[OPEN] Didn't I see this movie?

[edgeoftheknife]

Characters: Erskine, Bakura, and OPEN
Date: August 10, 2016
Location: Central Sector
Situation: Erskine has been failing to deal with some Bad Things from his past and now it's catching up to him. He's having a bit of a nervous breakdown and, as an Elemental sorcerer, is going to be setting fire to a building in the city as a result. Tag-ins welcome from anyone! Come help put the fire out before someone gets hurt. Come shuffle the kedan away from the burning building. Come yell at this idiot?
Warnings/Rating: Bad headspace. Possible violence. Arson. Vague spoilers for the SP series through the end of book 8; will try to keep specific spoilers to a minimum unless noted otherwise. Please let me know if you're okay with spoilers or not and I can adjust as necessary ♥




He'd asked for help.

That thought echoed small and almost forgotten in the back of Erskine's mind. He'd asked for help. It shouldn't have come to this. Maybe he'd been too late, or maybe he'd been past the point of saving.

The evening was hot--too hot. Everything was hot and dry and the fire spread too quickly, jumping from the awnings of an outdoor cafe to the quaint little building behind it. Fire bloomed a brilliant orange against the skyline, against the deep blue of the sky. Kedan screamed, scrambled to get away, to get their loved ones away. Screamed at him, though from a safe distance.

Who wanted to get too close to the man with fire in his hands and rage in his eyes?




((ooc: Please note that for the sake of continuity/planning/etc, Bakura is going to be the one to take Erskine out of the area, and no one is going to die no kedan are going to die. Otherwise feel free to interact as you see fit, even if it's not with Erskine! Fight fires. Be heroes, do cool stuff. Yell at Erskine. It's all good.))

Comments

[insertdadjoke]

In the same vein, most people from worlds without magic were used to doctors. Cain still didn't have that familiarity thanks to his immortality that made any sort of healing foreign to him except intellectually. His brows raised considerably at the explanation.

"It's just science?" Now that was crazy. Any suitably advanced technology, etc., etc. but the idea that magic itself was suitably advanced progress gave him a moment of pause. "So, in theory, anyone could do it?"

[radiantwingedone]

"... something like that. I usually think of it as math, as formula is the more common way to refer to spells." But he is describing a lot of natural things - fire, lightning strikes, the shape of the cyclone, so there's a slow nod.

"Yes." A stiff shrug again - Duke's just not that physically expressive. "There are inexplicable things to it - I am no good at manipulating water or earth, for example. I can memorize the formula, it just doesn't produce the scale of results I want."

[insertdadjoke]

That was just weird. Cain wasn't sure why, but it was one of the few things he was having trouble just squaring away as one of those other-universe-things like so many other oddities. Perhaps because it was just close enough to home to be completely wrong that it was bumping up against the edges to what he knew was right rather than just being something he could dump elsewhere in his justification of the differences.

"Like someone's natural affinity for athletics versus intellectual pursuits," Cain said slowly, considering. "Still possible but not likely to have anything come of it. That just doesn't happen." In my world went unspoken.

[radiantwingedone]

From Duke's end, it just seems like a 'what if no one ever learned how to use magic' sort of thing. The idea it was unknown completely is just as strange - if particularly hard to imagine. Monsters use magic too, someone would have tried to figure it out, if only on the 'how do I stop it' way.

There's a nod for athletics vs study. It also is why people avoid learning magic at home. Can't focus or something like that. He has to think a little on that, sorry, it didn't quite make sense. Oh. Okay-

"You might be missing the particle involved, then. Which is likely a good thing, aer is harmful in concentrations." ... so people went out and harnessed it. sounds about right-

[insertdadjoke]

Cain tilted his head in consideration of that idea. Just another particle, something manipulable by people with nothing but some kind of focus and capable of inexplicable things. This aer sounded dangerous and fascinating all in one, and that left a lot of questions for the fact that it was apparently present in the Dreaming as well.

"Have you met anyone else not from where you are who can do that?" he asked. "Use aer like that."

[radiantwingedone]

Duke didn't mention the bloodline who could do it without any focus, did he. Oh well.

"Not... exactly. Aer was turned into mana, recently. Something about binding it to elements to stabilize it, I wasn't directly involved." He might have been part of the reason they did so, so quickly, but... not part of the planning.

He needs someone from Brave Vesperia who actually knows about it to show up. He has questions. "I have met someone who uses mana, and it has similar elements for her. My version was more limited, actually."

[insertdadjoke]

It hadn't been mentioned, but it didn't change very much. Magic in the hands of mortals was dangerous. Even just with deathsight, they were running amok and causing problems left and right that fell to their departed kin to correct. It just didn't sit right.

"Aer turned into mana?" Now that was something Cain was interested in and fairly baffled about. How could one change the entire nature of a particle throughout a whole enough to make that statement hold the kind of depth Duke was speaking of? It sounded like some kind of mass terraforming project. "Yeah, I've met her too, I bet. What do you mean by more limited?"

[radiantwingedone]

"I wasn't quite involved, mostly... aware of the after effects. I believe it was something about binding elements to the rougher Aer, resulting in elementally charged particles known as mana. ... It also produced elemental spirits, to watch over the elements created." Which... sort of made what he viewed as 'his role' on the planet useless, but that's something he's starting to be okay with. Another few ideas have popped up.

"The elements of Terca Lumireis, or at least those used for offensive magic, were fire, water, wind, earth, light, and dark. Combinations of wind and fire would produce lightning, while wind and water would combine into ice. I've been told that Raine's world has lightning and ice as their own elements, with spirits as well." It's more effort, really, to get the same results, for Duke. ... well, if he could manage working with water spells at all, it would be. He'd have to combine two spells to make the same results he imagines would come from a mage of Raine's world.

... it also should be fairly clear that this is something Duke enjoys working with. He seems a little less distant, talking about magic.