Greetings; I wrote some fan fiction abotu the red gaurd meteing.
“I believe you have lied about quite a lot today, and for what purpose, it is not entirely clear to me. But it is obvious that you do not take us seriously. And that is a mistake,” Captain Aisling added dangerously.
‘What is he even talking about? Where did this come from? I take them so incredibly seriously that I prepared for this meeting to the point of abandoning almost all other distractions and spending a large chunk of my newly gained fortune for even the slightest improvement in the chances that I walk out of here safely today.’ For a moment, hot, acid panic began to rise up in her stomach. But then she remembered the advice she had been given, not just by Miles, but by Liza and even Professor Lacer. If she acted weak, they would treat her as someone they could walk over. And when they surprised her, she needed to roll with it.
The conversation continued, until Captain Aisling said “That we allow you your freedom is a gesture of goodwill. We can track you down anywhere in the known lands, if necessary. Do not think that, if we truly turn all of our resources to it, we will be as ineffectual as the local law enforcement.”
Siobhan decided to appear strong, and scare them with a threat of her own, even if Captain Aisling had carefully spoken such as not to technically have made any threats. She put the plan in one half of her Will, in the rear carriage seat, not only somewhat lacking muscle memory, but also unable to unconsciously give any clues in her body. The other half of her Will, not knowing the full plan, frowned and said “Do you speak for the Red Guard?”
Captain Aisling said “I do.”
Siobhan turned from Captain Aisling to Thaddeus and said “Does he, truly?”
Thaddeus nodded.
Siobhan turned to Agent Marcurio and said “He represents the red guard, truly?”
Agent Marcurio said “That’s right.”
The dissonance between the memories of Siobhan’s two Wills was straining them a little. The part of Siobhan Will that was in the back sent the information to her masking Will, and the two synchronised again. Gera stirred. Siobhan made a triumphant, predatory grin, and said to Captain Aisling “Captain Aisling, you broke our agreement on this neutral ground and attacked me.” Siobhan grin got bigger as the two Red Guard agents before her shifted their postures slightly. “Perhaps I should give you a boon to help you not do that again. A boon for you, and the Red Guard you represent.”
Siobhan then started laughing manically. She reached for a small silver disc in her bag. Having completed the guiding light ritual, and carrying the light coaster with her, she was able to sense in a radius around her, though her view of the inside of her bag was less clear than her view of the back of her head. ‘I thought the text didn’t go further and tell how to add additional functions to the beacon, though. My memory is ordinarily pristine. Oh, that’s right, there was actually also an old scroll with all the instructions.’
Her hand easily found the small silver disc with a raised Circle on either side, and using the modified stone-disintegration spell on one of its sides, she engraved some glyphs on the other side. She then blew on it. This she put into her mouth, with a cartilage frame that let her comfortably wedge it between her upper molars, setting it against the roof of her mouth. Siobhan then formed a Circle with one hand to make herself look like she was going to use it for free-casting, and used the other part of her Will to cast the spell in her mouth, sacrificing heat in her tongue to start slowly, theatrically, ominously, creating a detached light illusion around Captain Aisling of a Circle and glyphs, using glyphs like "devour " and, um, well, basically it looked scary.
‘Does this make sense? There’s just air where the illusory Circle is. In modern sorcery, magic is channelled through the material of the Circle. If it were this easy, I could have an artefact that projected a light illusion for the shedding-destroyer spell, easy to move about and with a customisable size. Such artefacts would be known. There’s the photograph of me with a glowing spell array on a pane of glass, though. They might think this is me doing mysterious freecasting.’
Captain Aisling started backing off. Siobhan said “What’s this, Captain Aisling? Are you running? Well, if you’re forcing my hand, and my boon has to take your running into account, then that’s just the way it is.” The roof of Siobhan’s mouth was cooling, giving her a headache. ‘Oops.’ She adjusted the spell with her Will to only pull heat from the lower half of the Sacrifice sphere.
‘Oops,’ again. ‘Little sooner had I told the Red Guard that I would do everything in my power to keep myself from becoming an existential threat to the world, than had I started Sacrificing heat from my own body.’ She changed the source of power to the beast core against her side. ‘My control is good, and I saw Thaddeus inside his Circle in one lesson.’ After clearing her throat, she continued laughing manically as her spell Circle illusion followed the fleeing Captain Aisling unerringly. She glanced at Agent Marcurio and Thaddeus. [fox person was doing something (intentionally left in)]. Thaddeus was standing with his conduit and beast core, and a very concerned look on his face.
Siobhan then thought ‘My eye’s cornea absorbs ultra-violet light, to stop it from harming my retina. My body already casts an invisible shadow.’ She then used this knowledge to reach some of her shadow out from where its eye would be, towards Captain Aisling, transparently invisible to her eyes. She then stopped, and drew the shadow back. She had a cooler idea.
Given that her eyesight was normal, her body was still casting shadow as normal on her inner eye. Even when she detached her shadow, her eyesight was normal. Perhaps this spell excluded her eye’s shadow. With an application of her Will, she moved the shadow inside her eye and briefly dazzled herself with the light that was suddenly hitting her retina. ‘Nice. How far can I take this? Can I see my liver by moving the shadows of the obscuring tissue aside?’
So she shot out invisible eye beams, enveloping Captain Aisling in a sphere that fit in the light illusion Circle, a sphere that absorbed only ultra-violet light, and entered through his nose and mouth and ears and eyes bypassing his skin barrier.
Siobhan then brought her hand Circle to her mouth ready to speak the word ‘devour’ , and pondered what exactly she would devour from Captain Aisling. What symbols was she using in the light illusion? ‘Devour,’ and, what else? "Unbraght ". She was going to devour unbraght. With the glyphs for "devour " and "unbraght " in the light illusion Circle, she held unbraght in mind and spoke the word “Devour” into her hand Circle, focusing on having only the shadow around and inside Captain Aisling devour unbraght, while using the third part of her Will to activate the spell Circle of light illusion she had around Captain Aisling which was also meant to devour unbraght, but was untested and might not work. ‘Since when could I split my Will in three’ ?
Well, anyway, she devoured unbraght from the fleeing Captain Aisling and he gave out a tired “Aaaaah” and caught himself falling. Agent Marcurio did the same and so did Thaddeus (‘Why? I was only bluffing about giving a boon to the whole Gilbratha branch of the Red Guard. Surely not even an archmage could do that? Imagine cursing all of Lenore because you made a deal with the High Crown.’). And Captain Aisling inhaled some of the potion of darkness perception (‘When did that get there?’ ), the inhalation counting as consent for the binding magic from the sea lichen, giving Siobhan a link to his mind, through which she sent the fourth facet of her Will (‘When did I get that?’ ) to invade his mind (‘That was weirdly easy’ ). Perhaps the clarity of Captain Aisling’s Will wasn’t even good enough for him to modify his memories through Will alone; Siobhan’s copy, or fractal branch, or facet, was winning the fight for dominance. She released her two spells other than her shadow.
Siobhan looked around and saw that Gera, tense like usual, had backed away and was pale as a pale person. Deidre caught her gaze and laughed “Hahahaha, yes, my queen!” ‘When did Deidre get here?’ Thaddeus and Agent Marcurio were sitting on the ground, watching with uncombative eyes. Siobhan then formed her shadow around her into the shape of a raven and used it to shade herself from gravity, and curled into a hovering ball, seeming to onlookers to have transformed into a large raven. She mentally estimated she was shaded from roughly 3500 Thaums of acceleration per second. ‘I didn’t know I and my conduit could channel 3500 Thaums. The magic must be costing less, like a featherweight enchantment.’ She then briefly remembered an idea about gravity being linked to space, and regretted trying the magic on herself for a first test. ‘This might have done nothing, or gone catastrophically wrong’ . She decided to call the technique "raven-feather-weight ".
The hovering, shadow raven-clad Siobhan opened her spell rod for a spell that would hold air solid, and solidified the air in the moving shape of the giant raven, causing an inward gust of air as she compressed the air into something more solid, and she flapped her wings downwards, sending a gust of air down as she launched herself upwards, and she increased gravity slightly to maintain her height. She looked, with her hovering raven of darkness, down at where, due to the multiple magical lights, she would ordinarily be casting multiple separate shadows on the stone, were she not bending reality otherwise. ‘I’m not casting shadows on the ground. Heh.’
The shadows she might otherwise have cast were already moved away into her giant raven of darkness. She opened a section of her spell rod for a light spell, made a void of no shadow between it and her face, and shone a beam of light into her face, dazzling herself. As she had no shadow below, the stone also lit up as though the beam of light hit it. ‘Infinite energy. I’m on a roll.’ She put away her light spell. Next, she released some control on her shadow and allowed those natural shadows to form on the stone, multiple disconnected shadows. They were shadows of a curled up Siobhan, which looked lame, so she more relaxed her control some more, and the shadows widened into shadows of the large raven. ‘My shadow has shadows.’
While Siobhan pondered whether she could do anything special with multiple shadows, Captain Aisling, under Siobhan control, stood up and bowed and said “My apology, my queen of darkness and nightmares and terror and blood, for my transgression. I and my subordinates are at your service,” as blood leaked from his nose. He was not coping as well as a shaman possessed by a spirit. The dissonance between the Wills in Captain Aisling’s mind was too much. Was this like how it felt being a raven in a Lino-Wharton messenger spell? His Will broke, and Sebastien woke up in a bed and opened her eyes to see a worried looking Damien. This aforementioned Damien said “You were laughing manically.”
Sebastien started sitting up before deciding not to, and rubbed her head instead. ‘That fitted the description of a dream like ordinary people have.’ Ana was there too, and said “What happened?” Sebastien said “I woke up and it was all a dream.” Damien said “It sounded like a funny dream,” and Ana said “No, I mean what happened to you, Sebastien?” Sebastien ignored the question for now and said “What does ‘unbraght’ mean?” Both of them thought and then shrugged and shook their heads. ‘Did my dream make up a non-existent concept placeholder for plot reasons? Was anything in the dream viable? Perhaps the ultra-violet shadow part.’
‘Unrelatedly, why were Damien and Ana watching me at the same time? Wouldn’t they take turns?’ Sebastien asked them, “Why are you both here?” She then woke up, all a dream had it been.