Meager accomplishments
Oct. 22nd, 2005 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maderrDid some necessary shopping. Groceries, w00t! Also finally got a new alarm clock and a purse (I feel so girly). It's really cute - black, blockish and it has cinderalla on it! I l love it <3
Still not much on the whole writing thing. I dunno why.
Okay, I lie. I'm writing something, but I'm about the only who cares. Of all my stories, both the ones written, on hold and not yet out of my head - this will always be my favorite. My story. It's also hard as fuck to write, especially the way I'm doing it now (I started it, then gave up, and now feel more confident I can pull it off the way I want).
I'm going to go watch movies and chill. That's allowed, right? I may even watch something that will permit me to take notes while doing so.
OH! I CAN WATCH NIGHtMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Again. For the 207th time. Shush. We all have these little, slightly unhealthy obsessions. You should encourage it. Einn was in part based upon my inordinate fondnes for Jack Skellington.
If I were really mean, I would start watching season one of House while the roomie is not here *evil giggles*
All right. Done chatting. Oh! I forgot! I have a new bag of shrimp chips! *does a dance* Okay, off to watch, note-take and gorge myself on baked shrimpy goodness.
No, I am not on drugs. Yes, I am completely sober.Until five and then I'm totally breaking into my new case of Foster's.
Shutting up now.
*A/N* Still really rough. It is constantly a WIP. Mostly because there is fuckloads I have yet to research. This is...about a third of the total prologue. An unknown narrator and eventually all five of the main chars. UC is the closest I will ever get to an angst-ridden story. Also the closest I can ever come to something of a suspenseful/creepy/horrific nature. I am, probably for no good reason, proud of this magic system. If its been done before, I've never seen it and I'd prefer to remain ignorant. /ramble
Picture a water glass. Ordinary, tall, the kind you can find just by opening your cupboard. Imagine it full of water. Sitting on a large table
That glass is the wall between the table and the water within. The table is the mind, containing both the conscious thoughts – deciding what to wear or which movie to see – and the subconscious thoughts that control things like walking and breathing.
The water is the part of the mind we don’t use. It is the part that was sealed away. Between it and the rest of the mind lies that glass wall.
Put a crack in the glass. A hairline fracture, nothing more. Barely noticeable, not a drop of water escapes – at least not that we can see. But from that hairline fracture come the geniuses of the world. Artists, musicians, scientists and more, all of extraordinary caliber. The faintest tapping into what lies inside the glass gives them this “genius.”
Say it cracks a little more. A spider web of fractures. Water begins to drip slowly onto the table, into the rest of the mind. These are what most people call “psychics” or more often, “freaks” Those that see ghosts, hear voices, can sense when things aren’t right. In our world, we call them “mildly insane.” Insane enough to know there’s something more to the world than the ordinary mind can see…but not enough to know what to do.
Put more cracks in the glass, enough that water trickles into the mind. This is what we call “moderately insane.” Alchemists, witches, charmers. The weakest in the magic world, but by no means weak. Alchemists especially know how to make the most of what power they have. More than a few of the mighty have fallen to an Alchemist’s tricks…
Break the glass, let the pieces scatter across the table. “Total insanity,” the realm of wizards, sorcerers and necromancers. Magic beyond anything, the ability to tap nearly the full power of that portion of the mind that should be sealed away. Many die young, and one way or another they all die from the magic.
Pretend there never was a glass, or that rather than broken – where shattered pieces still remain – that the glass was simply taken away. “Perfect Insanity” is rare and to be greatly feared. Little is known about the Perfectly Insane, as few survive encounters and those survivors do not speak of what they endured.
Magic is a myth, this is what people say. For most that is more or less the truth. They will never tap into the magic behind the glass, short of being forced into Perfect Insanity. But for those with cracks and fractures, or the shattered remains of the glass scattered across their mind, magic is all too real.
Some love it. Some hate it. But all know that magic is the result of one thing and one thing only.
Insanity.
Every last one of us. There is no exception. Magic is born from the breaking of the wall between the stable mind and the instability that was hidden away to save humans from themselves. We have powers. Powers to move things with a thought. Powers to read thoughts. Powers to change our shape. Some say we even have the power to control the elements. What we can’t do with a thought, we can do with spells and incantations, relics and charms and talismans created by unstable thoughts. We do things that sane people only dream or read about. We can be strong, cruel, wise, kind – all these and more. But we are none of stable. None of us sane.
Remember that.
The scent of vanilla and lime was what kept him alive. Ernest swore he could smell it, mixed with the stench of blood and fire, ash and smoke. Faint, whispery, a lingering scent that kept him conscious and aware of the tall figure that lumbered like a specter made manifest on the far side of the smoke-filled chamber that had once been his mother's sunroom.
It was a scent that he associated with the things his brother did, those things they did in the old guesthouse at the edge of the property, in the latest and earliest hours when their parents weren't around.
He knew the scent wasn’t really there. It was impossible, with the thick smoke and bright flames that consumed what had once been a beautiful house. The vanilla and lime were little more than the scent of a memory, brought on by the creature with white skin and pitch black hair that had attacked them, slaughtered them, left them to burn. The monster with an achingly familiar face but a stranger’s eyes.
Even now he could still hear it moving, walking slowly and heavily through the house, as if it had all the time in the world to do as it pleased. The mad grin in its eyes and on its lips had said quite plainly that, if he could, he would have killed them all at least twice. Probably the sensing of its movements was a thing of his imagination like the vanilla and lime. But it served its purpose, for Ernest remained painfully still in fear of drawing its attention. His clothes were wet and sticky with blood; he could no longer feel his battered right arm.
But as his vision dimmed to a gray fuzziness he knew he could not postpone his spell casting any longer. It was not a spell he should be able to cast, except that he had made it himself in the hopes of impressing his brother. He began to murmur the words, stopping when they came out only as a choked gurgle. Closing his eyes and drawing in a ragged breath, blocking out the heat and smoke all around him, Ernest tried again.
Warmth fell over him, surging and tingling and healing. Just enough that he could get up, and stumble his way through what remained of his mother's French doors, falling to the ground which smelled of dirt and grass, and nothing like vanilla and lime.
Some with magic are what might be called noble. Good people. Witches and Wizards usually are of this nature. Looking to the earth, studying the stars, guiding and watching from afar. There is no rule saying that a witch or a wizard must be so…there have been some which are not. Magic is not bound by anything except the mind which wields it. Still, for whatever reason, Witches and Wizards usually tend toward “good.” They are most likely the sole reason the magical world has not descended into rampant violence.
The least understood of the magic world are the necromancers. Those whose insanity has a penchant for dead and dying things. They are a secretive group, for reasons both obvious and not. Certainly there is something disturbing about a person who is comfortable with corpses and ghosts. But they are, compared to their brothers in magic, relatively harmless. You should not anger a necromancer, but that could be said of almost anyone or anything.
In my opinion, and it is not an ignorant one, the magical persons to be feared are not the necromancers. Alchemists and Sorcerers are the ones to look out for.
For Alchemists long for perfection, for knowledge. Many, like Witches and Wizards, are benevolent. But science is a demanding mistress, and magic is born of insanity. Mixing the two is not a natural thing to do. That they make it work is the first example of what Alchemists are. They are the rule breakers. If told that something cannot be done, an alchemist will seek to prove otherwise. Often they succeed. Alchemists are Witch and Wizard and Sorcerer, Necromancer and Charmer and scientist all rolled into one. As I said before – they know well how to make the most of their abilities. The greatest Wizard in the world, and he was not one of the nice ones, was killed by an Alchemist’s tricks.
But even an Alchemist will pause before messing with a Sorcerer. Perhaps because they are as alike as they are different. Nothing is more dangerous than a man with single-minded, selfish intent. Sorcerers fall just shy of Perfect Insanity – indeed they most often are the ones who succumb to it – and this makes them the most powerful of the magical world. They live only for the magic. Write tomes, fight each other, create spells and incantations, talismans and relics. Sorcerers crave magic the way Alchemists crave perfection. If there existed a book on the history of the world that hides from its sane brother, it would show you a world dominated by battles between sorcerers, between alchemists, and one against the other.
These are the ones to fear.
Fire was hot. Burning, scalding, waves of it chasing them up the stone steps. Steps traversed so many times. They were dark, old, full of loose stones, dipping in places from years of wear. They knew those steps by heart. With their eyes closed, for that had been among their tests.
This was the last time they’d ever have to climb them. Up, and finally out. Never again would they go down into the dark. Chemical fumes mixed with the fire, making the smoky air poisonous.
They continued to climb. Out of the basement. Out of the lab. No more going down. The lab was gone. The scientist dead. He’d been laying in a pool of his own blood. Killed by his masterpieces. “Almost there,” the first whispered, voice rough from smoke and chemicals and fear.
“Yes,” the second agreed. They held to each other so tight, their nails drew blood in the other’s arm. But the wounds would fade; they would not join the myriad scars marking their bodies. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, still able to feel the hand which had held it, pulled hard, had nearly succeeded in stopping him.
His brother’s hair was longer, pulled back in a loose tail. Later he would take it down, brush it out. They would take care of each other. Just like they always had. When they bled. When they screamed. When they cried and asked someone who did not exist why these things were done to them.
But they wouldn’t be done any more. It had taken years, but it had been done. No longer would things be forced upon their unwilling bodies. No more would they be forced to learn what they did not want to know.
They stumbled out of the house and collapsed on the ground. It was wet, soaking through their ragged jeans. Hyde shivered in his arms and Jekyll held his brother close, kissing his brow softly. “We’re free.”
Hyde nodded, and buried his head against Jekyll’s shoulder to hide his tears. “It’s pretty,” he said faintly. “The way it burns.”
“Yes, it is.” Jekyll held his brother and watched their former prison burn, the smoke lost to the starless night. His eyes glowed red.
Still not much on the whole writing thing. I dunno why.
Okay, I lie. I'm writing something, but I'm about the only who cares. Of all my stories, both the ones written, on hold and not yet out of my head - this will always be my favorite. My story. It's also hard as fuck to write, especially the way I'm doing it now (I started it, then gave up, and now feel more confident I can pull it off the way I want).
I'm going to go watch movies and chill. That's allowed, right? I may even watch something that will permit me to take notes while doing so.
OH! I CAN WATCH NIGHtMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Again. For the 207th time. Shush. We all have these little, slightly unhealthy obsessions. You should encourage it. Einn was in part based upon my inordinate fondnes for Jack Skellington.
If I were really mean, I would start watching season one of House while the roomie is not here *evil giggles*
All right. Done chatting. Oh! I forgot! I have a new bag of shrimp chips! *does a dance* Okay, off to watch, note-take and gorge myself on baked shrimpy goodness.
No, I am not on drugs. Yes, I am completely sober.
Shutting up now.
*A/N* Still really rough. It is constantly a WIP. Mostly because there is fuckloads I have yet to research. This is...about a third of the total prologue. An unknown narrator and eventually all five of the main chars. UC is the closest I will ever get to an angst-ridden story. Also the closest I can ever come to something of a suspenseful/creepy/horrific nature. I am, probably for no good reason, proud of this magic system. If its been done before, I've never seen it and I'd prefer to remain ignorant. /ramble
Unequal Children
Time Long Past
Time Long Past
Picture a water glass. Ordinary, tall, the kind you can find just by opening your cupboard. Imagine it full of water. Sitting on a large table
That glass is the wall between the table and the water within. The table is the mind, containing both the conscious thoughts – deciding what to wear or which movie to see – and the subconscious thoughts that control things like walking and breathing.
The water is the part of the mind we don’t use. It is the part that was sealed away. Between it and the rest of the mind lies that glass wall.
Put a crack in the glass. A hairline fracture, nothing more. Barely noticeable, not a drop of water escapes – at least not that we can see. But from that hairline fracture come the geniuses of the world. Artists, musicians, scientists and more, all of extraordinary caliber. The faintest tapping into what lies inside the glass gives them this “genius.”
Say it cracks a little more. A spider web of fractures. Water begins to drip slowly onto the table, into the rest of the mind. These are what most people call “psychics” or more often, “freaks” Those that see ghosts, hear voices, can sense when things aren’t right. In our world, we call them “mildly insane.” Insane enough to know there’s something more to the world than the ordinary mind can see…but not enough to know what to do.
Put more cracks in the glass, enough that water trickles into the mind. This is what we call “moderately insane.” Alchemists, witches, charmers. The weakest in the magic world, but by no means weak. Alchemists especially know how to make the most of what power they have. More than a few of the mighty have fallen to an Alchemist’s tricks…
Break the glass, let the pieces scatter across the table. “Total insanity,” the realm of wizards, sorcerers and necromancers. Magic beyond anything, the ability to tap nearly the full power of that portion of the mind that should be sealed away. Many die young, and one way or another they all die from the magic.
Pretend there never was a glass, or that rather than broken – where shattered pieces still remain – that the glass was simply taken away. “Perfect Insanity” is rare and to be greatly feared. Little is known about the Perfectly Insane, as few survive encounters and those survivors do not speak of what they endured.
Magic is a myth, this is what people say. For most that is more or less the truth. They will never tap into the magic behind the glass, short of being forced into Perfect Insanity. But for those with cracks and fractures, or the shattered remains of the glass scattered across their mind, magic is all too real.
Some love it. Some hate it. But all know that magic is the result of one thing and one thing only.
Insanity.
Every last one of us. There is no exception. Magic is born from the breaking of the wall between the stable mind and the instability that was hidden away to save humans from themselves. We have powers. Powers to move things with a thought. Powers to read thoughts. Powers to change our shape. Some say we even have the power to control the elements. What we can’t do with a thought, we can do with spells and incantations, relics and charms and talismans created by unstable thoughts. We do things that sane people only dream or read about. We can be strong, cruel, wise, kind – all these and more. But we are none of stable. None of us sane.
Remember that.
The scent of vanilla and lime was what kept him alive. Ernest swore he could smell it, mixed with the stench of blood and fire, ash and smoke. Faint, whispery, a lingering scent that kept him conscious and aware of the tall figure that lumbered like a specter made manifest on the far side of the smoke-filled chamber that had once been his mother's sunroom.
It was a scent that he associated with the things his brother did, those things they did in the old guesthouse at the edge of the property, in the latest and earliest hours when their parents weren't around.
He knew the scent wasn’t really there. It was impossible, with the thick smoke and bright flames that consumed what had once been a beautiful house. The vanilla and lime were little more than the scent of a memory, brought on by the creature with white skin and pitch black hair that had attacked them, slaughtered them, left them to burn. The monster with an achingly familiar face but a stranger’s eyes.
Even now he could still hear it moving, walking slowly and heavily through the house, as if it had all the time in the world to do as it pleased. The mad grin in its eyes and on its lips had said quite plainly that, if he could, he would have killed them all at least twice. Probably the sensing of its movements was a thing of his imagination like the vanilla and lime. But it served its purpose, for Ernest remained painfully still in fear of drawing its attention. His clothes were wet and sticky with blood; he could no longer feel his battered right arm.
But as his vision dimmed to a gray fuzziness he knew he could not postpone his spell casting any longer. It was not a spell he should be able to cast, except that he had made it himself in the hopes of impressing his brother. He began to murmur the words, stopping when they came out only as a choked gurgle. Closing his eyes and drawing in a ragged breath, blocking out the heat and smoke all around him, Ernest tried again.
Warmth fell over him, surging and tingling and healing. Just enough that he could get up, and stumble his way through what remained of his mother's French doors, falling to the ground which smelled of dirt and grass, and nothing like vanilla and lime.
Some with magic are what might be called noble. Good people. Witches and Wizards usually are of this nature. Looking to the earth, studying the stars, guiding and watching from afar. There is no rule saying that a witch or a wizard must be so…there have been some which are not. Magic is not bound by anything except the mind which wields it. Still, for whatever reason, Witches and Wizards usually tend toward “good.” They are most likely the sole reason the magical world has not descended into rampant violence.
The least understood of the magic world are the necromancers. Those whose insanity has a penchant for dead and dying things. They are a secretive group, for reasons both obvious and not. Certainly there is something disturbing about a person who is comfortable with corpses and ghosts. But they are, compared to their brothers in magic, relatively harmless. You should not anger a necromancer, but that could be said of almost anyone or anything.
In my opinion, and it is not an ignorant one, the magical persons to be feared are not the necromancers. Alchemists and Sorcerers are the ones to look out for.
For Alchemists long for perfection, for knowledge. Many, like Witches and Wizards, are benevolent. But science is a demanding mistress, and magic is born of insanity. Mixing the two is not a natural thing to do. That they make it work is the first example of what Alchemists are. They are the rule breakers. If told that something cannot be done, an alchemist will seek to prove otherwise. Often they succeed. Alchemists are Witch and Wizard and Sorcerer, Necromancer and Charmer and scientist all rolled into one. As I said before – they know well how to make the most of their abilities. The greatest Wizard in the world, and he was not one of the nice ones, was killed by an Alchemist’s tricks.
But even an Alchemist will pause before messing with a Sorcerer. Perhaps because they are as alike as they are different. Nothing is more dangerous than a man with single-minded, selfish intent. Sorcerers fall just shy of Perfect Insanity – indeed they most often are the ones who succumb to it – and this makes them the most powerful of the magical world. They live only for the magic. Write tomes, fight each other, create spells and incantations, talismans and relics. Sorcerers crave magic the way Alchemists crave perfection. If there existed a book on the history of the world that hides from its sane brother, it would show you a world dominated by battles between sorcerers, between alchemists, and one against the other.
These are the ones to fear.
Fire was hot. Burning, scalding, waves of it chasing them up the stone steps. Steps traversed so many times. They were dark, old, full of loose stones, dipping in places from years of wear. They knew those steps by heart. With their eyes closed, for that had been among their tests.
This was the last time they’d ever have to climb them. Up, and finally out. Never again would they go down into the dark. Chemical fumes mixed with the fire, making the smoky air poisonous.
They continued to climb. Out of the basement. Out of the lab. No more going down. The lab was gone. The scientist dead. He’d been laying in a pool of his own blood. Killed by his masterpieces. “Almost there,” the first whispered, voice rough from smoke and chemicals and fear.
“Yes,” the second agreed. They held to each other so tight, their nails drew blood in the other’s arm. But the wounds would fade; they would not join the myriad scars marking their bodies. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, still able to feel the hand which had held it, pulled hard, had nearly succeeded in stopping him.
His brother’s hair was longer, pulled back in a loose tail. Later he would take it down, brush it out. They would take care of each other. Just like they always had. When they bled. When they screamed. When they cried and asked someone who did not exist why these things were done to them.
But they wouldn’t be done any more. It had taken years, but it had been done. No longer would things be forced upon their unwilling bodies. No more would they be forced to learn what they did not want to know.
They stumbled out of the house and collapsed on the ground. It was wet, soaking through their ragged jeans. Hyde shivered in his arms and Jekyll held his brother close, kissing his brow softly. “We’re free.”
Hyde nodded, and buried his head against Jekyll’s shoulder to hide his tears. “It’s pretty,” he said faintly. “The way it burns.”
“Yes, it is.” Jekyll held his brother and watched their former prison burn, the smoke lost to the starless night. His eyes glowed red.
