the Sight, at least for short periods of time. There is also some manipulation of connections involved, but they seem to be mostly bundled in with the illusionary effect. "
"How does that work?" you ask. "Aren't they separate branches of magic?"
"They are," he confirms. "I think part of it is that the illusionist that I learned this from also had some pretty extensive training in enchanting too. But it's mostly an effect of the illusions themselves, minor enchanting shifting connections to create the effect that you want. An illusionary copy of yourself, for instance, would also contain some fragile copy of your connections, making others really
perceive it as you. An illusion of nothingness where you are would temporarily hide your connections as well, making them
believe that you aren't there anymore.
You consider this for a bit. After hearing about all of the things that can be done with shamanism, you are a bit let down at hearing about the lack of direct firepower illusions would offer. On the other hand, it would probably offer more in a fight than enchanting, and you had quite liked the idea of being able to become functionally invisible in a fight. All in all, it seems like it would be a pretty good deal. "Do you have much experience with illusion?" you ask.
"Not much," Blake says ruefully, "none of which was actually practiced by me. Almost all of it was from another companion, though he wasn't around for too long. And I think we were enemies at some point, or perhaps adversaries. But I do remember that he was definitely someone worthy of respect. While we were companions, he shared a couple of tips. I think it's enough to get you started, at least."
Less than ideal, but still worth a try. "So what's the first step?"
"Chronomancy," Blake says with little enthusiasm, "is the manipulation of time, or more often the manipulation of people's perception of time."
"How does that work?" you ask, tiredness seeping into your voice. It wasn't a physical tiredness—you haven't exerted yourself nearly enough for that—but a sort of tiredness that comes from repeated disappointment, silly as it was. You shouldn't have gotten your hopes up in the first place. You're doing better about that this time.
"Generally, it's done by the manipulation of
zeitgeists, which are essentially spirits of time."
"When you say they're 'spirits of time,'" you begin, your curiosity piquing again, "do you mean that they monitor time, or that they
are time somehow?"
Blake gives you a little smile that looks as tired as you feel. "Yes."
You nod without comment. You had more than half-expected that answer.
"It is a very powerful branch of magic. I didn't bring it up before now for a couple of reasons, but a big one is that I never practiced it myself before I came here. No helpers for this one either."
"But you know the theory?" you ask.
"Yeah, both from what my companion did to look into it and my own research." Blake gives you a lopsided smile. "Some of our biggest, most persistent enemies were chronomancers. Know your enemy and all that."
"Right," you agree. "So how do we get started?"
"Anything else?" you ask, feeling unconscionably exhausted. Especially considering it's not even lunchtime yet.
"…maybe?" Blake hedges. "I suppose we could try karma manipulation."
"Karma? Karma, karma…have you explained what karma means to you, yet?" you ask, half-heartedly trying to remember all of the things that you two have talked about since you created the vestige.
"Only a little, I think," Blake says, an uneasy edge creeping into his voice. He stops for a minute, rubbing his hands over his face several times. "Okay, Karma, CliffsNotes edition," he starts, head still in his hands.
You mouth
CliffsNotes? to yourself in confusion, but don't interrupt.
"You're aware of—sorry, wrong question," Blake says, shifting tracks. "Does your world have the cultural idea of what karma is, in general?"
"I guess?" you hazard. "It's a sort of tally system for doing good or bad things, right? What goes around comes around?" You snort at the thought, thinking of the Bay as it is.
No way something like that is real. Any world where
Scion could just die like that after doing so much good for people is a world clearly without karma.
"Right, that's basically it," Blake confirms.
Nope, still no way that's real.
"But there's a catch," he says.
Ah, that's more like it.
"The karma that I'm familiar with doesn't actually give a damn about good or bad, or even evil. All that it distinguishes between are
right and
wrong, and it uses fucking old standards for determining what those are. Most of it comes down to lies, in the end, with breaking your word considered an extreme case, though there are other parts, like wronging people in general and hospitality rules."
You refrain from pointing out that explaining what 'wrong' is with the phrase 'wronging people' is less than helpful. "So how do you manipulate karma? By working to only get good karma and not get bad?"
But Blake is already waving his hands in the air. "Oh no, that doesn't really count. Virtually everyone in the know does that already, because the consequences can be pretty serious, and Others do it by course—I'm not sure that most
can do actions that would generate bad karma, at least without doing serious damage to their very selves. Though some of the karma rules affect them differently, it seems." He shrugs. "No, karma manipulation generally involves changing how karma will affect you and the people around you."
"How does karma affect anything?" you ask, still confused. "
What consequences?"
"Oh, yeah," he says. "Basically, good karma makes people like you more and makes things more likely to go your way, while bad karma does the opposite."
You spend a few moments gaping at Blake.
"…of course, the effects are much, much more pronounced for practitioners," he concedes. "It tends to be a lot more mild for the uninitiated."
Oh, okay. That makes a little more sense. Because otherwise, you were going to have to call bullshit. There's no way the universe really works like that. You
still don't think that this world works that way, but it's more believable that Blake's does.
Blake politely gives you the time you need to recover from his outlandish statements.
"So when you talk about manipulating this…?"
"Generally, it's the universe that decides when and how karma is paid back." The vestige stops at your stare. "Look, I don't know the detailed cosmology behind this. I was mostly looking into
how things worked, not so much
why, as much as I wanted to. When it came to karma, the important part was figuring out how it worked, so we could work around it. I was told karma was the universe's way of paying its debts—I don't know how much of that was figurative, but it was what I was taught."
"Okay, sorry," you mutter, raising your hands in front of you.
No need for him to be a jerk about it. But the idea of the universe thinking for itself,
acting for itself…so strange.
"Anyway," Blake says, running his hand over his face again, "the universe decides how and when karma is repaid. But with karma manipulations, the practitioner seems to be able to influence the when or how, at least to some limited degree. It can be capricious, but extremely powerful."
"Well, that certainly seems that it could be handy," you say somewhat dubiously. "How would I go about actually doing that?"
"I'm less than certain," Blake admits, "but I have a couple of ideas—"
"I think that we need to stop for now," you say with finality.
"I…," Blake hesitates.
"
Do you have any more ideas?" you ask. The words might have come out angry or frustrated, but they didn't. They were just words, asking a simple question for the sake of learning the answer.
"Sure, some," Blake says. "There's augury, to see the future, and astrology, which is sort of like constructing artificial ghosts—"
But you already start tuning him out at "astrology." There has to be some sort of limit to the kind of crap that your power is trying to feed you. "Is there anything on your list that you have more than a vague idea of how to implement?" you say, interrupting him abruptly.
"Well, yes, one form of magic," Blake says slowly. "If there are spirits here, then this idea should work. And I received explicit instructions on how to use it, even if I didn't end up actually doing so, since it turned out I already had a better option."
"Oh?" you ask, suspicious about why he wouldn't have mentioned this idea before others that he was much shakier about. "What's the catch?"
"There are two catches that I think you'll consider rather big," he says, scratching the back of his head, "and a couple others that are perhaps smaller."
Well, that's not ominous. "What are they?" you ask, crossing your arms. "Or what is the power?"
"It's the ability to change into animal form," Blake says.
You can't help but perk your ears up at this. It was hardly the most combat-viable of powers, which would make it harder to go out as a cape, but among other things, it would let you turn into a bird. It wouldn't be exactly like Alexandria, your favorite hero growing up, but if you could become a bird…
Then you could fly…
Shaking yourself out of your reverie, you return to the matter at hand. "And the catches?"
"Well, if you aren't careful in the…application process…it can leave you dazed, at best, or you might become more animal-like, at worst."
Well, that doesn't sound good. On the other hand, he probably meant just temporarily, right? You can't really remember a cape whose powers changed them permanently, at least not after they got powers. You do remember that there were some capes whose bodies changed when they had powers—there were one or two in Brockton Bay, if you aren't mixing things up—but that hasn't happened in a while, and you made it past that point without issue anyway.
"Also…" Blake hesitates. "You have to take all of your clothes off—"
What.
"—so that you can apply the blood from the animal that you want to transform onto your bare skin," he finishes with a rush. You just stare at him, slightly agog. "It also has to be a fresh kill—the animal's blood has to still be warm. Unless it's from an animal that doesn't have warm blood, I suppose," he mumbles, looking everywhere but at you.
"No," you finally say.
"No?"
"No. There's no way I—the idea of getting naked in this neighborhood—where would I even
get a live animal to kill—no." You take a deep breath. "I think we're done with the 'magic' testing for today."
"Okay," Blake says, not looking or sounding disappointed. "Where to next?"
You take another deep breath, attempting to quell the tumultuous emotions the last minute has stirred up. "We go to the library."
Basic Info
· Status
o Normal
· Big Three
o Person
o place
o THING
· Auxiliary elements
o Unknown
Vote for one option per underlined section. Feel free to customize your votes with up to 60 words of additional description; if you are using someone else's plan and wish to add something to it, please
bold the new portions.
Long-term vote alert! This vote, though important, will not affect the next post much at all. Instead, it is a vote about the direction of the story as a whole. I'll keep the voting open on it for about a week, since I can keep working on the next chapter while you vote on it.
What kind of cape do you want to be?
[] Be a hero! Fight for Justice and Order and the Law! You could join the local government-sanctioned team for underaged capes, the Wards, which offers quite a lot of support for their members in exchange for more oversight, or you could stay independent, being a legal vigilante with a lot less support but no oversight either.
- [] Customization
[] Be a rogue! Forget getting into fights, you can just use your power to make money! Erm, as soon as you figure out how you could monetize this…
- [] Customization
[] Be a villain! Nothing too destructive, but your dad could always use some more money around the house. It was your childhood dream to be a hero…but it's time you grew up. Besides, when has authority ever helped you out?
- [] Customization
[] Bide your time! You don't even know everything about your power yet. You can always decide later…
- [] Customization
For anyone lamenting about how much time I "wasted" on going over forms of magic that didn't end up working, all I have to say is
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