A Near Miss Who: Marcus and Jacta When: Anesus 4, 7:00 AM Where: 2nd floor hallway, next to the stairwell
Marcus went to bed reasonably early as a rule, so he also rose early. When he woke up on Anesus 4, the first thing he did was raise himself up onto his elbows in the still-dim light and squint at the closest wall to his bed. There still seemed to be extra windows in the walls due to missing bricks. Yawning, he climbed out of bed and wandered to the actual window, seeing that outside was very cloudy, not a trace of the sun anywhere. It was going to be a day when his eyesight was worse than usual due to the lack of natural light, but since there wasn't anything he could do about that, he decided not to let it trouble him.
He pulled pants and a couple of shirts from the wardrobe and washed up as best he could at the washbasin, then dressed and combed his hair. Marcus put on his shoes and then peeked into the Solar Room, thinking of yesterday when he'd surprised a Lykos there. Nobody seemed to be in evidence this morning, so he picked up his key and left his room, locking it behind him and putting the black cord on which he'd hung the key around his neck.
Ambling down the hall toward the stairs, Marcus was still waking up, idly thinking that he was glad today wasn't his day to work in the garden. It was chilly outside, and his peek out the window had told him that it was probably going to rain. He rubbed his eyes and yawned again, then made the slight turn that would carry him to the head of the stairs going down to the first floor. The only thing that kept him from plummeting to the stone floor far below was a sudden sensory awareness that there wasn't anything there as he began to lift one foot to step down. The blond pinwheeled backwards, slamming one elbow hard against the wall as he struggled to halt his forward momentum; his heart slammed in his throat and he found that he was suddenly too frightened to make a sound.
He slid to a sitting position and then onto his stomach on the hallway floor, his expression both unnerved and puzzled as he eased forward and put one hand over the rough edge of floor where the staircase was supposed to be. "...where'd it go?" he breathed, his voice barely audible as his fingers explored the empty space. A long way down, he could vaguely see light where the stairwell that wasn't there was supposed to empty out into the main hall. The elbow he'd banged throbbed terribly, and he held it close to his prone body as he continued to stare downward, his other hand and arm still in the hole where the stairs were supposed to be.
Marcus wasn't the only one who'd nearly plummeted to his doom... though most of the older residents here had yet to wake up (or were dealing with the problem from the basement end) Jacta was at a loss about what to do. She was still on early waking time, and since she was one of the residents meant to prepare breakfast today, she hadn't spent the time that she usually did lounging in bed. She hadn't nearly fallen down the stairs at least, having been warned by a Lykos who'd been more awake and aware than her... but she didn't know where to go from here.
When she encountered Marcus nearly tripping over the edge, she'd moved to grab his arm, but it looked like the blonde was taking care of himself. "You alright?" she asked, having stopped a few paces away from him. "It's a long way down..." She wasn't fond of sheer drops, herself, and that came across in the tense tone of her voice.
Marcus hadn't even realized that Jacta was there. Wow, he must've really been mostly asleep. Maybe she'd been standing off to the side? He felt foolish that someone had seen his rapid slide to the floor and now was watching him wallow around on his stomach trying to figure out why the stairs were gone. He'd turned his head to look at her when she spoke, still looking a little frightened, his blue eyes wide. The inside of his mouth tasted heavy and coppery, probably the adrenaline left from the scare he'd gotten, and his heart was still thudding away rapidly.
Recovering a touch of his equilibrium, Marcus carefully sat up and braced his back against the wall, one hand moving to curl around the elbow he'd banged. "I knocked my arm pretty good," he answered her finally, "but I guess I feel a lot better than if I fell down in that hole." A sheepish smile curved his lips upward, and he looked at Jacta curiously, squinting a little to see her better. "I wonder, uh... where the stairs went?" He still couldn't quite believe what had almost just happened, nor could he conceptualize how an entire huge stone staircase could just vanish.
"That's something that I think all of us have, are, or will be asking very shortly," Jacta replied, moving forward automatically to inspect Marcus' wound -- was it something she should be running to find bandages for, or would he be fine? "It's probably that stupid challenge, though where they magicked the stairs to is something that I can't even begin to imagine..." She could imagine a pair of random stairs taking up some Windborn's hall, but the thought didn't bring any chuckles when they were 'her' stairs.
"You're human, right?" she asked, taking in his clothing, the healthy tone of his skin. "If you don't mind lending me some magic, I could probably put something up to keep others from falling without warning..." though some good-old-fashioned wooden planks would probably do the trick much easier. The only problem with that was that all of the supplies were down a level...
Jacta's stomach grumbled unhappily, and a thought came to her. "I wonder how long they're gonna leave us stuck like this? The window's didn't disappear this morning... you think the stairs will stay gone the same way?"
Marcus had yanked up the loose sleeves of the shirts he wore to reveal his elbow, and he'd started poking at it tentatively. He wasn't bleeding, but he'd bet that it would swell up and be sore as the day wore on. After he'd turned it around to examine it from all angles, he huffed out a sigh and rolled down his sleeves again. He met Jacta's eyes and then glanced down at the opening again. "If someone really fell down there, they'd probably die," he said, a frown marring his expression. He had trouble believing they'd let that happen.
Still distracted by that thought, Marcus sounded a little absent-minded when he answered her question. "Yes, human. Can I lend you magic if I don't know much about it?" he asked. He honestly didn't know, since he'd never paid much attention to the magical aspects of life. He'd always been preoccupied with other things, like music and the ocean and being with his extended network of siblings and quasi-siblings. "If you know what to do, I'd be glad to help."
"I hope not," he said to her query about the stairs. "I was supposed to work in the pantry today." His nose wrinkled as he glanced to her again. "I don't really mind the bricks missing from the walls, but we're gonna need food." A pause as he raked his hands through his hair to get it out of his face at least temporarily. "I'm Marcus. I live at the end of the hall, in the block next to the Solar Room." He'd just realized he didn't know this girl's name and she didn't know his.
"We'll just have to see what works," Jacta replied to his questions about magic. In truth, she didn't know much about fancy spells, and she certainly hadn't ever had to shore up a hazard like this before. The great thing about walking Ground, at least in Jacta's experience, was that it allowed a lot of control on little experience. Stable and sturdy, sometimes quite powerful; it was probably why most of her caravan walked the same path. While Marcus introduced himself, she focused on what magic he had to offer. It was... definitely not the same Wind, as the underlying currents seemed to run against her methodical probe, water parting around a solid obstruction -- oh. Well, Jacta had always felt that if she had to work with someone who didn't walk Ground the same as her, Ocean was second best. That kind of magic still worked with dependability, as opposed to her experiences with fickle Sky and the untruthfulness of Light. She'd never even had a chance to work with someone who studied Life, considering that most of the people she depended on and worked for were too busy to devote their life to book-study.
Returning to the more mundane aspect of their meeting, she answered, "I'm Jacta; Block eight, room four... right in the middle," she admitted. Then, smiling grimly. "You think you've got it bad, I was supposed to help with breakfast. There's gonna be some mighty pissed people if we can't figure out a way to get downstairs..."
She turned her attention back to the sheer drop before them, considering her options. She knew perimeter spells, and locking spells, and those to shore up unstable beams while work was being done to a building, but she had never come up against something like this. Or... maybe she was thinking about it the wrong way. "We can probably put up some kind of warning," she thought aloud. "A sort of magic hobble... it would go off whenever a person got too close, like a kind of slap on the wrist." She'd seen it used on horses when she and her caravan had had to overnight on the road. "Do you think that'd be enough?"
It was intriguing to Marcus to consider helping someone with magic. Nobody had ever asked him, and he'd never considered it before, really... mainly because he'd never had any affinity for it that he knew of. Only one of his four siblings had a fairly strong inclination for magic, after all, and that was his oldest sister. But who knew? Maybe someone else who used it with regularity could find something useful in him. They wouldn't know unless they tried, right?
"Nice to meet you, Jacta," Marcus said. He went back to cradling his elbow, though it was in an absent sort of way as he pondered the problems at hand. "There'll be some pissed people up here, too," he commented. "Because we can't even get to food!" He wasn't a huge eater by any stretch of the imagination, but let a few hours go by and he was going to be quite hungry. One thing at a time. That's all we can do, he told himself.
Of course, Marcus was clueless about what they might be able to do; Jacta would have to fully take the lead, because it was apparent she'd worked magic before. She seemed to be a take-charge sort of person, and he didn't think she'd mind. "It'd be a lot better than what there is now, which is nothing," he said, his tone a mix of wry and good-natured. "I really think we've got to do something, unless we want to take turns sitting here all day to make sure nobody falls over." He couldn't bear to think about that.
The young woman simply nodded in reply to his formalities, thinking ahead to the next problem... of course people would be upset if they couldn't get to the necessities that had otherwise been paraded around in front of them for the last three days. It was all but cruel, laying out the entire castle and its amenities for new residents to get accustomed to, and then taking it all away. Then again, Jacta was beginning to recognize that the challenges here were meant to be cruel. She supposed that she could be less lucky -- they could be directed solely at her.
As it was, the lack of stairs were very serious. She hadn't heard any stories of people plummeting to their grievous injury or even death... but then again, she hadn't heard a lot. Anything could have happened between half past midnight and now.
Lowering herself to a seated position, Jacta turned her head to regard the elbow-nursing young man. "Marcus, I need you to focus. Breathe deeply. Think of the path you walk, and imagine extending that to me, if you can... I'm going to try to build a perimeter from wall to wall to alert people to watch their feet... but it's going to take some concentration." She had folded her hands on her lap, over the front of her heavy over-skirt. "If we do this right, it should wind up like a compulsion to stop and look down..." of course, she hadn't done this ever before. She hoped she didn't botch it. Her burnt tastebuds still protested feebly from the time that that jerk-faced Vrykola had distracted her.
Marcus' mindset didn't really allow for him to believe that the challenges could include deliberate cruelty. His thoughts might eventually run in that direction, but he'd have to see more than one incident for that to happen. It did bother him that somebody could get hurt (or might've already gotten hurt during the hours between twelve-thirty and now), but the way he saw it, all he could do was help prevent that from happening until this particular challenge was over with.
He listened attentively to Jacta's instructions, wanting to do this right. What she was asking of him seemed simple enough, and he mirrored her position, putting his hands in his lap. Concentrate. He'd shaken off the jolt of fear that had seized him when he'd almost fallen, and he was calm again; he gazed in Jacta's direction, though he did not meet her eyes directly so he could focus on what she'd asked him to do. Ocean. The roar of waves was something he could hear in his dreams, so accustomed to it he was from the years of living so close to the shore. He focused on the sound he remembered so well, on the rhythm of water, hoping that he was projecting it in the way she'd intended.
He'd never done this before, so it was impossible to know how successful his attempt was.
The spell didn't take all that long to complete, once Marcus had begun his end of the ordeal. Jacta had had to take a minute to adjust the spell to allow for the fluidity of its source -- when she worked with Harbenae, it was as if she was able to sink her hands into the magic he offered. Marcus' was much more difficult to grasp!
She had placed the first of the three castings that comprised the spell upon the floor, leaning forward and allowing the magic to spread from hands across the surface of the stone. The second and third she placed on either wall, each with a disgruntled flare and surge of heat -- the spell itself wasn't that masterfully cast. Once that was done, Jacta hunkered back down, allowing the remnants to dissipate. Just being near the casting was making her feel a little uncomfortable.
Reaching an arm towards the void of the staircase to test the spell, the girl yanked her hand back towards her chest, shaking it once it was out of the makeshift field. It was like, as close as she could describe it, sticking an arm into a putrid mess of muck. It had a smell, though upon shaking the spell's effects away, Jacta realized that perhaps the smell came inherent with running into the casting. She shivered. Blegh.
"Give that a try," Jacta cast an eye towards the blonde, wanting to see what he thought. It was by no means a pleasant spell, but it would get the point across, she thought!
From Marcus' end, it didn't feel as if he'd done anything except think about water, something which-- to him-- was as natural as breathing. He blinked his eyes open when he sensed movement from Jacta's direction, and he watched her curiously as she stuck her arm out into what looked like empty air. The way she yanked it back again and her look of disgust said it all.
"Okay," he said tentatively, following her instructions. He had no idea what to expect, and he wondered if it would hurt him when he touched whatever magical field she'd put up. When he discovered for himself what it felt like and scented the resulting odor, Marcus made a startled sound in his throat and involuntarily scooted back a few inches. "Yuck," he said, his nose wrinkling. Maybe that was rude, but he certainly didn't intend rudeness. It was actually... really effective.
He smiled sheepishly at the girl, wiping his fingers on the cloth of his pants. "You did that," he said, a touch of awe in his tone. He hadn't ever experienced magic so close-up before, magic with such a practical application.
"Sorry," Jacta apologized, though she was grinning never the less. "We did that." She was... well, not pleased. The spell wasn't something to take pride in, as unfortunate as its reaction in victims could attest. But it got the job done for now. "That ought to hold until another person takes it down..." Which hopefully could be soon! She wasn't sure where to go from here, so she sat herself down next to Marcus, stomach growling. "I think we're pretty good. Everybody's gonna remember us if they try to fall down the stairwell." The sensation of stepping into vile quicksand wasn't something that a person would soon forget!
"So you never got to practice magic before?" she asked, giving a pause to recollect her thoughts. "Where did you live?" Most folks that she knew -- men included -- used their gifts even in little ways to aid their days.
Marcus was hungry, too, and his stomach was beginning to make noises, so he didn't mention hers. Eventually they'd get down, right? Somebody would figure out a way to traverse the incredibly large gap between the second floor and the first. They wouldn't leave them stuck up here all day... he didn't think. "It worked really well," he said, still smiling almost in disbelief. This was something new to him, and it was terribly interesting. It hadn't felt like he'd really done anything, but then there was the spell to prove that he had.
"Not really, no," he said to her question about magic. "I'm from Sodiensel, and my family fishes for a living. Most of us kids didn't practice magic... just one of my sisters." It hadn't ever occurred to him that that might be strange. It had just been how they lived. They were always busy, there was always something going on, and they'd spent the majority of their time on completely practical things.