Raven loves waffles more than life itself (ofevilsfire) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-07-14 15:47:00 |
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To say that her dream world fascinated her was an understatement. Li rather lamented the fact that the library from the Yshari Sanctum wasn’t here, otherwise she’d be spending her time getting lost within the archives. She could lose herself among books for hours on end and not even be aware time was passing. Of course it would play against her when she had somewhere to be, but other than that Li was a bookworm.
She was also a bit of an experimenter with her magic. Things were different because here, she didn’t have her teacher, Isendra, to help teach her how to use her magic. Though her brand of magic was different. It didn’t quite fit into any of the tribes of magic in her dream world, so she took the title Wizard and did her own thing. There was far more to magic than the eight different ways of practicing it in her world. She’d taken to studying the more esoteric magic, much to the worry of the archmage Valthek. She’d duelled him before she left for Tristram to follow her destiny as prophecy had foretold.
In this world, she mainly practiced her magic alone. Save for those times when the Stormtroopers and demons showed up and she could use them for target practice. But her powers were growing. Li found she had new spells and abilities at her fingertips. It was a matter of gaining control of them in the way her dream self did. The Wizard of her dreams wielded them with such effortless grace, she hoped to one day reach that same level. Which was why she was currently in a secluded area working with her magic. With her long hair up in a high set ponytail, she took to her own kind of training. In one hand, a blackish-purple orb, made from an unknown material, floated above her upturned palm. She lifted her other hand, a wand gripped in it, chose a target, and a ray of pure ice shot out of the wand. She was concentrating hard, attempting to use the orb to enhance her spell, but it was difficult to maintain and she dropped the spell after some seconds, taking a breath.
“There has to be an easier way,” she spoke in Chinese, looking at the orb as it still hovered above her palm, bobbing up and down and moving with the movement of her hand. Unbeknownst to her, her Nephalem status had carried over into her waking life. Her demonic and angelic heritage could be detected by those sensitive to it. Despite having been referred to as being a Nephalem in her dreams already, it hadn’t crossed her mind that she was actually one.
For once Raven didn’t have work, nor was she out doing an actual patrol. True, her senses were always alert when she was out should she be needed, but it wasn’t a planned patrol. It was more a matter of knowing she needed to get out so and not to let herself become overcome with guilt over what had happened while she’d been trying to help during the breaches. It was a matter of not letting herself lock herself away. Especially as everything was still off, more raw as she had yet to leave the portal and was still at raw power, a power that she felt crackling all around her.
It would be fine. It had to be.
So she was out walking, avoiding people all the same. It was a headache. But she wasn’t going to let that stop her. It just meant she was winding her way through a park where there were less people. Which was why when she picked up on a very peculiar energy signature, one that mixed angel and demon? She was intrigued. But also concerned.
There were plenty of people on the network, and Raven well knew that certain… traits… could cross over. But that didn’t mean she could just leave something like this alone. So she went to investigate just who was causing the strange energy signature as well as being prepared to fight. Just in case.
What she saw was…. Well, she wasn’t quite certain. A floating orb. A wand. Nature energy at play.
Li looked at the solid black orb floating in her hand. There was power within it, power that Li stored and amassed within it. Well, her dream self did it far more efficiently than she did. Everything seemed to come easier to her in the dreams, but then her dream self had lived with magic her entire life. Li had only begun receiving her magic during the Stormtrooper invasion. That had been when she’d cast her first spell, a cone of lightning that had taken out a few Stormtroopers.
Doing this alone wasn’t easy, but she knew that practice made perfect. So she was testing things out, including the wand and the orb, to combine with the spells that she could use here. Closing her eyes, she centered herself and focused on her power. A white, snowy type of fog appeared around her right hand, the orb pulsed a little and she cast the ray of frost once again, this time it was stronger than before.
That was a surprise, but Li kept it up. She hadn’t realized someone was watching her, and she focused a bit harder, trying to channel more power through the orb and into the spell. The beam of ice widened a bit. And then, well, things didn’t quite go as Li had expected. She shifted her weight, trying to keep the beam focused as she began to turn. However, the girl that was watching her suddenly came into her view and she yelped.
And the ray of frost kind of went haywire in that it suddenly aimed at the girl as Li’s hands moved towards her. And then there was a mini explosion of frost as the spell backfired, and Li stumbled backwards a couple steps.
The magic wasn’t something she was familiar with, but there wasn’t all that much time for Raven to react as suddenly a ray was heading towards her and the teen needed to defend herself. Or try to at any rate. While she threw her hands up to create a barrier, her current state of being off kilter meant that it got through and hit her, knocking her back some. And it hurt.
Not to the level the attacks of her brothers had hurt when they’d come through the breaches, but enough. More than that? She was suddenly cold and she could feel the magic coursing through her. Great. She would deal with that later. Dropping the barrier, Raven was about to go check on Li when the wind blew her hair and she noticed that it was blonde.
Why was she blonde?!
Picking at it, the teen let out an annoyed sigh and did a reversal spell. Only for nothing to happen. Okay…. Glamouring it. With no sign of change. Was she really going to need to buy hair dye to fix this? Well, she had the money at least. More pressing matters to worry about, such as the person with demonic and angelic energy who had been practicing magic where anyone could see them.
Walking forward, Raven crossed her arms and quirked a brow.
“You okay?”
That was...not how things were supposed to go. Ray of frost didn’t explode like that. Li frowned, trying to reverse engineer the spell in her mind, going through the steps she’d just taken to find where she’d gone wrong. It was entirely possible she’d put too much energy into it. So she supposed that coupled with the surprise of someone suddenly being there had been enough to throw off her channeling of arcane forces.
No matter, she shook her head a bit, then looked over at the other teenager. And she could have sworn that her hair had been dark just moments ago. That also wasn’t something her spell should’ve done. But clearly she needed to study her spells far more closely. Though that was easier said than done considering the bulk of what she needed to study only existed in her dream world.
But then the other teen asked her a question and she pulled herself out of her thoughts. “Yes. Are you alright? I am sorry, the spell is not suppose to work like that.” Meaning more than just changing the girl’s hair color.
The easy explanation was always preferable, though Raven knew far too well that things were different between how they worked in the dreams versus how they worked in real life. Especially while still learning control in a much shorter time than it did through a lifetime that happened only when you were asleep. Annoying, but that was how it went.
“Mm.” Never one for words if unnecessary, Raven did grasp some loose strands of suddenly blonde hair to look at before turning her attention back to Li.
“They usually aren't. Which is why you should find a safer place to practice.” Li was just lucky that Raven not only was a dreamer, but also one who knew magic herself so that the jolt didn't do serious damage to her.
Li tilted her head slightly as she took in the other girl’s hair. The blonde didn’t look bad on her. The dark hair would’ve made her eyes pop more, but the blonde seemed to compliment her as well. Intriguing. Not many people could pull that sort of change off.
“If I knew of one, I would. As it is, I must do with finding secluded areas. It is not as though I could find the Yshari Sanctum here.” Though if she could, Li would probably never leave it. Hell, she’d never leave any place that had some sort of extensive library dedicated to magic. Li flexed her left hand, then flattened her palm and the orb fell against it, fingers wrapping around it enough to hold onto it. She clearly had some sort of telekinetic ability to do that though none of the magic she could currently use involved telekinesis.
Raven certainly didn’t feel like a blonde. The dark hair matched her personality and who she was as a person. But it was something she would deal with once she finished up here and could go get some hair dye as magic clearly wasn’t working at the moment.
“There’s a Magic Guild. My aunt started it.” Clearly Li was a dreamer to have the abilities, as well as the magical signature of demon and angel. Though it wasn’t like Zee had been promoting it lately, usually only if someone mentioned magic online. Well no, she’d mentioned it at the beginning of the month when everything had gone haywire with the Breaches.
“Given the amount of different magic users who have shown up, it works well for practicing, has a library from those who’ve had books show up or put down what they’ve learned into books.”
While Raven preferred going to Regina’s just as there was less a chance of running into people, she also did practice at the Guild, or raid the library. It mostly was determined on what was going on, what she needed to work on and the like.
“Is there? Should I speak to her if I wish to go there?” Li’s eyes practically lit up at the mention of there being a library with some collected books on magic. That sounded highly interesting, and she wondered if she’d be able to learn magic from other peoples’ dreams, not just her own. Though she had to wonder if anyone else here dreamt of the world of Sanctuary, if anyone even knew of the magic from her world.
She would have to think long and hard on whether or not to take the scrolls she got from her dreams there. For one, they were written in a language that only those from Sanctuary could understand. For another, Li was still trying to learn the spells within them, trying to understand them. Isendra could’ve helped explain some of it to her, she was certain. But as it was, Li was on her own.
But first thing was first, she needed the specifics of this Magic Guild. Needing to know who to talk to and where it was so she could go there and learn and practice her own magic. Even if her magic was a dangerous brand of it. Harnessing the arcane the way a Wizard did was intensely dangerous, but it was also freeing, allowing Li to craft her spells the precise way she wanted them to be. Once she had control, obviously. Her dream self had a lot of grace and wielded such power effortlessly.
“It wouldn’t hurt. Just introduce yourself, mention me.” Given Raven rarely spoke to people. Yes she was still rather annoyed by the hair situation, but at her core, she did want to help people. She was just bad at interacting with them and preferred to keep to herself. “I probably could take you but it’s masked unless you know the coordinates and she likes to show it off.”
Absently, Raven shifted her weight, uncertain on what to say next. If there was one thing Raven liked about the Guild, it was that she could use her abilities to absorb the knowledge from all the books that had come to be there, even if they weren’t from her own dreams. She could still learn and practice. The one useful thing that had happened because of Malchior.
“Who is your aunt?” It was information that would definitely help matters. Better than filtering to the ‘owner of the guild’ at the very least. It was certainly good to know these things. She wondered what the guild was like, if it held any similarity to the Yshari Sanctum or not. Though there was only one way to find that out for certain.
Li was a people person, she just tended to be hyper-focused on studying and learning. That mixed with a hefty dose of sarcasm to her humor sometimes made it difficult to get on with some people. Not to mention Li’s first language was not English. It wasn’t even her second language, technically speaking. She took things literally more often than not which sometimes got in the way of understanding jokes.
“Zatanna.” Not like Raven was one for speaking a lot if she didn’t have anything to say. She kept to herself and those she considered her people and that was about it. Though she did pause for a moment. “I’m Raven. Since I said to mention me.” That would be awkward. Even if she could just say ‘your niece pointed me in this direction’, probably better to give an actual name.
Nodding, Li remembered that name. She would send her a message about it. Li was already more than impatient to see what the Magic Guild had to show for itself. She had high expectations, but when it came to learning she always did. “I am Li-Ming. It is nice to meet you, despite the circumstances.” Meaning the hair, obviously. “I am sorry about that.”
A slight nod was given. Introductions were done, and there wasn’t much else to be done now. Li knew where to reach out for in terms of joining the Guild, so that she wouldn’t accidentally spark someone who didn’t have magic or knew about the Dreamers. Raven didn’t have much else to say and well, she was blonde and that needed to not be a thing.
“Yeah. I’ll fix it.” Somehow. Actually having to dye her hair was going to be interesting as she was so used to just doing a glamour or finding a magical fix. But if it was the magic she’d been zapped with, there wasn’t much Raven could do about that fact. “So…. yeah. See you around.”
With another nod, this time in farewell, Raven turned, opened a portal and vanished.