genessia | [ action | open ] it starts with a rattle

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[ action | open ] it starts with a rattle

(( OOC: Let me know if your character doesn't age, or would age slower than normal. Raistlin is cursed to see time as it effects all things. ))

The voice that disturbed the quiet of the Bay was a horrible, rasping whisper, "...Shirak."

Light, cold and sterile, blazed into sudden life from the crystal atop of the newcomer's staff. It had been thrust out into the dark in the grip of a thin, attenuated hand, and Raistlin Majere stared at the unfamiliar surroundings that greeted him from where he sat in the odd... bed? he'd woken in.

This wasn't the Abyss.

Nor did it look like some new, creative setting invented by Takhisis to torture him with.

Well, then.

Something new.

The mage let the bottom of his staff hit the floor, and used it to help him swing his legs over the side of the bed, struggling his way to standing in the damp cave. Raistlin stayed there for a minute, swaying in place, both hands clutching the staff for support as a wave of dizziness threatened to pitch him down into the murky water.

He knew he didn't dare linger longer than he must in the cold water seeping into his boots and creeping up the thick velvet of his black robes and cloak, but it would be worse to fall. The instant he felt able, Raistlin moved forward and eventually out of the water entirely, before pausing once more, this time to steady his breathing.

The rattle; the wet, sucking wheeze of it was as clear as the way the light glinted off his strange, metallic golden skin. Moving quickly, he retrieved a pouch of foul-smelling medicine from inside his robes to breathe into -- in, rattle, rasp, out, wheeeeze. In...

Don't cough, don't cough, don't cough!

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"Is... this it?" Raistlin produced the little pamphlet from a pocket inside his robes. Between the water and his breathing, he hadn't gotten to do more with the things he'd woken up with besides stash them away for later examination.

"Aye, that's the one. It'll have a map for every city here.

Bear in mind if ye knew any teleportin', ye can't do it between cities. Actually have to walk through the gates to get to the next one over."

Raistlin took a second to carefully close and tuck the pouch of herbs away, and then let go of the staff at his side -- which stayed standing straight up -- to unfold the pamphlet between his hands. "And which city are we in now?"

He eyed up the staff with idle interest, his head cocking this way and that as he tried to puzzle out just how it was-

"Whuzzat?" Oh. He was distracted.

"Genessia City. There's four more other than this one, and that's all there is."

Said staff wasn't nothing to look at, either. Gnarled and worn, clearly old wood, with a golden dragon's claw atop clutched around a large crystal. Raistlin glanced away from the maps in his hands to follow Cassian's distraction, then turned his eyes back to the maps. "The Staff of Magius," the mage whispered, "I strongly suggest against touching it."

"Tisn't mine to touch." He doesn't go around grabbing other peoples things. It didn't even occur to him to think it might be dangerous to grab at it.

Just rude.

"Just not seen anythin' like it before, not from humans at least. Right fancy tricks like that tend to be the realm of the fae when they ain't human smoke and mirrors, back home."

Raistlin looked up from the maps again, this time arching an eyebrow. "Humans lack magic on Earth?"

What a strange thought!

"Humans can utilize magic, like a water wheel might utilize water. But a water wheel don't make it's own water, and a human body can't handle powerful, flashy magics without a great deal of outside help."

He tugs a carved stone out from a pouch at his side, offering it up for inspection.

"It's got to be channeled through other, less squishy, less flammable material."

Raistlin did indeed inspect the stone, plucking it from Cassian's hand and turning it over in his for a moment before offering it back. "I see... you create talismans, storing the spell for later use? But then where does the water come from, to begin with? Surely you generate the power if you are imbuing it into a stone..."

"Nae, rather-" He tapped the carved sigil on the stone.

"The rune is like a hole, specifically cut and sized for the energy ye want to put in it. Cuttin' the hole opens it up to said energy. Tis ambient, at least at home.

I can't carve these up on the spot and use 'em, need time to cook."

"Strange," Raistlin's fascination was pretty clear in the way he'd seemingly forgotten all about the map dangling from one hand, and he reached to take the stone again before hesitating with a, "May I?"

Cassian lightly shrugs, and hands it back over again.

"The only creatures at home who can create their own magic are angels, and that which was descended from 'em.

Humans ain't in that list. What ye plannin' on with it?"

"I am curious..." examining the stone even closer as he spoke, Raistlin trailed off for a second before completing the thought, "...to see if it responds to a more direct application of power."

The archmagus didn't even know where he was staying tonight, and here he was conducting a field experiment on mixing two worlds' magics. Because of course he was.

Raistlin enclosed the stone in his long and bony fingers, curling them carefully around it like one might hold a live bug they don't wish to smash. He held it up and away from both their faces, the thick velvet of his billowing sleeve sliding down halfway to his elbow, that metallic golden skin of his gleaming in the light.

A single word in that strange, spidery language of Krynnish Magic, and a snapping, white-hot power crackled around his hand.

"It may, tends to charge faster in the presence of higher magical fields." He should know: He hucked one at Kani's stupid head once and it filled itself right up to the brim.

He couldn't help his own curiosity, watching in obvious interest as the runes upon the charm blazed white with the sudden influx of energy.

It wasn't an exceptionally strong stone, Cassian hadn't poured that much time and energy into this one. It only had to be strong enough for a painful, but non-lethal zap.

Cassian took an obvious, massive step back.

"Mate, it's not that hardy a rock-" And the audible CRACK that followed up that statement only punctuated the warning.

Raistlin had the presence of mind to toss it away from them both when he heard -- and felt -- that crack, though he was quick to close in after it once it was done crackling and sputtering on the ground.

He even (absently) hiked up the bottom of his robes a little in the hand still holding the pamphlet, the other automatically grabbing the staff at his side before he went.

"Christ Lord in Heaven Almighty, it ain't meant to take that big a charge." Gentle griping, he was frankly pretty happy that Raistlin had dropped it before the stone exploded. That... that wouldn't have been good for the mans hand at all, he was sure.

He edged closer to peer at the far too overcharged stone, squinting and fixing his glasses as he tried to get a good look at the runes.

Them, and the massive crack through it, were blazing blue light, sparks occasionally shooting from the fissure in the middle of it.

"Ye toasted that one right good, didn't ye?" A thoughtful pause, and then:

"... I wonder if it'll still go off with the command?"

"Go... off?" Raistlin went ahead and took a step back from it, his attention on the cracked little stone absolutely rapt. "Do it."

FUCK YEAH MAGIC.

FUCK YEAH MAGIC.

It took but one word, the point of these charms after all, was efficiency. Things that took just a second to set off.

One word in Irish, two syllables was all it took.

It popped. Stone shards flung themselves, smoking and sparking, in every direction, branches of lightning arcing off sharply into the air. It crackled, the smallest of thunderclaps, though it could probably, more than likely, still be heard for blocks and blocks anyway.

... Cassian looked like a thirteen year old boy who just lit a firework.

"... Ye know I got more of these 'round."

"...Where?" Pamphlet shoved back into whatever pocket he'd stored it in before, it looked like someone was on board.

More charms were pulled from the pouch at his belt. Always leave the house prepared, he'd been jumped a few times wandering about without his shotgun.

Different runes decorated them, and he fussed through the lot. About five in all, a few repeats in there.

"I got another lightnin' charm, a concusser, and three for detonation." Because someone here likes Big Booms.

"Well then," Raistlin held out his hand, palm up, "shall we begin?"

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[ action | open ] it starts with a rattle

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MAGIC MAGIC MAGIC MAGIC

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