Merrion Priddy (merrymage) wrote in emillion, @ 2013-09-12 16:04:00 |
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Merri debated on whether or not to get a casting room for his meeting with Guy and Cy. On the one hand, he still wasn’t completely sure if it was the scroll or himself who was wrong, which meant that their time would be better spent in the library or in one of their homes, which they were sure to have synergy books abundant. On the other hand, if he was the one who was wrong, maybe they’d want to cast it for themselves to be sure and then they could move into the practice immediately without having to take on the impossible task of finding a casting room last minute. Of course, if they weren’t in the library but in one of their homes, then that wouldn’t have been a problem anyway. Then there was the added worry of imposing upon their time and privacy further by asking to have it either in their rooms, so in the end, Merri decided to reserve the casting room closest to the library, just in case. He waited outside the door with the scroll in hand, and he read it carefully, slowly, and thoroughly over and over again. Though he was still unsure if it was missing something or if he was the one messing up, he still didn’t want to cast it without well-trained synergists nearby. And so, his back leaning against the wall, he read so intently that he paid little mind to anything else. Which set him up rather nicely for a tap on the shoulder, Cy leaning up on her tiptoes to rouse Merri out of his stupor with a smile. She had a satchel slung over her own arm (it seemed it had healed nicely after the chocobo attack, all those weeks ago), and the bag was filled with the protruding blocky edges that showed there were books – many books – inside. She wobbled a little from the weight of it. “Morning! Guy’s not already inside, is he?” Cyclone was normally the one on the learning end of things, desperately cobbling together white magic and negative status ailments, filling in the blanks of her knowledge. The opportunity to pay it forward and offer up some of her synergist knowledge was welcomed, even relished – and besides, they all said you learned best by teaching. “What’s going on out here?” Guy opened the door to the casting room in a burst of energy. He’d arrived early that day, for without any other pressing appointments, the abundance of free time had made him anxious to get the whole procedure underway--teaching synergy spells, after all, never failed to catch his attention. Perhaps this had been a mistake, however, for as he leaned himself eagerly out into the hallway, Guy raised his eyebrows and wondered how long the two had been waiting around. “We aren’t meeting in the library, are we?” He added after a moment, one hand moving up to scratch at his chin. Guy took in the sight of Merri and his scroll and Cy and her satchel of books (excellent, he thought, she was always so wonderfully dependable). Keeping the door propped open with his boot, he waved his wobbling student over to try and relieve Cy of her burden. Merri smiled brightly at the arrival of his two friends, one right after the other; though, he supposed, Guy had already been here. “Hi, both of you! Guy, I wish I’d known you were already inside! I’d have come join you! No, we’re not meeting in the library, unless…” His eyes trailed down to Cy’s satchel. “Well, I guess we won’t have to if those books are meant for today!” And if they weren’t, he’d feel a bit embarrassed to have made the assumption, and they may have to go to the library, in the end. He extended his hand towards the both of them for whoever would take the scroll first. “This is the Shell scroll I got from Vivi. I tried it out for myself but…” He cringed. “It didn’t work. I don’t know if it’s me or the scroll itself, so I was hoping you might be able to look at it and see what’s wrong? I tried to figure it out for myself, but…” Since Cy was closest, still hovering between the two men (one out in the hall, the other inside the casting room), she plucked the scroll from Merri on her way in. The satchel of books was offloaded onto her mentor as she paced into the room. Perhaps they would have been better-served to have Guy look at it first – but a second pair of eyes never hurt, did it? So she scanned, squinting at the spell scroll. The words tangled and knotted together on the page in front of her, forming a flowing pattern that Cyclone knew would resolve into Shell. Was there anything wrong with it? She stood in the centre of the casting room, the other two temporarily forgotten as she followed the meandering lines of script. Finally, turning towards Guy, she jabbed her index finger at a particular block of text. “Dunno for sure, but maybe something in that section?” she said. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what, but something seemed indescribably, subtly off about the transcription. “Nothing to worry about, we’ll have you sorted in no time at all,” Guy reassured Merri with a generous smile. He took the heavy load of books with an exaggerated grunt, hefting the satchel into the casting room and setting it carefully onto the floor. His eyes widened as he began to open it. “And it looks as if we’ve got all we might ever need in here!” While Cy began to scan through the contents of the scroll, Guy dug through the familiar tomes to the one he felt would be best to start with. Fingering anxiously through its pages, Guy shuffled over to the woman’s side without pulling his eyes away. Soon, the diagram in the book and the contents of the scroll were positioned side by side, a perfect opportunity for the other mages to observe and study. “Is this what you meant here?” He asked curiously, pointing to the corresponding sections. Guy looked around his student to make sure Merri was able to follow along with their pace. “This scroll is quite the mess it seems.” When Guy and Cy confirmed that the mistake -- or mistakes, rather -- had been in the scroll, Merri breathed a sigh of relief. One, that it hadn’t been his folly that had caused him to hurt himself when attempting to cast the spell; and two, that they were able to figure out what was wrong so readily. He knew that asking them for help would be the best thing. Merri peered over their shoulders to see where they were pointing to and compared them to the page that Guy had flipped to. His eyes shifted back and forth between the two sources as he took in the differences. The more he looked, the more he saw, and the more foolish he felt for having missed any of it. “Oh,” he breathed. Trying to shake off his sheepishness, he managed a nervous chuckle and continued, “Well, Vivi always does say that she doesn’t guarantee the quality of the scrolls she sells, and this one did come pretty cheap. I’m glad I asked you both for help, though!” He pointed down at a particular section and said to himself, “I guess that’s why I nearly set the casting room on fire last time I tried casting this.” A mistake that he hadn’t made since he had been a scholar. “You nearly set the casting room on fire?” Cy echoed with a small smile, glancing around and trying to picture the scene. She’d never really had much experience causing fire and explosions herself; that was the sort of thing reserved for her parents and their object refinery, or Cormac and his chemistry experiments. Bending herself over the book and chapter Guy had unearthed – he knew the texts much better than she did – she pulled out a pencil and scribbled some amendments to the scroll, adding light annotations in a feathery hand. “Let’s try that,” Cy said, handing it back to Merri while she started bustling around the room, setting it up for the man to begin casting. “You probably came to the two right people about this, considering we specialise in status effects. Synergy ain’t a very popular art. Dunno why.” “Do you think we ought to spend more time on our public image?” Guy scratched his chin in thought. And while Cy began to prepare the casting room, he in turn moved the satchel of books carefully out of the way, with the tome he’d been holding nestled carefully underneath his arm--just in case they might need it again. Once everything looked properly settled into place, Guy leaned himself against the wall and gestured toward Merri with an encouraging wave. “Go ahead and give it a try! And if anything else goes awry this time, we’ll be right here to help.” Merri gave Guy and Cy a smile. “Thank you again,” he said. “I really appreciate this. I know how busy both of you are!” Then he looked down at the scroll and Cy’s notes, still hesitant to speak any words or phrases aloud quite yet. He paid particular attention to the places she annotated and committed them to short-term memory, just as least long enough for him to get the spell out. “Okay, here I go,” he warned. He took in a deep breath, and then another, clearing his mind of everything else, before beginning the incantation. His eyes did not leave the scroll for a second, though his heart beat more and more rapidly with each word spoken. What if it failed? What if he hurt himself, or worse, hurt Guy or Cy? Merri sighed and stopped the spellcasting with these thoughts. It would do him no good, he knew. He tried again once more, focusing on each word and nothing else but when-- --nothing. Merri should have been more thrilled. Nothing was better than casting a spark of Thunder or an uncontrolled Fire about the room, or sapping himself of his own mana, but it was still a disappointing result. He read the scroll thoroughly again and shook his head. “I don’t understand what I’m missing,” he said sheepishly to his friends. Cy had propped herself against a nearby table, arms folded across her chest as she watched his progress with a furrowed brow. There was the briefest surge of incredulity – a councilor who couldn’t even cast the spells she could? – before she managed to suppress it, kicking herself. There was always room to learn, even for council members. That was the beauty of the guilds, all the various classes pooling their knowledge and expertise together. So it was time to keep pooling. “All I can say is, envision a literal shell around your target. A dome, like, covering its entire shape and tucked in at the sides, no loose ends left,” Cy said. “Guy? Any tips?” Guy scratched his chin. Well now, that didn’t turn out at all like he expected! However, teaching synergy was old hat by now, and so after witnessing the spectacle of Merri’s unfortunate failure, he pushed himself away from the wall and gave the councilor an encouraging smile. “Here now, I’ll show you how it’s done,” he said. “I’ll cast the spell, and you be sure to pay attention to the example!” Practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, Guy shifted over to Cy. “Just as she says, you’ve got to visualize the spell in your mind first, Merri.” Casting a spell for an audience, his own actions were, for once, slow and deliberate, arms out and palms open, going through the same incantation that Merri had attempted only moments before. Shell began to shimmer across his form like liquid, encapsulating him fully in a protective barrier. “Well now, how’s that?” It wasn’t the quick-snap summoning of magic that he was accustomed to, but it served to show the contents of the scroll in proper action. Merri had seen Guy perform magic at a much quicker speed than this so Merri knew that this was for his benefit, and he truly appreciated it. As Guy chanted each word, Merri watched as the spell slowly took form around his friend, trying to hold back his own awe to study how the phrases crafted the barrier in turn. He nodded slowly, and when the spell was completed he grinned widely enough to show teeth. “That’s amazing! And very helpful, thank you!” he said. Turning to Cy, he said, “So, visualize first, and then cast the spell? I’ll… give it another try, I guess!” Once more, Merri’s eyes slipped closed as he cleared his mind. He pictured Shell around Guy, and then he pictured it around the target Cy had set ahead, and he opened his eyes to begin the incantation once more. This time, he thought he saw the faint glow of something up ahead, and it wasn’t Cure or Esuna, for the spell sustained, and it wasn’t Protect, for it didn’t feel anything like what Merri had been practicing for weeks. Was this Shell or something else? The spell vanished before Merri could turn back to his friends to ask. With a frown, he asked, “Did it work? Did I do it?” Cy had hopped back onto the balls of her feet, unconsciously leaning in to keep a close watch on the spell as it unfurled, her eyes peeled to catch the tell-tale little pulsing glimmer that she could ordinarily pinpoint as Shell. After another moment of scrutiny: “You did!” she finally declared, with all the triumph of a doctor bellowing It’s a boy! “I mean, not completely, obviously…” She’d approached the target and was now tapping it with one finger, picking away at where the glow had been just a moment before. “‘Cos it didn’t last. But it was Shell, I guarantee it. And you didn’t blow anything up this time, mate. So you just have to keep along those lines, and over time you’ll be able to sustain the spell longer and longer. Just like that.” “Congratulations!” Bounding up to Merri after his success, Guy gave his friend a firm pat on the shoulder. “I knew you’d catch on.” With the book still tucked underneath his arm, he realized, the synergist held it out in front of him once again. Cy was right, of course--while that might’ve counted as his first successful attempt at Shell, Merri had barely even begun to master the spell. “Now to keep studying,” he said in an encouraging tone, “and don’t hesitate to come to us again if you need more help in the future!” At his friends’ enthusiasm, Merri couldn’t help but to nearly bounce to match their happy energy. The spell worked! He still had a long way to go -- hours of study and practice -- before he mastered it, of course, but he was leaps and bounds further than where he was just an hour ago. “Thank you so much, both of you,” he said. “If I can make this up to you in any way, please, let me know! I couldn’t have made it this far so quickly without your help.” He looked down at the scroll again, smiling. “I think I’m going to stay here and keep practicing. I know you’re both really busy, so you don’t have to stay! I’m on the right track now, I think. Thank you so much again.” And with a grin, he went back to practicing it again and again. Shell would only marginally get better and stronger by the time he finished, but at least he didn’t have to hurt himself anymore. Learning with friends was truly the best way to go. |