ΗΑΔΕΣ (underworldly) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-05-13 14:38:00 |
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Hades hadn’t been to Orange County’s ‘official’ (it was official, right?) Magic Guild often - but he knew of the place, since Meg’s cousin was the one who started the whole thing. And since he’d offered to help an angry kid with his fire-throwing magic (maybe he just saw so much of himself in that one), it seemed like a good idea to not do this at, say, Hades’ own house. Or anyone else’s house. Or out damaging fragile ecosystem, or causing a Californian brush fire. Before he knew it, they could be turning the whole damn state to cinder and ash - and that really wasn’t his goal. The Guild was well-fortified, according to Zatanna. They could practice here and not break anything - and just in case, he’d brought along some precautionary measures. His own Underworld spell books, cracked and dry with age and smelling faintly of brimstone for some reason - he’d also brought fruit from the ambrosia tree, in case they needed a little magical negating going on here. That was kind of a last-ditch effort, because the idea was to learn how to use magic - but it never hurt to have a backup plan. The ambrosia was tucked safely away, however, wrapped up so as not to interfere with what they were doing now - here in a room that was basically empty, save for shelves of supplies to make potential targets and various chalk etchings, symbols, scrawled on the walls and floor. They didn’t need those. “Okay, so - what’s magic like, in the place you dream of?” he asked, because if he could get handle on understanding that, he might know where to start. Penny wasn’t all sweetness and rainbows, but Hades didn’t really mind - he was a kid (well, maybe a little older than that but to Hades, he was still a kid) who wasn’t related to him and didn’t hate him for shit he couldn’t control. That was good enough. The OC was fucked and Penny would not be convinced otherwise. This place should come with a goddamn warning label - “turn back, all ye who enter, lest you end up with fucking powers or some other bullshit”. The fact that magic users (were they still Magicians, or was that exclusive to his dreams? Also, why the fuck did they have to be so fucking pretentious? ‘Magicians’. Too good for fucking ‘wizards’ or whatever) were prevalent enough to require a guild was evidence enough that maybe a little information on the Dreams should be printed in the guidebooks. Penny would’ve never come here if he’d known what was going to happen. “Magic,” he said, “is fucking bullshit. It’s some exclusive club for the privileged and if you do one thing wrong then you fuck everything up.” The Dream about that fucking Mothman had proven that. Penny was gonna have nightmares about that asshole for a while, even outside of his dreams of Brakebills. And that was all aside from his little experiment in the kitchen, which was bad enough. But a few people had made the unfortunately excellent point that if this is what he managed when trying, then what he did accidentally could really fuck something up. He knew that non-verbal casting was possible, both Kady and Quentin had managed it and if Quentin fucking Coldwater could manage it then Penny had no doubt that he himself might be able to manage some serious destruction. With the new addition of fucking Travelling as well, maybe he should start getting a handle on this. “We cast by chanting and doing stupid hand motions. Different chants and jazz fingers for each spell. Lots of Latin and bullshit. Seems to be a spell for everything but good luck figuring them out, they police their shit like you wouldn’t believe. Gotta prove yourself or whatever. But apparently I taught myself how to teleport, so that’s something.” Sounded about right. Magic was a complex sort of subject - there were rules, important ones, but also apparently ways to break those rules too and get around them if you were desperate and generally stupid. For anyone who was daring enough to do that? They paid the price. Trying to learn the nuances of the arcane took years, and luckily Hades had the time to spare - he’d dreamed of being a God (he supposed he was one here too, or rather, he wielded the same powers as he did in the Underworld) and by the time Emma Swan and company had barrelled into Underbrooke, he’d known his craft damn well. “It’s something you can sense, right? Generally, it seems to be that no matter what world you come from magic is kind of...in the universe, all around us, some sort of metaphysical energy and all that shit. You just have a knack for tapping into that energy, yeah? Not everyone does. It can sometimes be bullshit - “ Okay, most of the time it was bullshit, but he tried to use his skills to help people rather than go mad with power. Nothing good was waiting down that road. “But either way, it’s now a part of you like your blood and bones so you’ll get used to it.” He set up a target - it was more like a row of candles in their holders, wicks not lit. Not yet, anyway. “Teleporting will come later. Took me awhile to master that one,” he grinned, showing rows of razor-sharp teeth. “But for now, fire. It’s okay if you fuck up here though. The goal is to light at least one of these wicks. So let’s see that fire.” Hades imagined that at least 3 of the 5 candles would end up exploded during the course of this exercise, but you know. Hashtag yolo? Hippie metaphysical bullshit aside, that wasn’t a bad explanation. Penny could feel something new, something that felt incredibly natural, like he’d been incomplete without it before but just hadn’t known it. Despite his protestations he’d found himself doing magic without even realizing, murmuring the spells he learned in his dreams automatically as he went about his day like he couldn’t fucking not do it. There really was a spell for everything, it seemed. Including one for lighting candles. That was like, some fucking 101 bullshit. Penny passed his hand over each of the candles, rubbing his fingers together over the wicks and murmuring the spell. One by one, each flared to life with a fwoosh, and when they were all burning Penny blew them out. He cocked an eyebrow at Hades and spread his hands as if to say ‘that’s it?’ Admittedly, that was about all he could manage when he actually tried. Apparently he could only get the amount of intention or whatever right when he wasn’t thinking too hard. But Hades didn’t need to know that. Well, slap his ass and call him Sally! Or don’t. But still, Hades was impressed. Penny had managed that without blowing anything up. “Not bad,” the Lord of the Dead praised. “Okay, since you’ve clearly got this, let’s take it a step further. We’ll up the ante on the firepower and see how you do.” Rummaging on the shelves, he pulled down various bits and bobs, setting them on a table across the room - all lined up like brand new targets. They were pretty benign at first, things like paperweights, bookends, empty bottles. But then. Then... A wave of his hand, a puff of black smoke, and he transfigured them all into creepy clown dolls. “Go on. Burn them from where you’re standing.” “Motherf-!” Penny shouted, biting off the end of the curse and only just avoiding the urge to run across the room. He didn’t necessarily have a clown thing but honestly, anyone who could look at those things and not be a little freaked out by their sudden appearance was a goddamn liar. But getting over his surprise, he just was a little pissed because unnecessary. “You’re talking battle magic. Which is, apparently, super illegal for reasons that are probably fucking stupid. So they don’t teach it, because magic is a club for the cool kids. And besides, it’s fucking hard” Kady had told him as much, though didn’t expound on exactly how hard or why she knew how to do it. But, shit, if fucking Coldwater could do it… Penny placed his hands together, left palm to the back of the right, interlaced his fingers, aimed at the stupid fucking creepy ass dolls, concentrated with intent and pushed forward and…! Nothing. Fat lot of nada. “Fuck!” This would all be a lot better if he had some Magicians around that weren’t the fucking Orgy Twins, useless pair that they were. Hell, he’d even take fucking Quentin at this point. He’d prefer Kady, or even Alice (nice hooters under those church girl dresses, he’d definitely looked a few times), or hell, maybe one of the damn professors - Sunderland, or the Dean, or anyone. But all he had were the things he pulled out of the dreams and a creepy shark-toothed man and his creepy clown dolls. Penny tried again, and again, and again, and still, despite, nothing. Hades had a feeling that would happen. But don’t worry, Penny, he had your back - with his shark teeth and potential fiery hair and all (depended on what day it was and who he was with; sometimes he shapeshifted into his ‘normal’ human appearance, sometimes he did halfway, sometimes he didn’t at all). “Relax, kid, you look like you’re constipated. Don’t force it,” he advised and yes, there the clown dolls were. Still there. Smiling creepily. “Literally, relax. Remember what we said earlier - magic is a force in the universe, it’s the air you breathe and in your blood and the marrow of your bones it’s always there. You have to take it, and grab it, and use it as your own. I don’t give a shit what the ones in your dreams did or didn’t teach - because fuck them. Sounded like they wanted all the control for themselves, and to control who learned what so they could feel powerful.” Well, that wasn’t the way it was going to be here. Hades wasn’t trying to decide who was good enough to learn what - all he was going to do was help someone harness the skills he knew they already possessed. “Focus on one at a time. Think of the properties of fire - how hot it burns and what it looks like,” he advised, and if he was really feeling particularly evil, he’d make these clown dolls come alive. Penny rolled his eyes. “If you gotta force it, it’s shit,” he quipped. “I know.” But he tried, again, focusing on the air around him, the gravity holding him down, the blood in his veins, his heartbeat, the magic he could feel thrumming through him. Again, he moved his hands, focusing on the memory of Kady - everything both too fast and too slow so every detail was etched into his memory but doused in a haze of panic, the Mothman advancing on them, the determination in every muscle of her body, the force of the magic coming out of her hands. He took a few deep, steadying breaths, centering himself, trying to find a quiet place in his head, and after a moment he pushed and - ! Nothing. Penny cursed, liberally, and shook his hands out. Fuck this. Hades wanted those dolls set on fire, he’d set them on fucking fire. Just not with this ‘across the room’ bullshit. That was just not happening. He strode over to the table and, with a few hand motions and some angry muttering, a wall of flame that stretched from the table to the ceiling burst forth, his irritation with everything making the spell more potent than it should have been. Whoopsie doo. Of course Hades would cheer on more destruction with fire than was strictly necessary - but really, this structure was well-fortified, he was more than immune to the effects, and sometimes you just had to go balls to the walls to really practice and get shit done. “Nice job,” he nodded. “Now do the same thing, but take a step back - and focus on the temperature of the flames. Can you make them hotter, or less hot?” He’d get Penny throwing fire from across the room eventually - he’d even get him in full control of that fire too, a master of the element. Because sometimes you didn’t need to incinerate a whole row of clown dolls, sometimes you just needed to start a campfire. There was a scale, from lighting a candle to engulfing a building in flames and you needed to be able to do it all. This time the clown dolls weren’t clown dolls, though. They were Trump bobbleheads. Surprise! Less terrifying in appearance, but still ready to be burned. Alright, Penny had to laugh at this one and flicked one of the heads to watch it bobble. Different sort of clown, not that Penny much liked getting political, but hey, he was happy to burn them either way. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself down, tried to follow the hippie bullshit meditation that the Psychics kept trying to push on him (he had to admit, it was unfortunately effective, since any time he did it he Travelled...or at least he did in the dreams, he hoped like hell ‘random teleportation’ wasn’t something he’d have to deal with here), then focused and cast the same spell. He wasn’t quite throwing fire, considering he’d already proved that that wasn’t happening, but the dolls did burst into flame. He did his best to concentrate, to control the fire, the temperature, the size of the flames. It flared up more than he’d like, but overall, much more controlled than the clowns had been. When the Trumpleheads had been reduced to faintly glowing melted plastic, Penny dropped the spell entirely, shaking his hands out. He felt drained, and he wasn’t sure that he’d be able to do that again any time soon, but it was better than he’d been expecting given the failure at battle magic. “Huh,” he said. “Well fuck me.” There was a big ol’ grin on Hades’ face - aww, he was so proud. “I’ll save that for whomever’s caught your interest, kid,” you know, the ‘fuck me’ part (and sometimes he’d make terrible dad jokes, did that count as one of them? Come on, he couldn’t help it). “But see, you can do this. You’ve got it in you.” It didn’t all come at once, you didn’t achieve mastery of any sort of magic overnight - but with practice, and some more practice, you’d get better and better. Until then it just became second nature, and you were comfortable with those skills. “You probably need a break though, huh?” he guessed, since Penny looked fatigued after that last round of concentration. Hades didn’t want to push him too much. There was only one proper response to that anti-proposition, and it was a big ol’ middle finger and an eye roll. “Sure, seems that way. I feel like I got hit by a truck, though.” Maybe it was like lifting weights - not that Penny had ever really done that, his body was borne of schlepping shit around and leading the kind of lifestyle where he didn’t necessarily know when or where his next meal would come from, but he knew that lifting was the kind of thing you did gradually and ached in between. A break sounded ideal, although maybe he’d come back here tomorrow - definitely soon, if not. He’d sworn off of magic in V’s apartment and as much fun as setting shit on fire in the middle of the street would be, he had a feeling the Ministry of Magic or whatever would descend on him. But despite the ache in his bones and how drained he felt, he felt good. He felt, for the first time in his life, like he actually had a purpose to work towards rather than aimless drifting. It was both uplifting and totally unsettling, and the itch to pack up and go was starting to broil under his skin. What he was doing here was everything that he promised himself he’d never do when he kicked Florida to the curb - settling down, finding a purpose, learning (he’d barely made it through high school and he never wanted to pick up a fucking book again after that experience). He had what could be considered a job, a place he could put down as a home address, someone he almost felt comfortable listing as his emergency contact (he fell hard and fast, what could he say - it was why he usually stuck to one-night stands). This wasn’t who he was, or who he thought that he was, anyway. But it felt good. Weird, unnatural, but good. He still wanted to get up and go, though. Maybe he’d take the weekend off at the bars and get a rental car, drive until he had to turn back around. Disappear for a little while. That didn’t sound too bad. He had something to come back to now. “Break sounds good,” he said. He considered thanking Hades for his help, and the words almost left his mouth, but well, he just wasn’t a thankful kind of guy. So instead and raised his hand in a lazy wave and said, “Later.” Then turned on his heel and headed for the door. |