diatu | Electric Boogaloo

Who: Tyzias and YOU!
Where: All around Anastara and Diatu
When: Late October
What: Tyzias arrives at Diatu and is thoroughly unimpressed.
Warnings: Curmudgeonliness abounds, lots of swearing.

attention, attention everyone
Anastara, being built around a Magicademy full of mischievous and/or incompetent students, is no stranger to ridiculous happenings. Especially in recent months with the arrival of the Sundered. As such, residents have a high tolerance for magical shenanigans and associated weirdness. But it is extremely difficult to simply ignore a round boulder being pulled at high speeds down the street by a pair of extremely large trolls.

Said trolls have at least a passing knowledge of traffic laws, so thankfully nobody is hurt. But an entrance like that draws attention—which is exactly what Tyzias doesn't want. When her chaffeurs crack the rock open at the academy, Tyzias tumbles out of her luxury transportation (really, it's quite posh inside, the Troll Lord of Okanes isn't a barbarian) and lands flat on her back before the gates of Diatu, staring at the sky.

After a twenty-three second sustained groan, Tyzias grumbles, "Sweet fucking Sufferer, Grumbrig, I know you wanted to give me the 'royal treatment' but that's a little overboard." She laboriously tries to pull herself to her feet. And fails. "Fuuuuuuuck dust got all in my shirt fuck fuck fuck HEY YOU CAN YOU HELP ME UP HERE"

see through bloodshot eyes
Now that she's finally someplace that might be able to get her on track to find some answers, there's no way in... whatever this world's punitive afterlife is that Tyzias is going to waste it on something as trivial as sleep. So it is that it's three AM in the morning and she's still poring through dozens of books by flashlight in the common room, mumbling to herself in a haze as she flips through page after page. Her choice of reading material is eclectic: basic textbooks for beginning mages, advanced theses on Intimation, a few tomes about Sundering, swathes of world history, Osmarius grammar, prayer books, and more. Tyzias is practically buried in a blanket of notes.

Then she sweeps her arm across the table to diagram a High Osmarius phrase, accidentally hits a stack of books, and it all comes tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down. While she doesn't go down with the ship, all of Tyzias's study material crash to the floor. The thud that echoes through the hallways is deafening.

Tyzias muffles her scream by planting her face on the table, then sighs, hauls herself to her feet after much effort, and begins slowly putting everything back in order as she braces herself for the inevitable mob of furious students who were just aroused by the chaos. Hopefully whoever finds her first isn't too angry...

wwwwhen you held the knife
Tyzias looks at the supply list in her hand, then at the rack of wands, then at the list again, then she groans. "You know what would've been fantastic? If Teach actually told me what I needed for class. Outlined a clear, concise list of Factors that I need to make the magic shit happen. But no. 'Discovery foci.' What am I supposed to get? Bat guano? I mean, okay, I know that all I need is a book and a wand, I'm not that dumb, but what wand? The one that magically calls out to me or some shit?" Tyzias throws up her hands in frustration.

"You. You have any idea how I'm supposed to pick one of these things? I know this place's reputation, there's no way I'm just gonna snag one off of the shelf there and call it a day."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Bang. You're dead."

In the middle of Dust's spell kata, Tyzias's wrist twirls, she mutters "light," and a globe of glowing gold light flies from her wand and towards one of the few weak spots she thinks she's found in his form. On further inspection, while she shares pure speed and momentum with Dust, her strength was in precision while his was in raw power. Tyzias fights with not a single flourish, not a single millimeter of unnecessary movement, while Dust... well, it looks intimidating, but he's expending far more energy than he needs.

Granted, much of that was likely due to his sword forms acting as a conduit for the magic, but still. It's an obvious weakness.

The moment that light shot his way, Dust stomped down his lifted foot to plant himself solidly, then whipped Ahrah up into the air and let go of the hilt. Rather than fall, the sword spun on his palm, so fast that the only sign of the blade was the distortion the vortex of its motion left on what was seen through it.

The ball of light zipped into it, and rather than beaning him, it multiplied into forty or so of itself, all whirling around in the vortex.

"Really, Tyzias?"

But he was more amused than anything as he caught Ahrah's hilt again, letting the balls of light scatter in all directions.

Tyzias's eyebrows shoot up into her ragged mop of black hair at Ahrah's display. Now that is impressive. "Damn. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that if that had been a slightly less friendly spell, all of that," she gestures in the direction of the dissipating lights, "would've come right back at me. Color me impressed.

"But if I hadn't been so courteous as to let you know that I was slinging that light in your direction, that just might've hit. And I doubt that anybody you're fighting with would be so kind as to call out their attacks like some anime villain. Impressive as your flowy shit is, somebody who's more experienced than me could easily find an opening punch a hole straight through your form. Gotta keep on your toes."

"Actually, the Dust Storm is better at magnifying a friendly spell and using it for attack. If you cast that as an attack and I amplified it... that was how I got through so much of my time in Falana."

Which brought back the memory of Fidget, quite sharply. Brought in one of those sudden silences that hung just a little too heavily to be innocuous, before Dust shook off the morose nostalgia through force of will. "You know, if you wanted to spar I would've obliged you."

Tyzias laughs harshly. Shit. She went a bit too far. "Me? Spar? With you? My dude, I can't even lift most swords above my head, let alone swing them with enough force to tickle you. Trust me, it'd be pathetic. I'll stick to faffing around with kiddie spells for now, thankyouverymuch."

Tyzias is very good at lying in most cases. That's how she survived on Alternia; by lying to everybody about her activities; even to her matesprit. So the deception rolls over her tongue as easy as honey, coming off as genuine self-deprecation. But Dust has probably gathered enough evidence to know that something is up.

Dust might have bought it if he hadn't see how she wielded her wand. But hey, he got it. That was fine with him, honestly. If she wanted to take it easy, that just meant he could get into the fights, when they came, without worrying about her.

"Little idea, though. Use an invisible attack spell."

Tyzias exhales ever-so-slightly when Dust decides to drop it. Thank fucking Skaia. Tyzias knows that he knows that she knows how to fight. It's obvious at this point. (Damn, she really needs to work on her "weak nerd" facade more. She used to be exactly like that, she should be a natural at acting like a total wimp!) But since he's not pressing the issue now, she can rest easy.

"Wait... holy shit." Tyzias immediately begins getting out her books and sketching out ideas. All of that can go on hold, she's got shit to figure out.

Dust chuckled, though by no means unkindly, as she suddenly sped into intellectual action. Guess his demonstrations were at an end for the moment? But that was fine. They'd gotten something done with all this, that's for sure.

Electric Boogaloo

sorry if the prose is weird, it's been a long day

It's all good!

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End thread?

o7