It's time for me to take some chances [Closed]

[saltwaterlungs]

CHARACTERS: Darcy and friends
DATE: Still January
LOCATION: Kitchen and Bobby B’s
SITUATION: Darcy makes some moves
WARNINGS: None yet

To burn it all to a billion ashes

[ To each of the following; Dimitri, Gwen, Erin, Okie, and Valdis, a text is sent.
Lunch?
I’m in the kitchen. ]

Stop playing dead

[ The core members of what can be loosely described as Team Captain also get texts. Skulduggery, Ava, Maximilien, and Peter.
Meeting at Bobby B’s
Bring anyone you trust.
When they arrive, Darcy’s already set up at a table, looking at her phone and smoking a weed cigarette, seemingly well enough to scrape herself back into some semblance of how she usually looks, in a suit jacket over a hoodie. ]

For one last time, I'm screaming out loud [exploration]

[ Darcy’s got one stop on their mind to prioritize for their own exploration; the crew cabins. Late one evening, upon making certain there’s nobody around and they aren’t being observed, they approach the bulkhead. ‘You could always go in’ is vague even for the Captain, but they have to wonder if they have some sort of… admin privileges equivalent for the ship. So they try to open the door as if they expect to be able to, casually as walking into their own room. ]

Comments

[makesomedeals]

"Good. Let's get this over with before something worse happens. I believe my roommate is permanently indisposed, so there's privacy there."

[freedomsuitsme]

He nods. He's not going to ask right now what "permanently indisposed" means.

"Lead the way."

[makesomedeals]

And so he does, to the cabin he once shared with Maeve. He knows she's gone, can tell in the same way he could when Security vanished without a trace. As far as inorganic beings it's just him and Bastion remaining now, ironic that they're both from the same world and had never met before.

But that's neither here nor there.

"Just so we understand each other," he says as he ushers Maxwell into the room and closes the door behind him, "Should you try anything to intentionally harm me I'll be forced to retaliate. In ways you won't enjoy."

[freedomsuitsme]

"If I was going to make such a move, I wouldn't have agreed to meet you in a place you likely have more knowledge and control of. But now we can both acknowledge that you've warned me. Now, I'll need a space on the floor capable of being written on."

[makesomedeals]

If regrets had a numerical value he'd be currently watching it tick upwards like the stock market tracker. But he's gotten this far, no sense backing down now. Plus he can hear Skulduggery's mocking I told you so from here.

"Take whatever space you need." Max effortlessly reaches down with one hand and lifts the bed down onto its side, breaking it from where it's normally attached to the floor. He clears everything off to the side, giving him as much space as possible. "Sigils I assume? You don't actually need to draw them in blood do you?"

[freedomsuitsme]

"No, I generally work with charcoal. Occasionally blood is more appropriate, but that's mostly during the establishment of long-term contracts."

It's not especially explicit, but Maximilien might just notice that there's sort of a coding to the order in which Maxwell writes sigils. Loops, arguments, functions, arranged as intersecting and superimposed geometries.

[makesomedeals]

"I can't deny that signing deals in blood does have a certain flair of the dramatic about it." He's never done that, but now he sort of wishes he had.

He tilts his head to watch what Maxwell is doing, unable to parse the formulas and notation, but recognizing it as something structured - rather than the fluid nonsense he normally attributed to magic.

"What do I need to do?"

[freedomsuitsme]

"Once I finish setting this up, I'll need you to stand in the center of the circle and hold the spellbook. This will treat you as the focal point of all the spell's conditions- in this case, a series of inquiries as to the nature of the power source in your chest. Whatever happens, do not step out of the circle. If something seems to be going wrong and you wish to terminate the spell, drop the spellbook."

[makesomedeals]

Seems simple enough, though he has a suspicion it won't be once spells start going off around him. There's a hesitation before he moves, it would probably work better if they could see the stone wouldn't it?

Almost begrudgingly he slips his tie off, shrugs out of his jacket, and then starts to unbutton the several layers of clothing he's wearing underneath. He's not going to take them off, but now the gem is visible. About the size of a hand, kite shaped and glowing red the same as his eyes. It's set in the middle of his chestplate surrounded by a gold setting keeping it in place. The rest of him is matte black and silver tungsten. There's plenty of seams, but no visible gaps into his inner workings, nor any visible wires.

[freedomsuitsme]

"Fascinating," he can't help but mutter. He adds another triangle to the series of inscribed geometries, and writes numerous sigils around it.

"And quite helpful. A good description of the object will keep the spell from potentially mis-targeting or misinterpreting what we feed into it."

[makesomedeals]

"So this works by reading the symbols you've written? As if your magic is being programmed." He's having a true epiphany about magic here, too bad he's not going to get to act on it before the end. At least he won't have to see Skulduggery's smug skull if he tells him.

"Tell me what to do, I've never seen this done before."

[freedomsuitsme]

"The spell initiates from the center, where you'll be holding the Codex. It's the focal point, able to process raw Nightmare Fuel into something workable. From there, the energy passes outward, moving through different layers of circumscribed geometry. I think it differs between magical traditions, but generally They favor ternary conditions- that is to say, I've found triangles are effective for laying out the conditions of a spell. Hexagons also work. Circles are fine for less potent operations, and they can also be used as a fail-safe to make sure there's no power leak from a poorly-defined polyglyph array. That's the very basic nature of it. I could explain more later over a drink, if you'd like, once we've settled these matters."

[makesomedeals]

Nightmare Fuel doesn't sound pleasant, especially since he's just gained the ability to sleep a few months ago, though he hasn't yet had any dreams.

All of that information buzzes around his synapses, bouncing off the rigid technical way he sees the world, he tries to figure it into some semblance of order so he can try and understand, but it slides away, always just out of his grasp. He simply can't process what seems to be a logical fallacy.

"Perhaps later. So I shall stand there, holding the book, and the symbols will become something you can read and that should tell you what this is and hopefully how it works?"

[freedomsuitsme]

“Not quite. The symbols will remain as they are, defining the nature of the spell. The information we seek will appear as a sort of illusory overlay. I actually don’t know if it’s a fixed language, or if it appears as whatever is comprehensible to the viewer.”

In short, the symbols and geometry are ROM.

[makesomedeals]

"Ah. I suppose I'll understand when I see it. Shall we?" He folds his arms behind his back, standing at the edge of the symbols. He's not about to disturb them until told to do so, at least he knows that much from Skulduggery's attempts to explain sigils to him.

[freedomsuitsme]

"Very well. Step into the circle, and be sure to give the marks as much clearance as you can."

[makesomedeals]

"Oh of course." He's not going to step on any of the writing if he can help it, stepping around them with surgical precision. "And now I hold that?"

He holds his hands out for the book.

[freedomsuitsme]

"Yes. Allow the pages to flutter freely. They'll find the invocations that the circle needs."

[makesomedeals]

"Of course the book knows, why wouldn't it know? Why shouldn't inanimate objects all be secretly sentient." He mumbles to himself as he holds the book open in his palms, curling the last digits of his fingers around the cover just to keep it in place. It would actually be horrifying to find out that everything is sentient - and put him in the awkward position of being just as bad as all the humans that used him, when he was using chairs and cars without realizing they could feel.

Something he's just not going to consider. Instead he focuses on the book itself, waiting for the pages to ruffle unsure what to expect. Maybe things will light up, or an eerie breeze would blow, regardless, he's definitely tense.

[freedomsuitsme]

With a grand gesture and a muttering of incantations, the circle begins to well with a strange, inky substance, and the pages of the book flutter. Sigils and symbols etch themselves onto thin air, solid smoke forming something akin to a digital readout. The magician, maintaining focus but clearly intent upon perusing the information, moves the symbols about, silky gloves almost seeming to brush sections aside as if they were applications being pushed to the background. It's surprisingly methodical, a search through stacks of information, key figures acting as pointers to registers of importance. All the while, the pages flutter back and forth, a shifting of threads, a shuffling of data.

[makesomedeals]

He keeps his fingers out of the way, making sure the pages can move as needed. Maxwell had made it sound like the book itself was sentient and deciding what to do, but as he watches him manipulate the symbols in midair there does seem to be more to it than that. His sensors focus on the viscous black goop that seems to well up around the circle - but his analysis tells him nothing. In a bid to reassure himself he decides that it's because it's from a realm unlike his own and he isn't programmed with the right instrumentation to obtain any data on it. And not because it's magic.

It's not unlike watching a scientist shuffle around data trying to formulate an answer. He hadn't understood what they were doing either, but there'd been an end result like they're hoping for here.

So instead he peers down at the book as it flips pages as if in a strong breeze that keeps changing direction, trying to see if there's words or anything discernable.

[freedomsuitsme]

Oh, the book is full of text and diagrams, but most of it is in a script utterly alien to Maximilien. Occasionally, a scrap of Latin translation flashes across a page. "Precious." "Incantation." "Insanity." But nothing coherent or comprehensive.

After a few minutes, the energy begins to diminish, and the fluttering of the pages slows.

[makesomedeals]

His eyes flick over everything going on, noting that things are starting to slow down.

"Does that mean you've found something out? Or is something wrong?"

[freedomsuitsme]

"The ritual has mostly run its course. Remain in the circle until I indicate that it's fully done, and then we can discuss what's been uncovered. It's not as much as I'd hoped, but it's something."

[makesomedeals]

"Hmmm." He stands there diligently until the spell finishes, the book closing in his hands. There's a part of him that wants to reach out and see if the dissolving symbols in the air have some sort of tangibility, but he resists. "Something is more than we had previously."