WHAT. Adaine's magic is gone? Changed? Replaced? She isn't sure, so she seeks out Caleb for help. WHERE. Xhorhaus WHEN. First day of the power swapping plot WARNINGS. Some talk of anxiety/panic for Adaine, but otherwise none! STATUS. Complete
Adaine wasn't quite so reliant upon magic as some wizards might have been. Yes, she was guilty of using her Mage Hand to turn off her bedroom lamp at night and she had used Prestidigitation more than once when it was her night to wash the dishes, but cantrips aside, she tended to save her well of magic for schoolwork or class and when she needed to stock books at work and needed an Unseen Servant to reach the highest shelves. Then there was her oracle magic, of course, which tended to happen whether she wanted it to or not. It left her liking to do other tasks throughout the day herself, using her hands and having a different sort of control of her surroundings.
And so, when she woke up without her own magic--and instead with someone else's, not that she realized that just yet--it took Adaine several moments to realize what had happened. She felt off right away, that constant, unique to her connection that she felt to the magic of Vallo not at its usual frequency, for lack of a better word. It wasn't the first time that Vallo's magic had acted up, though, and her concern was set aside for about thirty seconds more, giving her just enough time to get out of bed, put on her slippers, and then realize that Boggy was gone.
It wasn't just that he wasn't in her room, Adaine knew immediately. Even when he was dismissed into the place that he went during the very rare times that she dismissed Boggy for his own safety, she could feel a connection to him. That was entirely gone now. Her concern quickly began to rise and take a right turn into panic, especially when she turned, pointed through the wall then cast Message.
"Kir? It's Adaine. Can you reply to this?"
She stood there in silence for far longer than she knew was required to confirm that the message hadn't been sent. In a spur decision, she looked across her room, cast Misty Step, then closed her eyes and drew in a deep, deep breath when she didn't teleport.
After several bouts of deep breaths and counting the seconds out, Adaine's heart was beating marginally slower in her chest. The panic was now flirting with the anxiety she was already trying to keep at bay and both were still simmering under the surface, evident by how quickly she pounded down the steps of the Xhorhaus, barely registering the inhabitants, or lack thereof, of each room as she searched out for Caleb. There were many magical people under this roof that she knew would be willing to help her, but it was Caleb, her wizard of a father figure who managed to keep her grounded, that she immediately knew she needed in this moment.
Adaine found him in the library and hovered in the doorway for a moment before saying a soft, "Caleb?" to announce her presence. Her hands were at the hem of her pajama shirt, fidgeting as she needed to keep her hands busy. "Do you have a moment?"
It might’ve been a weekday morning, but Caleb still had an hour or two before he had to be anywhere, and that left him with free time to snuggle cats and read books in the library. And true to form, he had a cat on his lap, and then another on the back of his chair playing with his pulled-back hair. It was probably the closest he would come to a happy afterlife anytime soon, and he was happy with that.
He was used to the kids popping in early in the morning - usually it was Kir with some kind of argument as to why he shouldn’t have to go to school, or Kiri getting into some kind of mischief early. Adaine wasn’t usually the type, not unless something was wrong, and that thought made him sit up abruptly. It disturbed Frumpkin from his lap, who immediately gave Caleb the most annoyed side eye before jumping down and going to the nearby fireplace to slump.
But that gave Caleb the opportunity to stand. She physically looked fine, outside of that worried look that Caleb didn’t like seeing. One that possibly came with unhappy memories, and he was far too versed in that since his arrival in Vallo. “Ja, I have many. Are you alright?”
"I'm unsure," Adaine said immediately, in the sort of tone that made it clear that she was not, but she was hanging onto whatever threads she could to put on some sort of front that she was. Her head dipped forward and she looked at her hands in front of her, palms up and fingers splayed out. "Something is--my magic is acting oddly."
An understatement, she thought to herself as she began to make the simple motions to cast Prestidigitation with the intent of creating some simple blue sparks in the palm of her hand. Adaine moved a bit slower than usual, concentrating a bit harder to keep her hands from shaking. It hardly mattered, though, as no sparks appeared and she simply sucked in a quick breath. She had been expecting as much, however the hope had still started in her chest that perhaps earlier had simply been a fluke.
Adaine looked back up at Caleb, her hands moving to press to her abdomen in an effort to hide that they were, in fact, starting to tremble. "Is yours normal?"
Caleb stepped forward immediately, glad the gat had already been dislodged so he wasn’t having to run off with that abrupt movement now. He hadn’t used much magic yet this morning, outside of the lights to guide him to the library, and pulled one hand up to turn it, grabbing the flying lights at the corner of the room.
They moved with familiarity and glided through the air towards both Caleb and Adaine, to float around them. “I had not noticed anything off yet, nein.” He didn’t like that she was not feeling herself, though, and it certainly did not discount that something could be wrong across the board. “It is possible this is like Vallo’s other antics, where it is some and not all, but we will figure it out.”
He reached out to touch her shoulder lightly, and then squeeze it, before he moved past her to a drawer with components stored. Caleb pulled out a copper wire and offered it to Adaine. “Let us try a few things first. Message?”
Despite that her anxiety was still dialed up and as ever present as it generally could be, Adaine felt something settle in her chest. She had known that coming to Caleb was the right call, not just for his expertise in magic. Even before things had taken a turn toward truly bad and evil when it came to her father, she could have never imagined going to him for support. Her father likely would have turned her out entirely if she'd suddenly lost connection to her wizard-related magic. Now, though, she hadn't even had to pause to think about or debate it before she hurried to find Caleb. That may have been a small thing to some, but to Adaine, who had spent the first sixteen years of her life without any real trusted adult or parental figure in her life, it was near everything.
Adaine took the wire from Caleb, bending it carefully between her fingers to put it in the configuration that she liked. Unnecessary for the casting, but a habit that brought her more familiar comfort. She took a few steps back from Caleb, a flicker of hope in her eyes as she began to cast. Hands to her mouth, she whispered into the wire, "Can you hear me?"
Even as she said it, Adaine knew that it hadn't worked. That connection, the magical spark that was as familiar to her as breathing wasn't there. There was something, though, some undercurrent that she couldn't put her finger on or a name to, just that it wasn't right. Eyes still on Caleb, she let her hands and shoulders drop as she confirmed, "Nothing?"
Caleb nodded, but he hated it. He hated to confirm to her that he heard nothing other than her whisper, there in the room with him. He frowned, and moved back to her personal space without asking first - that wasn’t like him, but he somehow didn't think she would complain. He gently took the copper wire from her hands and tucked it away. “Nein, nothing. But I am not done.”
There was no point in going through more magic that they both knew, spells he had taught her, but there could be other things. “How do you feel, physically? Do you feel any other changes?” There was always the possibility her magic was manifesting, or it was temporarily gone - as Vallo was so fond of doing.
He reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, and squeezed. This time he did not pull away after just a few moments, and left his hand there, warm and comforting. “We will go through a checklist of things, to figure this out.”
Caleb was right in that Adaine wasn't about to complain about his stepping into her space--just as she didn't even think about complaining when he touched her shoulder. Just as his presence was grounding, the little shows of comfort were keeping her calmed, something that she appreciated as she clearly needed it in the moment. Without barely thinking of it, she lifted a hand to rest on Caleb's at her shoulder, all while she pulled in a deep, centering breath.
That done, Adaine mulled over Caleb's words. "Physically, I feel the same. Nothing seems off there." Outside of that missing sensation that was her magic that was always simmering under the surface, her connection to the future always there and ready to be triggered through vision or her tapping into it, she knew that she was otherwise unchanged in that regard. She wasn't sure if that was comforting or not; maybe if there was a physical change, there'd be an easy way to pinpoint what was going on.
She focused a bit harder then, brow furrowing as she let her mind wander toward potential changes, and almost immediately felt something she had missed in her panic. Adaine looked up, glancing around the room. She knew that Caleb was before her and Frumpkin not far away, but there was something more to it. She could feel them, sense a connection there that she normally didn't. As she focused even harder, she realized it wasn't just the two of them. Their house was full of people and animals, that was just common knowledge. But that same sense of connection, as though she was feeling their essence, was there and it was entirely new.
"Ah. There's something different," she started, words coming a bit haltingly as she tried to decide how best to describe it. Adaine lifted her hand off of Caleb's, gesturing toward himself, then beyond the walls. "I can feel everyone--sense them, if that makes sense. It's odd, like I can feel their very life force. That's not normal."
Caleb’s eyebrows went up, and he looked back to the door, and the wall, as if he could see through them himself. He couldn’t, but he squinted a little anyway.
He made sure to right his face a little when he looked back at Adaine - Caleb had learned to school his expressions around the kids as a whole, as Kiri did love saying the most shocking things in other people’s voices at the worst times. It came in handy now, as he didn’t want to look anything other than sure of himself in this moment.
“Interesting. Useful.” In many ways, it was very useful. “Take a deep breath and focus on one specific person. Essek. Kir. Vax’ildan. It is your choice, but see how you can focus it by picking one only. Can you see them? Is it a stronger connection, this way? Could there be communication involved?”
He paused, took one step back to survey her while she concentrated. “Take your time. I am not in a rush.”
Nodding toward Caleb once, Adaine turned and concentrated toward the presence that she thought might have been Kir. She hadn't been able to reach out through him with her normal magical means earlier, but maybe this new type of magic, wherever it had come from, would be different.
And so, as Caleb instructed, she concentrated. She tried to open up a line of communication, her eyes narrowing as she mentally asked, "Kir? Can you hear me?"
As she did, though, the concentration seemed to open up the world around her. Suddenly, it wasn't just the others that lived with her that she could sense, but the cats, the moorbounders outside, Nugget--if she wasn't mistaken, she thought she could even sense the plants that were growing within the greenhouses on the roof, the massive glowing tree itself, even. It was fascinating and overwhelming all at once and Adaine shook her head, trying to clear it as she blinked rapidly and looked toward Caleb.
"You can't just wake up and have suddenly swapped being a wizard for a druid overnight, right?" Even as she said it, the suggestion sounded impossibly silly. "I know there are more types of magic in Vallo than just what we--" She motioned between the two of them, then the walls and house in general as all the occupants did have that in common, even if Adaine wasn't from the same world as them-- "practice, so maybe it is something else, but this feels very, I don't know. Nature-ish, in a way I didn't really notice nature before."
Caleb made a little shrugging gesture as if he could not definitively tell her nein, and that it was definitely impossible. Because he did not know. “In a place like Vallo, it is very hard to say.” But Caleb was intellectually minded enough to still want to solve this, even if the world was against them every step of the way.
“Would you like to go into nature with me? To see if we can pinpoint something?” Even if they could not reverse these new skills to her more usual ones, he was there to help her practice what was new, to try it out. “I am no druid, but I have had a lot of experience with Caduceus and his love of nature. We could go for a walk and see the cats. Kir will no doubt be up soon and looking for a way to get out of school for the week because of this.”
At least every attempt Kir made was adorable, and Caleb was not that concerned about him missing school. He looked forward to the ways Kir would come up with, even if Caleb was one to turn most of them down.
Adaine nodded, clearly liking Caleb's suggestion. She wasn't much of a nature person, but she had learned a lot from Sandra Lynn during their sophomore year spring break adventure and had at least come to appreciate Vallo's forest for what it was in the handful of months since she had moved into the Xhorhaus. Catrin had told her stories of camping and beach trips, so there must have been some transition there to enjoying it more and more. Was this the start of that?
"If you don't mind," Adaine agreed, hands coming together in front of her and fingers twining together. She felt less anxious than before, even if they had only crossed off ideas from the list of possibilities. It was a start, though, and she wasn't alone--that was especially important.
At that thought, Adaine looked up to Caleb and then stepped forward, hesitating just a moment in her typical awkward way before hugging him. "Thank you," she said quietly. "You being here means a lot to me."
“Oh.” Caleb was used to Kir and Kiri hugging him. Kiri, especially, was very fond of them, and it had been a slight adjustment figuring out how to navigate learning to hug so openly - he had been hugged very much as a child, and giving that back sometimes sent a pang through his heart, but it always felt worth it each time they clutched him back. He and Adaine had hugged, a few times, but she was obviously older and it hadn’t come up as much.
He didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around her and squeeze, though. He pressed a gentle kiss to the top of her head, keenly aware of how little she’d ever had in parental affection. “Ja, of course. There is nowhere else I would rather be.” After the hug had hit its appropriate amount of time, he stepped back and held out his arm to let her go through the door first. “Let us go experiment and see what you are made of, Adaine.”