diatuooc | 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

"And that is just the question, is it not?" Ardyn tilted his head in something resembling interest, watching Kuja in much the same way a cat might have regarded a glass of water on the edge of a table. "What manner of gods would craft a world full of the suffering of those who pray to them?"

A slight sound that might almost have resembled an amused laugh left him, hands dropped to his hips.

"And what value would there ever be in such life eternal and naught left to do with it?"

"With so much power, so many lives destroyed or blessed with a thought, the troubles that press upon so burdened a mind must only compare to those of the suffering as an ant caught adrift in the flow of a raging river. Unless..." Caught in his own thoughts, he tilts his head, one hand raised to a cheek, almost as if admiring the fantasy.

"Unless worlds bend, and the vastness of the universe can be brought to but a speck of dust, drawn along on the back of the ant for all its life, the weak carrying the strong to see."

"Of that I've little doubt at all."

But he paused at the elaboration as if giving it more careful consideration of his own. It was certainly an interesting mental image, if not his particular style.

"I find myself contemplating, on some rare occasions, what the state of things would be like without the ant at all. The river left to rage at naught but the empty air surrounding it, with none to observe its power and fury. That is to say, what measure is a god lacking the faithful so painstakingly crafted in their image?"

Kuja sighs airily, letting his hand curl back around his midsection with the other. "Two sides of the same world, opposites in all ways, loathing each other from dusk til dawn. Yet, without each other, what would the one be? Where is the universe without the dust to hold it together? Where is the dust without the universe to spread it so far and wide?"

In all of this, he feels something lift, lightening his mood all the while dragging it down at the same time. It isn't just the world at large in his story - it's the story of his own life. But he isn't speaking it to Ardyn. In a way, the confession is to himself. There's something to be said for having lived the tale and recalling it. "They would be nothing at all, not even a memory."

Ardyn was oddly silent as he looked back to the window, something briefly very distant in his eyes. Something about what Kuja said struck a chord he didn't like in the slightest--it was familiarity, and heavens knew Ardyn hated being reminded of what he knew far too well. Black and white, night and day--burning light and night sky. Equals that couldn't exist without the other, and yet existed in opposition.

But the thought was dismissed in an instant, a smile coming to Ardyn's face that didn't reach cold yellow eyes.

"Something of utterly no consequence." he said with a vague wave of his hand.

He surprised himself sometimes. In days before, after everything that had happened to him, because of him in worlds far and away, introspection had become a painful event in and of itself. Not this time. He had taken it and given it flowery wings, sugar coated it and set it adrift on a silver lined cloud.

Somehow, it felt a little lighter. Somehow, it felt a little worse. All in all, he thought he could live with that. He shook his head, letting long hair sway with the movement. "Consequences follow actions made with care or not, but in the end are something. Would best to be something rather than the dullness of a nothing at all."

That draws his gaze away and to the side, momentarily confused. But with another shake of his head, another look back out at the storm, it's gone.

"You'll find no argument from me. I, personally, much prefer making an impression to being left in obscurity."

And boy, did he ever have experience in both.

In that, they'll find common ground, a rare sort these days, even when people around him try, against his better judgement, to find it with him. He'll admit to a certain curiosity about this encounter, but at arm's length or better, though he can't argue the man's point.

"Left as a memory, or left with only memories, as fleeting as they are, I would also choose that over the alternative. In the end, it's all that we have."

Test Drive #3

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