UStuck RP: The Dark Arts and Crafts

His reputation? Lorcan winced. Things weren't that bad, were they? Yeah, his brother and sisters liked to tease about the necro thing, but people knew that was just sibling antics, surely. His own mother ran this restaurant they all loved so much. They had to realize he wasn't...

"I'm not going to steal someone's table," he snapped, maybe a bit harsher than he meant. "I'll ask." With that, he strode towards the table Greg had pointed to, purposeful. Determined. Not angry. Not scary. He wasn't.

He cleared his throat, settling his hands on an empty chair at the table. Its occupants turned to look at him. "Are you done with this table?" he asked. "My associates and I need it for a working." He finished with a brief smile. There. See? Polite.

-

Back at the counter, Vulk tapped Greg's arm with the prongs of his power outlet. "You shouldn't have asked that," he said, voice soft for once. "Lorcan doesn't always know how he feels when people get scared of him. But that's his sad face right there. He's sad."

 

Greg looked at the talking lamp, Vulk, and winced. He hadn't meant it to come out like that. Words were not his strong point. He should probably apologize. "I didn't mean it like that. And it's not that he's scary, I mean, at least I heard he was a weird loner. Nothing scary about that. And don't we all go through a necro phase? I mean, granted, mine ended five minutes after I started when I blew up... But I didn't mean...Gah!" Greg waved his hands around his head, hoping maybe that would make words come. "Words are the worst!"

Melody seemed to notice him at that moment, ignoring Lorcan. She rolled her eyes at him and got up to leave, although not before strumming her air guitar at Greg and having it make a sound. More importantly, that sound. The really annoying one. The one where it was a race car noise. Which didn't come from normal guitars.

"Your magic doesn't make any sense, Musić!" Greg yelled after her, before remembering he was here with other people. He went to Lorcan.

"Sorry, that came out wrong. What I asked you to do, not what I said to her. Air guitar mage makes no sense. It isn't your reputation, it's your...aura? Is that the word? Besides, it was only Musić and someone she knew. And she cost me my homework last night. No one thinks you're scary. Just weird. But weird is good. I should probably stop talking."

 

"Aura?" Lorcan mouthed the word, confused. Sure, he'd heard of crafters who did things with auras, but he thought Greg was a sticker mage. Of course, he could be referring to the aura of entropy and decay Lorcan naturally emitted as byproduct of his craft. He could have sworn people couldn't feel that.

The rest of Greg's message came through loud and clear, though. "Musić. She a rival of yours?" Lorcan gave a wry smile. He'd had a rival back in college. "You know, you could have just said you wanted me to ruin her day. I'd have tried harder."

-

Back at the counter: "...Did you just leave me here?! I am developing abandonment issues!"

 

Aki was pulled out of musing on potential array shapes for this particular scrying by the lava lamp's querulous tone.

"Vulk,was it? Would it be all right if I carried you over there?"

The lava lamp bubbled quietly for a moment before responding. "All right. But you have to make rocket ship noises on the way over."

Aki snorted. "You'd have to pay me not to make them," and began counting down from T-10.

 

Aki took a little longer to get to the table than expected. This seemed to be because Vulk had wheedled her into playing rocket ship with him. Lorcan assumed it had taken a great deal of begging and badgering on Vulk's part. He didn't think his sanity could handle working with Aki if it hadn't.

"Vulk," he said when they finally reached the table.

"I'm a rocket man."

"Of course you are," Lorcan replied. "Sorry I left you there." He was usually better at keeping track of Vulk. He couldn't afford to storm off like that; he had responsibilities.

 

Greg saw his chance to make up for his previous mistakes. After all, wouldn't it be helpful if Lorcan didn't have to worry about forgetting Vulk?

"Lorcan, if you want, I could make Vulk mobile. So you wouldn't have to worry about leaving him. It wouldn't be much work either," Greg said, opening his sticker tin and searching for a useful sticker. He was pretty sure he had a rocket pack sticker, or failing that, a winged Pegasus or unicorn. he couldn't remember if it had a horn or not.

 

"Yes!"

"No," Lorcan said, giving Vulk a warning glare. He turned his attention back to Greg. "Look, why don't you put that thing away? The last time you tried to use that, you launched a doll through my basement wall at seventy miles an hour. You think Vulk can survive that sort of treatment?"

"But Loooooorcan--"

"It's like you always say, Vulk. You're fragile. I won't risk it." To Greg, he added in a low tone, "You've never babysat before, have you?"

 

Greg blinked at Lorcan, before thinking about Kitty. Specifically the flying episode. The flying episode that ended in a broken sewing machine, an exploding fridge, three weeks of rain inside the house and an unauthorized llama. If Vulk was like Kitty, then no flying for Vulk.

Ms. Farina was too nice to potentially ruin her place. And his mom would find out.

"Right. No stickers on Vulk. So, glitter scrying. I didn't know you could scry with glitter. Granted, I don't know how to scry successfully since mirror stickers don't work. And stickers on mirrors...let's just say that the reflection world is a very strange place."

Greg shivered. Strange and terrifying. So of course, Kitty loved it.

 

"Hold that thought." Aki held up a finger to shush the question. It wouldn't do to get distracted while she had to attend to the landing procedures. Lacking a proper body of water for touchdown, she'd had to improvise, and if Vulk got injured or cracked during the procedure, she'd lose her mission control certification. Plus, Lorcan would probably kill her. Familiars were serious business.

"All right. So. Glitter scrying." She turned to Greg, dusting off her hands. The customary sparkles fell to the table, but she ignored them. "It works best if I have some glitter from the thing I'm scrying for, since they're connected. I can theoretically make do with other glitter, because of the dispersion principle, but honestly it's just so much easier to use the original, and there's almost always some still kicking around anyway. You know how it is, how you can usually find glitter days after a spill? The connection sticks around.

The actual scrying is the difficult part. Have you ever seen pictures of what it looks like to be a fly? How they're watching the world through hundreds of tiny screens? It's kind of like that, but with about a thousand times as many screens which are all way smaller. Piecing the information I get into something usable is often tricky."

 

"So each piece of glitter is a screen? And you use all of those? And you can actually get information from all of those screens to be able to piece together information? And what's the dispersion principle?" Greg asked, trying to wrap his head around what Aki was saying. Looking through a bug's eye was nauseating. If Aki could actually piece together useful information from thousands instead of the hundreds of a fly, then she must be either crazy, insane, or crazy insane good at her magic.

Knowing most people who practiced magic, it was probably all three.

 

"Essentially, yes. Every flake of glitter is its own viewport. The more glitter I have, the more information I have." Granted, more information wasn't always a good thing, per say. Conflicting information was a huge problem, especially when glitter dropped on the object's way to wherever it was going, which, well, glitter. That was an inevitability. Add into the mix the random distribution of the glitter and which way it might be facing, and scrying became a lot more confusing than useful about half of the time. But, nevertheless, it was an important facet of her job, and the reason she was being pulled into this, so it wouldn't do to get anyone worried in advance.

"As for the distribution principle, that has to do with the spread and relative stickiness of glitter. How much it sticks to itself, how much it sticks to other surfaces, how it spreads between contact, that sort of thing. You know how glitter kind of gets everywhere? And then you can never get rid of it and wind up finding glitter still in the carpet months later? That's the sort of thing that the dispersion principle covers. I can use any glitter usually because once some glitter touches other glitter, some of it transfers. There's a slight connection between the two, and then when some of the glitter touches unrelated glitter, more connections form. I tend to prefer more solid connections, though, and with how much glitter sticks around after it spreads, I usually don't have to worry about playing six degrees of separation."

 

Huh. That was a surprisingly put-together explanation for someone who got along with Vulk. Then again, that's how it tended to be with a crafter's preferred form of magic. Get them talking about the mechanics of it, and suddenly every airhead was an expert.

That was just how magic worked. When you found your focus, the "rules" came easily--as far as rules could even be applied to something like this. You might not always be able to articulate them, though, and unless someone else had a similar focus they'd probably find the explanation worthless. Crafters could break their brains trying to attach rules to a magic besides their own.

There were exceptions, of course. Lorcan had been pretty adept at necromancy back in the day despite being a time mage, but that was because dead things and old things were pretty similar from a thaumaturgic perspective. Scrying was way out of his comfort zone, though. The only people in his whole family who came close were Aislin and...well, Aunt Mercy. Which raised the question of how Mercy's scrying worked, given the Baker clan was infamous for not being subtly-named. Did she hope her targets were carrying a baguette and follow the trail of breadcrumbs?

Maybe it was a good thing Lorcan's mom had put him in touch with Aki, mysterious issues with Mercy aside. Not that he would say so out loud.

 

Aki paused, looking around the table. Lorcan looked lost in thought, Greg looked like he wanted nothing more than to pull out a notepad and pencil and start grilling her on every flake of glitter that had ever come through her hands, and Vulk was... trying to lasso nearby chairs with his plug. That was probably her cue to get started, then.

First things first, she should definitely resummon Seth. Fortunately, her old notebook still wasn't quite out of pages for the ritual.

 

"So you need some glitter from us? I think there's some on me," Greg said, looking at himself. He did indeed have glitter on him. It was probably from the doll. He looked up as Aki pulled out her notebook, and realized he should have been taking notes. This was fascinating.

"So the distribution principle. If a glitter touches one glitter, and then touches a different one, that third one it touched is connected to the two others because of that principle. But wouldn't the second one not be? Because the first hadn't touched the third? Or is it like a hivemind and so since the first one touched the second one, as soon as it touched the third, it was as if the second one touched the third?" Greg barely had time to get his questions out before he came up with new ones. Since Lorcan or Aki wasn't telling him to stop, he could probably just keep going. "Is all glitter some how related to each other? And spread and relative stickiness, does some glitter not stick as much? I mean, I didn't think that was possib..."

Greg watched as Aki ripped a piece of paper out of her notebook, took some glue and googly eyes, and glued the googly eyes to the paper. He twitched, and reminded himself it wasn't the milk carton. It wasn't the milk carton.

It wasn't.

 

I would have thought that it would have taken longer for you to have eaten, Seth's voice came once he had materialized. Or is it that you just wanted to introduce me to these...charming young friends of yours?

"Seth! Meet Lorcan Verdigris, Vulk, and..."

Greg Cartwright, Seth interjected. Aki, be a dear and convey my best wishes to him, and inquire as to the health of his milk carton on my behalf, if you would.

"Lorcan, Vulk, Greg, this is Seth. Seth says hi and wants to know how your milk carton is doing, Greg."

 

Greg did not squeak. He didn't. He also wasn't hiding. He was just making a tactical retreat placing Lorcan between himself and the...monstrosity paper. Because Lorcan had been practicing magic longer, so would be better suited to dealing with the monstrosity. It wasn't because he was scared. It definitely wasn't because how did that monstrosity know about the milk carton?

"What is Seth?" Greg asked from safely behind Lorcan.

 

It was a fair question, Lorcan supposed, even if Greg's reaction seemed a little overwrought.

Lorcan definitely knew a thing or two about sentient objects--he glanced over at Vulk--but only from personal experience. The paper Aki had used was too fresh for Seth to be a tsukumogami, and that was where Lorcan's knowledge ran out. Different crafters had their own versions of the trick; it was kind of inevitable when you mixed magic, creative energy, and the human tendency to personify everything. Even Greg apparently had a sentient milk carton, and Lorcan could tell the kid was more on the 'Lawful' end of the spectrum than your average mage.

That didn't explain why Greg was using him as a human shield, though. It was a piece of paper with googly eyes. Who in the world would ever be afraid of something with googly eyes?

 

"Seth's my familiar, obviously. Didn't you just see me summon him?"

Truth be told, Aki was a bit too distracted to be snappish, with how hard she was concentrating on her array. She had done this before many times, but any time a conscious being was involved, it paid to be extra cautious. Wouldn't want a repeat of Mrs. Jenkins, after all. This time, she'd be careful.

Once she had finished affixing the glitter into the appropriate shapes and symbols around her chair with a glue stick, she spread a mishmash of variety sequins around the perimeter. She took care to only encircle her chair and the working, because it could be hard enough to control a working when she only had herself and Seth to factor in. Adding other people would just make the currents eddy around them, like rocks in a stream. No good.

She allowed herself a chuckle as she thought about how Greg might react to the inside of a working. That boy was all straight lines and measured markings. His brain would probably splinter or something, trying to assign his rules. Lorcan might be ok, but only because Vulk seemed like a decent sort.

As the final touch, Aki put the glitter from Greg in place.

"You all ready?" She closed her eyes.

 

Lorcan briefly wondered how his mother kept Tea and Charmalade clean with all the workings its patrons threw around. Thaumaturgically and literally, he thought, looking at the glued shapes on the ground. Poor Paola.

Then the working started.

There was a charged sort of atmosphere in the air that accompanied any serious working. The restaurant had a level of insulation, enough that the crafters who ate their wouldn't have their meals constantly interrupted with magical runoff, but from this close it was unavoidable. For Lorcan, he felt it as a moment that lasted just a little too long, like time was holding its breath. He expected that. What he did not expect was for glitter magic to be so damn pretty.

The space around Aki had filled with glimmering motes that flitted and swam in a tight column of air bounded by the sequins on the floor. Maybe it was Vulk's influence, but Lorcan couldn't help but think of glitter moving inside a lava lamp, cast into motion by the heat and throwing off sparkles of light as it danced. If he looked down at the floor, he could see the glittery shapes peeling themselves off the floor one by one to join their fellows. But then he looked up, and blinked, and looked back down--and the symbols were still there. They peeled off again, and rose into the air, and blink, and back. And there never seemed to be more motes of light than there had been at the beginning, even though the symbols added themselves to the mix again and again. Lorcan could already tell thinking more about this would give him a headache.

Look at one mote, he thought. Because the glitter Aki used had all been silver, and if he looked at the sparkling column together it was all silver, but if Lorcan focused his attention on a single glitter square he could suddenly see color inside. He wondered if scrying had an emotional effect on its users, because suddenly he wanted to see what was inside that square, to cast his mind through it like a window and learn what was on the other side...

A shape slammed in front of his eyes, cutting off the vision. It was a circle, with a hexagon inside--oh. The sequins. They formed a barrier that kept the glitter in and prying eyes out. Probably for the best. Scrying had a reputation for being dangerous in its own right. Lorcan highly doubted the addition of glitter magic made it safer. Hopefully Greg wouldn't take the warding too personally.

 

Aki opened one eye. Then two. Then ten. Then a hundred. Then all of them.

Black darkness no light dark dark dark black dark ah light there light light brown tan ceiling? ceiling floor tan green brown ceiling beige white yellow wall beige flower finger rosy fingered dawn hair brown blonde red pink blue pink finger floor dancing on rainbows fan broom wall box blue wall yellow bright chair blue purple purple table ceiling focus aki shoe water water dark lamp cord carpet dust wall dark brown cup spoon knife black dust dirt one way out no exit cage fence wall paint you fast fast fast water grey dark water bell stars that oversprinkle clamorous appealing carpet floor green wood smalls okay light ceiling bright tan aki table chair light light light are you bright too bright too bright first star light light bright bright it's here it's here it's here here here aki it's here aki here here here aki AKI STOP

"It's here."