diatuooc | Test Drive #3

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test drive

Test Drive #3

Test Drive #3

Lightning Crash

The weather over the floating island of Ascelion during spring months is best described as "hellacious"; its elevation puts it right among the worst of stormclouds and fuels their thunderous fire as they sweep past it and electrically scrape against its sides. Rain is frequent, but lightning is almost constant, along with thunderous rumbles that roll across the city and the open spaces of the Magicademy like waves.

But today is particularly bad. Webs of electricity crackle through the sky, jumping from cloud to cloud or grounding themselves on towers of the Magicademy angrily. None of them seem to endanger the students, but there's a first time for everything, isn't there? As titanic fury threatens to tear the sky in half, do you risk stepping into the outside? Does the infrasonic rumbling trigger fear or terror in your gut, as such deep waves are known to do? Perhaps you've learned a spell that will protect you. Or perhaps you've poorly learned a spell that may or may not protect you...

Wand Wrong Way

The rumors around campus speak of a small and musty store deep in the Merchant District, on a side road to a side road, where only those in-know go to find items that would surely draw too much notice if displayed publicly. Powdered dragon tail, eye of sphinx, swords Forged with magic-cutting spells, and most valuable of all, the Gateway Wand. Surely this legendary wand, in which the full power of Sundering hums, could get you and your friends back home.

Rumors are pretty lousy with directions, though. The Merchant District offers ample chance to get lost, to get distracted, or to stumble down the wrong alley and find hoodlums all too eager to extract "tolls" from the lost and seemingly helpless. Does your adventure become disaster? Does this rumored shop even exist?

Pantalones Giganticus

At its heart, Modification seems like the most simple of schools. What could be more simple than arithmetic? Therefore, Modification also has the steepest and most shocking learning curve of all, as it rapidly balloons to more complicated mathematical expressions, more variables in the formulae, and above all more chance for error.

So really, the mistake is an honest one. Any hurried student, probably in their third or fourth year of study, could accidentally introduce an unnecessary factor into their equation. That is probably why your pants are now sized for someone four times large than you. (Not four sizes. Four times.) Worse, this has happened to EVERYONE -- the entire population of the Magicademy, student and staff and faculty alike, are trundling around in blown-up bloomers, too-large trousers, not-conveniently-sized knickers... you get the idea.

Now the bad news: to fix the error in formula and restore your pants to normal size, someone else has to get in them with you.

Labwork

Not every magical disaster is caused by some wayward student you don't know. Many of them are caused by you instead. To wit: you're on the spot in one of the magical labs, being called on to demonstrate a technique more advanced than others you've mastered so far. Failure is expected, and the wards should prevent any injury to others from a miscast spell. But will the sparks of your magic just sputter out and die? Or will you inadvertently mispronounce, misform, misshape, or miscalculate in a way that brings chaos to you and your lab partner?

(You could also manage to succeed in casting the spell, but that isn't very fun.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Lightning Crash

The seventeen year old is playing a song on his ocarina, to match the fury of the storm. He's safe enough (probably), seated by a window, watching the lightning with mild glee.

Labwork

Whoops.

Whoops.

Link stared at the smoldering remains of what used to be a chair, his long ears turning a bit red at all of the sudden attention he'd just gained due to his spectacular failure.

"Uh....sorry...."

He hesitantly poke the pile of charred wood with the toe of his boot. The bits crumbled to ash as soon as he made contact with it.

The small hooded figure was heading out into the storm, seemingly heedless of the lightning. She was in a long black coat and was darting from what would be shadow to shadow if not for the lightning illuminating her.

She was running AWAY from the dorms.

"Sheik?"

Link blurted before he could stop himself.

She almost didn't hear someone, over the storm. And when she realized that might have been a voice, she stopped, trying to figure out who it was, what they had said, or where they were.

Link realized belatedly that Sheik was actually much better at sneaking (and subsequently at scaring the bejeebers out of Link).

He gave a small wave of greeting, ocarina still in hand.

She was looking around, but when she saw that she stopped, confused. Then she looked around again for anyone else. Seeing no one else he could have been waving to, she pointed a very confused finger at herself.

Link grinned. "Hi."

Edited 2019-03-18 11:22 (UTC)

She looked confused, shook her head and turned to go again. Lighting crashed very near to her. She raised a gloved hand and pointed. "THUNDER!"

a mass of lighting accumulated and struck where she pointed, easing the heaviness in the air for a moment. She started walking again.

"Wouldn't be magic if we didn't destroy something once or twice along the way," V said from the front of the classroom. "Do you know what you did wrong or do you need assistance?"

"I dunno, I'm pretty sure magic is supposed to...not destroy things...." He looked a little worried.

"I used to be pretty good a fixing stuff back home."

"Mending is an admirable spell for all that it is low level. But it has often been said that those who fear to fail fail to learn. Besides, blowing up one's party members is a fairly regular occurrence in some parties. but if you would like to remain after, perhaps Willard and I can figure out how you made that explode, and then we can teach you two spells, the intended one, and a controlled explosion."

"Really? I'd think destruction would be a lower level, seeing as how it's easier..."

And then it clicked that he was being offered the chance to learn an actual bomb spell. Link's entire face lit up.

"Okay! That'd be great, thanks!"

"There is a difference between random destruction and controlled destruction. The second is the more difficult, but still within the ken of most students willing to put in the effort to learn, brave enough to face the hard work of learning to tell physics to sit down and shut up."

But V nodded. "Very well, I shall see you after class, for now, attempt the potion on page seven. I do not think anything in there is likely to combust."

Oh. Right. Books again.

Link opened the book and labored over the page for a few minutes.

V went around to help the other students. After a while, the elf made it back around to him. "How goes the new potion?"

Link carefully added the first ingredient and then the second before going back to the book.

"Mm-hm. I think it's going okay..."

"Good. A simple health potion may seem like not much to some, but it can be crucial in combat and after if there is no cleric present. Additionally, potion making takes no innate power, just focus and meticulous attention, so even with ourselves cut off from our spell slots in this rather odd place, we can still make and imbibe potions. The larger concern then becomes component cost, which is usually why one does not craft their own potions. EXP cost also, to be honest, but we are not creating epic level potions, so there is no cause for concern over that at present. As to the fiscal cost, one should take advantage of class work as much as possible, as the school is providing the material components."

TL;DNR? you're making a red potion, Link.

Re: Uh huh. Suuuuuuure.

sevenyearsasleep - 2019-03-18 20:15 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Uh huh. Suuuuuuure.

gender_neutral - 2019-03-18 20:17 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

sevenyearsasleep - 2019-03-18 20:46 (UTC) - Expand

I need to check the canon point, but for TDM this is fine.

gender_neutral - 2019-03-18 23:41 (UTC) - Expand

rolf I'm getting mileage out of this icon

sevenyearsasleep - 2019-03-18 23:58 (UTC) - Expand

ROFL.

gender_neutral - 2019-03-19 00:55 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ROFL.

sevenyearsasleep - 2019-03-19 11:19 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ROFL.

gender_neutral - 2019-03-19 15:03 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ROFL.

sevenyearsasleep - 2019-03-20 11:23 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ROFL.

gender_neutral - 2019-03-20 20:17 (UTC) - Expand

"When did you get so tall, my boy?"

"I'm not that tall."

There's an implied You're just that short with a grin to match.

"Yes. Yes you are. And I'd guess this was the angels again, except I do not recognize where we are, so I suspect this to be a rather odd storm. Maybe a where are you in your future storm. Is this Hyrule, then?" though as they have not yet been attacked, he doubted it.

He's five-foot-nothing, Clef. "What? No, this isn't Hyrule. Hyrule is much more beautiful."

"Then... where are we?" Too tall!

"Noooo idea." Wait until you meet the other races of Hyrule. Hylian's are short as is, and Link's the tea-cup variety.

"But, seems to be the standard sucked-out-of-one-world-dumped-in-another. I should really get a stamp card or something...."

He gave a small snort at that. "Think anyone else from Naut got dumped here too? Or is this our Ascended powers acting up?"

"Nope. I'd love for Nautilus himself to get dumped someplace, but, I think that would probably do more harm than good."

As for Ascended powers, Link thought on that for a moment. "Kinda doubt it. We're still pretty low-grade as far as the Ascended go."