spellbinders | [OPENING] magical training log

[OPENING] magical training log

Who: Brie, whichever newbies want to show up.
Where: The beach.
When: Day 4
Open/Closed: OTA

[It's about noon on the island, based on the position of the sun. The newbies have had a few days to settle in, but that doesn't mean they've fully mastered their newfound abilities.

As much stock as Genette puts into telepathy, Brie is more concerned about their other newfound gifts. She's aggressively tried to wrangle as many newbies as possible onto the sandy shores of the beachfront area for some magic practice.

She's got a list of everyone's magic -- only a few vague notes, limitations are for you to discover -- and she's handing out missions for magic training. If you want to participate? Feel free. If you don't? Suit yourself.

But understanding your magic isn't just an activity that benefits the group. Learning your magic's abilities may be what stands between you and survival, which is something she makes perfectly clear.]

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"Uh," Waver paused, before going through a number of complicated hand gestures. The final result was a floating sphere, about the size of a basketball. "In theory, I can make the smoke take whatever shape I want. As far as I can understand it, the questions should result in figures that answer the question, or something akin to a puppet show that does the same."

That had been his interpretation, at least.

Yang watches as the smoke condenses and changes into an orb. It looks like he can really only do simple shapes so far--but clearly he's making progress. "So you need someone to ask you questions and respond with the right shape. It's like a game then," Yang figures, gesturing at the smoke-ball. "So? Want me to ask you some questions or do you need me to round up some other people for you?" She would be good for either.

Waver hadn't thought of it as a game, but Yang wasn't wrong. He was just bad at the concept of fun.

"Ask me one, and then get a few other people as well."

There was a logic in that suggestion. Waver didn't want to lose face in front of multiple people. Starting with just Yang minimized any shame of messing up in trying to answer whatever question she came up with.

Okay, so she needed to come up with a question that he could turn into a shape answer. The hard part was that they were from different worlds so it was possible that she could ask something and he wouldn't know what she was talking about. However, they'd seen a number of things since being here so maybe she should stick to a question related to this world.

"What items did you pick up from Genette yesterday?

That was a good one, Waver thought, and he gave a short, sharp nod to show that he had heard Yang's question, but now he needed to concentrate. Luckily, books and bags were the same general shape.

He started with the book first, bringing his hands together to form the length of a rectangle, and then moving them one on top of the other for the height. That was rather flat, but Waver had determined that wiggling his left fingers and then rotating his right wrist just so gave dimension to everything.

So far so good. Now his eyes concentrated on three sides of the rectangle, trying to make them textured and resemble book pages. It was a combination of sheer will, picturing what a book actually looks like, and then trying to figure out the right combination of movements to get the whole thing to translate into reality.

After three minutes, there was indeed a floating book. "That's one of them," Waver said, looking over towards Yang.

Yang waited patiently. She had figured it was simple enough to shape and would be something that they would both understand. She was pretty proud of her choice of a question. It was now Waver's turn to show off.

She hadn't expected so many hand movements, but she supposed she couldn't judge either. Creating had to be much harder than blowing stuff up after all, even if it was just smoke. "So a book? What was it about," she asked, because she couldn't help herself. "Oh...but I guess I should let you show me your other item first."

"I haven't had a chance to look at it much, actually," Waver admitted, the image of the book hovering between his hand. "It has a lot of woodcut illustrations though."

Which was in fact useful, since the couldn't make a lick of sense of the language. That was neither here nor there now though. Waver returned his attention to answering the second part of the question

Lucky for him, a bag and a book share the same shape. He gave a wiggle of his fingers to remove the texture of the pages of the book, and slowly, the corners of it rounded. A flap folded over, and straps emerged from the side. The movements were still cautious, jerky, unsure, but Waver seemed to at least know the general shape he was after.

Soon enough, a messenger bag hovered.

"There, that's the other item."

She nodded. She enjoyed reading about as much as one might expect, she'd had more fun reading out loud to her sister when they were both younger than she enjoyed them for herself. Although thanks to a certain injury she'd gotten in plenty of reading time over the past few months. She could still appreciate one though and being in a new world did make her a little curious about what could potentially be in the books.

As she thought about this, Waver was already shifting the smoke around until he had conjured the image of a bag.

"Oh hey, that went a lot smoother. I guess you can speed up the process if you already have the basic shape down, huh?" It certainly hadn't seemed to take him as long to manipulate the smoke into a bag from the book-shape.

"Yeah. When the shape is shared it is just a matter of pinpointing what other parts to manipulate."

Waver was pretty pleased that he'd managed to answer the question though, and more than that, Yang's actually been engaged with him, rather than standing about and waiting for the two magical shapes.

A flick of his hands and the smoke disappeared.

"That's the easiest bit though."

Well that was interesting, but made a bit of sense. If you already had the basic shape of course it wouldn't be hard to change the details, right?

"So. That's one question down at least. You said you'd like me to find some more people, right?" Yang asked. She was certainly willing to help, though she had a feeling if they were all working on various assignments like this that anyone would be willing to help.

"If anyone's available."

Waver knew that everyone needed to prioritize their own assignments first, and he didn't blame them for doing that either.

"If not, I guess you could just come up with more questions."

Yang looked around. Unfortunately, it didn't look like there would be anyone joining them any time soon. The area around them was devoid of others--so she assumed they were further down the beach or something. Yang shrugged, turning back to Waver. She'd have to come up with more questions then it seemed.

"Hmm...okay here is something that might be a little harder. What's your favorite food?"

"Hm."

Well, that was harder. Waver couldn't remember the last time someone even asked him what his favorite food was. He had to have been very young for something like that. But not having given it thought lately, now he realized that he had no answer. That was weird, and so he thought about what he usually dreamed about eating when he was on his meager food budget back at Clock Tower.

So he started with an oval. It would eventually become a roasting chicken, but for now, an oval. Then two more on either side, that'd be the legs, and then refining the bones and everything else until, eventually, a very lumpy attempt at a roasted chicken hovered in the smoke.

Yang had figured it was an easier question--again she wanted to make sure that despite world differences she might stand a chance at guessing. Surely food in different worlds couldn't be that different, right? Luckily, the smoke was taking a relatively familiar shape...albeit a lumpy one.

Hmm, this was a little trickier. But eventually Yang snapped her fingers, "Oh! It's some kind of bird. A cooked chicken?"

It was a very, very lumpy bird. But Yang got it all the same, and Waver brightens considerably that his effort paid off with a fairly quick recognition. He puffs his chest out a little, and a near smile flicks across his face.

"Yeah!"

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[OPENING] magical training log

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