70 Vhalar, 719
Location: Wilds
Several missions in the service of the Syns had earned Abra some level of respect from his fellow mages. He had proven himself as a reliable person and his power was becoming apparent. The attuners knew that he could be their backup when determining how much of a threat enemies were and the offensive mages appreciated Abra’s ability to pick people off at a distance without making a sound. His only weakness as a mage was going overboard from time to time. His discipline was lacking, but nobody could blame him when his powers were this great.
Abra along with a handful of other Syns mages were on a patrol of the borders again. Sent here by portal their goal was to look for anything suspicious. There was a list of people and sketches of their faces that an attuner had on hand. Their strategy was to find any people that were away from the villages and cities in order to investigate them. The attuners were especially useful at locating stragglers like this by Dousing to mortals. That was a technique that Abra hadn’t quite mastered yet because he didn’t know enough Notes for it to be meaningful.
“What Note are you focusing on?” He asked the attuners, “If it’s something easy to pick up on then I can try to help.” Really he just wanted to learn how to douse so he could use it to help his business. If he could locate desperate people, they would do anything for money.
“I douse for a number of things,” one said, “A lot of them are too complicated for someone at your level. Abstract concepts like death and murder and wrongdoing are too hard to grasp. You could try to douse something simpler, like blood. You won’t be useful until you get a hold of many other notes though and there’s no way you can douse fast enough to keep up.”
“Interesting,” Abra said. He wasn’t doing anything useful so he threw his knives at rabbits as they walked along. He took a while to actually hit one, but once he did he nicked enough blood to be able to attune to it. He walked with his bloody knife and focused onto the blood itself. There were many notes that made up the frequency of something as wondrous as blood. The warmth, the feel, the viscosity, Abra could feel all these concepts dancing around when he focused his ether onto the blood. He grasped the general note of “blood” and then he was able to start dousing for it.
Dousing, in simple terms, was looking for something with Attunement. It was like a compass that pointed an attuner to what he was looking for. If he was looking for a murderer and the target happened to be bloody, Dousing would help him find what he was looking for. In this case, he thought it simplest to look for more blood and not try to strain himself by looking for an abstract concept. Blood was everywhere in the forest. Not figuratively, but there was so much death in nature that he found many instances of blood when he tried to douse. It was actually mind numbing to try to focus on so many reference points at once. He couldn’t see how these more experienced Attuners could deal with so much information.
Abra was so focused on dousing that he hadn’t noticed that everyone else had stopped. A tug on his wrist informed him of his absent mindedness. “There’s about ten nearby. We’re going to investigate, just the two of us.” The Attuner pulled Abra forward and they walked cautiously towards the group of people that had been sensed. The Attuner was adept enough to guide Abra around the various traps that had been laid. “You should work on spotting those. If you get stuck, not even rupturing would save you.”
“It’s hard to find the time to practice every magic,” Abra said to excuse his general laziness when it came to that discipline.
They came to a collection of tents that were being set up by about ten mortals. They were a mix of Ithecal and Human with one Eidisi from the looks of it. “What business do you have in Melrathian territory?” Asked Abra when they came to the edge of the camp.
The mixed group were immediately put on edge. They drew their weapons and the Eidisi said, “we’re here for research purposes. I have hired this group to defend me from danger while I investigate the flora of the area. We mean no harm.”
“Why don’t you tell us the truth so this doesn’t have to get ugly,” The Attuner said in response. Abra didn’t sense anything wrong but he wasn’t as skilled in soft interpersonal skills.
“I’ve given you my reason for being here, so please leave us before my mercenary troupe has to get its weapons dirty.” The Eidisi put a hand on his own weapon, a bow.
Abra turned to the Attuner and whispered, “I think he’s telling the truth. I don’t sense an intent to deceive us in his tangle. As for the others, they’re ready to slaughter us if commanded.”
“Threatening the Ragnari will get you nowhere. If you’ve committed no crime then you won’t mind if we stick around to make sure you’re not up to no good. Though, you’re welcome to try to force us to leave if you want.” The Attuner put his palms together and sent his ether to the Eidisi. He was prepared to take control of his body at any moment.
“You’re not dressed like soldiers. You must be part of the mage faction then.” The Eidisi said with a smirk, “we might be evenly matched then. If you want the truth, I’m here looking for a special tree from which I want to harvest some wood. If you won’t be amenable to our presence then might I offer you some gold to change your mind?”
Had Abra been alone, he would have taken the money if he was honest with himself. The Attuner was having none of it though. He fully synchronized to the Eidisi and made him draw and arrow to put it right through the leg of one of his henchmen. The Eidisi was caught by surprise by his sudden lack of body control but it had been brief. As soon as the mercs knew what was up, they rushed at them.
Abra had a feeling negotiations were going to break down from the start. The only thing he could do was run and stifle the aggression in his enemies. He had a handful of tangles under his active management when he finally made it behind a tree for cover. Throwing axes hurtled past the three, just barely catching his pant leg that had been exposed. Fresh blood started to run down Abra’s leg. He just needed a few more seconds to gather up one powerful Nexus emotion… “There!” he thought when his spell was ready. He unleashed a powerful emotion onto one of their tangles and down he went, writhing in mental agony.
“That’s one down, nine to go,” he thought. He couldn’t just take them down on his own though. To keep someone crippled he had to keep flowing ether to their tangle and it wasn’t a small amount. He ran from tree to tree and hoped the others would jump out at any moment.
One wrong step and Abra’s leg was wrapped with a rope. His body was hoisted into the air as he flailed helplessly for his daggers. Every last one of they dropped onto the ground. “Just my luck,” he said. The mercenaries were just about to catch up too.
“How’s it hanging?” asked a defier who sprouted up from the ground and tried to hand Abra one of his daggers that he’d dropped. The weapon was inches from his grasp when the defier turned to face the other mercenaries. Every variety of medium length weapon was thust or slashed at the defier who had no choice but to retreat underground.
“Just great,” Abra shouted. He sliced a portal open and stuck his hand through to grab a dagger then furiously sawed at the rope around his ankle. A battle was raging around him and all he could focus on was keeping one enemy paralyzed and getting free. When he finally dropped down he ran to the one he’d crippled.
Nobody was paying him any attention which was fortunate. With the defiers and body possessing Attuners it was easy to overlook the weak looking Abra. “Sorry it had to end this way,” he said to the ithecal that was planted face down on the ground. He’d gone through several minutes of mental agony so there was a chance that he was down for the count. It was too bad for the lizard that Abra had to get back to the fight since others usually finished off what Abra started. His inexperience with killing showed as every stab into the lizard’s body merely pricked the surface.
“I don’t have time for this,” he said in a panic. An explosion made his usually calm mind fill with uncertainty. “Too bad for you, I didn’t want it to end this way.” He knelt down next to the ithecal’s face and flayed him. It was a unique experience for Abra to flay so much ether at once and “amazing” was an understatement to how good it felt to do it. It felt a lot like flaying a well, but it was somehow more satisfying when it wasn’t his own ether that he was absorbing.
When the flaying was done, Abra felt like he had all the ether in the world to use. It almost distracted him from the strange thing that happened to the Ithecal’s eye. It turned into a mysterious round crystal that fell out of the lizard’s eye socket. Abra didn’t know what it was, but he put it in his pocket for safe keeping. He could worry about it later. Right now, he had some work to do.
"Abra", "NPC"
