From alt.pub.dragons-inn Wed Jun 1 20:30:00 1994 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:7322 Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Path: netcom.com!csus.edu!csulb.edu!library.ucla.edu!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!swrinde!news.dell.com!tadpole.com!uunet!maunakea!li From: li@Data-IO.COM (Phyllis Rostykus) Subject: [HA] A Mid-Winter's Magic Message-ID: Sender: usenet@maunakea.Data-IO.COM (The News) Nntp-Posting-Host: inigo Organization: Data I/O Corporation Date: Wed, 1 Jun 1994 00:38:44 GMT Lines: 359 This piece comes after a piece that Kelly and I wrote about the actual plotline of [HA]. It also brings Kardia up-to-date for the party. I'm not exactly sure when the previous piece will be coming out, but Real Soon Now, should be good enough. This piece was written by myself, but with feedback from all the folks that created the characters herein. I needed to post this as it's kinda my intro to Kardia appearing at Luthor's party, sometime... Liralen li@Data-IO.com ========================================================================== The winter was spent in a whirl of work, learning, endeavor and trial in the Guild. When Kardia looked up for a breath, it was to watch ice melting into spring. It had been a very busy semester in the apprentice and journeymen classes at the Guild. At the beginning, she'd done the tests to see her placement in the various classes. As expected, she'd scored highly in the fields of magical self-defense, the analysis and dissection of curses, and excellently in general construction and maintenance of long-term enchantments. She failed, miserably, in all things astral, sorcerous, healing and of conjuration. But what she knew in the one field was applicable to the others, and she did her best to apply everything she knew to other fields. > >> >>> ** ----- *** ----- ** <<< << < "No! You can't force it that way... relax, Kardia. You've got to trust that it'll happen..." Journeyman Tuek sounded irritated with her. She was half sure that it was because Dasham had ordered the journeymen to get her lab exercises in as quickly as possible without regard to their schedules. Kardia wondered, a little sadly, if he wanted to be elsewhere and if she was keeping him from something. The Rameshander moved around the cot to her side instead of at the foot where he'd been watching her try to see the astral plane. His movements were all brisk, contained energy. Kardia frowned a bit and closed her eyes; but she was too aware of Tuek's presence to relax completely, easily. "Sa, Tuek, lay offa her. You're frightenin' her..." a laconic voice said. She could see Tuek and the approaching stranger from behind her eyes, that vision she'd always used for her magic analysis. Kardia gasped and opened her eyes. Another of the lanky post-teens journeymen looked down at her with yellow eyes, from next to Tuek. Both of them were looking at her in concern. "What's wrong?" asked Tuek. "You're... you're..." Kardia looked at waist height and the squinted to change sights. Her eyes went wide again. "You're a wolf." The blackhaired journeyman started laughing and clasped Tuek on the shoulder. "She kin do fully-conscious perception!!! What the heck areya tryin' ta force her inta meditative perception for?" Kardia blinked, "You mean that the way I see magic is actually seeing the astral world?" Journeyman Tuek's grin was half appreciative and half exasperated, "Yes. It is. Now..." He turned to the other journeyman, "Raine, how do you learn projection without learning the meditated perception?" The werewolf shrugged his shoulders, "Don't know. I just do it. Way we teach it in the family is like this... None of Master Ellina's mumbojumbo or soft beds." He frowned a bit and sat down in the chair next to Kardia. "But I am not going to just fall like a log. You might want to lie down anyway; and here, take my hand." Kardia sighed and took his hand a little nervously. "I won't bite." he said, showing sharp canines in a grin. Kardia blinked and then laughed softly, "It's O.K. I've already been bitten..." It was Raine's turn to blink. He then shook his head, chuckled and took her hand in his. His hands were warm, furred and stubby compared to hers. "Now, look to see the living world." She swapped sights with that internal will. "See me?" "You're a wolf, black hair with silver tips. How beautiful..." A slight chuckle, "You've got shadows... interestin'... the shadows're fillin' with something bright... Weird. Tuek... you wanna take a look at that?" "As you wish... ah! I see... odd indeed. They are tiny... it's like watching dust collect..." "What???" Kardia found it difficult to concentrate having a wolf and a man look at her quite that closely... "Oh. Sorry... we can study that later... here..." and the wolf holding her hand in his mouth tugged, once on it, hard. There was a tearing sensation, almost like what she would have thought the shedding of a skin might feel. A weight she'd never felt before fell away and she sat up. "Wow." said Raine and the gold eyes shone up at her. She looked down and blushed. She was completely naked. "I think this is why you like helping apprentices out, Raine." Tuek said, dryly. "You can get clothing, just will it into being out here..." "Will it?" "See yourself in it..." Kardia swallowed nervously, and thought of clothing herself, of the protection it afforded and the comfort. "Wow." said Raine again. This time without the growl at the back of his throat. Kardia looked down at herself and blinked. She was dressed in her travelling cloths, as usual, the pants, shirt, sweater, jacket and walking boots, but they were in her old colors. Peacock blue for the sweater, evergreen greens for the shirt and pants, and her boots and jacket were the deep color of the sea. Well, one boot was. The other glowed gold. The wolf sniffed the gold boot toe. He looked up and laughed a flashing laugh of teeth, "Nice." "Raine, would you like to escort her around for a while?" Tuek sounded distracted, "I don't think she needs to have two journeymen with her..." The wolf cocked a head, "You have somethin' better ta do?" Tuek focussed on the wolf and stilled and said, quite formally, "Yes. I have a... previous appointment that I'd like to keep." The wolf blinked and shrugged, "Sure." "Is that all right with you, Kardia?" "It'll be fine by me, now that you've got me some clothing..." she laughed and saw Tuek blush a little. "Thanks. Have fun..." Tuek saluted the two of them and then slid back into what Kardia now realized was his body. The body started to shine with his reentry. She frowned and looked at the girl lying on the bed. It didn't look like her from the mirror, but did look like herself from pictures. There were more wrinkles around the eyes, the mouth, and a half a dozen white hairs amid the red-brown of her long hair. The eyes... Kardia frowned. "Is this what you were looking at?" she pointed towards the eyes, which were only pools of shadow. The wolf nodded and put his front paws along the edge of the cot. "See, here..." his black nose pointed at her ears as well and an area within her ear. "It's the same." "The implants." Kardia said softly. The wolf cocked an ear in her direction. "Silic... uhm.... glass and steel constructs replacing my eyes and ears..." The wolf's eyes went wide, "How can you *see*?" "They're very well built." "No... they aren't alive, how can you see the real world, then, through eyes not alive?" There was surprise and shock in that normally laconic voice. Kardia shrugged, "I don't know. I just always have been able to..." The wolf shook its head, "Well, they're becoming alive, slowly." "What?" It was Kardia's turn to be shocked. "Look closely, patiently..." She watched the empty blackness of the left eye and saw the faintest sparkle of a mote that fell within it. That's when she saw the small pool of glowing life at the bottom of the socket where her eye should be. "Wow... weird... I wonder what's doing that?" "You don't know?" Kardia shook her head. "It kinda looks like your foot..." "Oh. Huh... I think I'd better ask 'Raelf about that..." Kardia looked around them. "Huh... the walls are still here... I thought..." "Yeah... most man-made constructs don't show up, up here, but these walls're magical. Shall we go?" She nodded, "Where to?" "Wawl, we kanna go to your home, like in the lessons. Why don't we go to mine?" "All right..." and they slid away into cool forest green... > >> >>> ** ----- *** ----- ** <<< << < The fireball snapped and crackled outside her shield. Kardia could feel the pressure, the heat of it and she grew frightened. The white lace tanned, browned, and then started crisping away from the inside out.... "Enough." said the quiet voice of Carroll. The fire winked out. Kardia could see Siaran from across the room, his eyes full of burning motes. The next instant they went dark. "Good job, Siaran." Carroll walked over to her and looked her up and down and then asked, kindly, "Are you all right? You started believing..." "That he'd get through..." She nodded and bit her lower lip. "And that's when he started to..." Carroll nodded. "That's how it usually works. Try, this time, to use a spell to counteract it, not the web." "Oh..." Kardia looked up at him, "...but it'd kinda scary not having anything between me and him." "Yeah, it can be. But you gotta learn this without your crutch." They looked over at Siaran. He grinned at them and his eyes flicked light again. Kardia gulped. "O.K. If you say so..." > >> >>> ** ----- *** ----- ** <<< << < Kardia wanted, desperately, to be sick. Shockingly white bone shone through the red slick of blood and ripped muscle. The construction worker had fallen off the icy roof and, in his flailings on the way down, had put his arm through a window and gotten it caught on the jagged edge of broken glass. His falling weight had ripped the arm out of the window. The catch had slowed his fall so nothing else was broken, but it nearly ripped his arm off. There was blood everywhere, frozen onto the pavement on the walls. Both she and Danu were covered in it and shivering from the wetting. They'd just been walking by when the man fell and had both run over. Luckily, he was completely unconscious. "Here. Pinch here." Kardia shed her gloves. The throbbing artery felt strange under her fingers, but she held it closed, holding the life within him. "Now hold here. I've got to pull the bone straight." Kardia gritted her teeth against the wave of nausea that hit her when she felt the bone grate home. "Remember channelling?" The haze of nausea wouldn't go away. A slap on the cheek, cold, wet, sticky with blood, "Kardia! I need you. I need your power. Channel it to me?" The world cleared for a bit. She looked up into Danu's eyes, "I drain power, I haven't been able to give it." Danu shook her head, her nearly expressionless face pinched around her eyes, her mouth, her nose where she was pale with anger and fear. Her voice was tight and the words clipped, "The archmages say you can. I've heard them. You can do everything else. You've got to do this or he'll die. I can't... by myself... please?" She was softly pleading now. Kardia realized she was gulping the icy air. Deliberately she slowed her breathing, steadied it. "O.K." she said, amazed at her calmness. "O.K.! So I'll try and make it go the other way..." "Good girl." said a girl who was less than two-thirds Kardia's age. She settled herself as well, the gaping rips in the arm in front of her. "O.K. Now..." Kardia felt for that strange, rasped channel that she'd felt so much magic run away through. She fumbled, heard a cry from Danu and felt power draining from Danu's connection to her. Using the runnel of Danu's power, she found the conduit. Reaching with the same will she'd found making clothes in astral, she willed the power out of the conduit. Back up. From all the life in the earth to this negative life field here in front of them. The backflow was beyond anything she'd expected... a glowing flood of power that returned through, along the line of Danu's power and it filled her and flowed out through her hands into the flesh of the man before her. The bone straightened, moved under their hands, and grew whole. Layers of muscle relaxed and rolled themselves back into place, veins grew like stop-motion creepers, and the skin unfurled itself over the muscle smooth and perfect. "Stop. Please..." whispered Danu. Kardia willed the flow off. It didn't stop. She panicked and yanked the direction back into the old configuration and felt the flood go back to ground. With the familiarity, she was able to cut the flow before Danu's magical forces were completely drained. "Whooof!" they both said. "Wha?" said the shirtless man that was draped across both their laps. They looked at each other, at him, and suddenly the tension snapped and slipped away. They collapsed back to lie tangled in giggles and tears of relief. > >> >>> ** ----- *** ----- ** <<< << < Truly a busy winter. But a rewarding one as well. When spring rolled around, Kardia started to believe that she might be ready to go back home. Maybe. But first... her very first party at Luthor's. Kardia had heard of the last one, and she'd just missed it with her entry to the city the year before. This would be something she didn't want to miss. ----------- Copyright 1994 by Phyllis L. Rostykus. Permission granted for distribution via the usual Usenet channels and for archival. All other rights reserved. Tuek created by Alfvaen Danu created by Kelly J. Cooper Siaran created by Andrea Evans. Carroll created by Colin Raine and Kardia created by Phyllis L. Rostykus All characters used with permission and corrections by their creators.