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 Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 10:13 am
The city at night. A formidable place to be lost. No one seems to give anyone else a second glance; everyone seems to be trying to go home. Rituk trembled, afraid. He was alone. Lost and alone. No one here seemed to notice his strange appearance or lack of legs; no one seemed to care about him. The Undera let out a small wail as he noted this. No one was going to take him home to Cecil.
The Dragon undera had become angry with his guardian and had run out hours ago. He now wandered along a filthy sidewalk, gazing fearfully at the garish graffiti that seemed to jump out at him from the buildings. He didn't like it here. He'd been looking for the park; he'd been wanting to hide there. That was somewhere where Cecil could easily find him once he was done being childishly angry. He still searched for the park, though by now he dragged on. He was tired and afraid. An anomaly that no one was going to pay any attention to, apparently.
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 11:25 am
Carmaic wandered through the metropolis streets. By day, the streets were busy, full of excitable people with very important things on their minds and very important places to be and people to meet with, he was told. He believed Sterling, because he knew that the human youth had no reason to lie to him, and because he knew it to be true based on past experiences. Every civilization has a time of day when the hurley burley's done and there's a sort of quiet to the streets.
The city was no different, except that its streets were not empty at night, they were just occupied by a different breed of human being. Some of the denizens of the night streets Carmaic had encountered were not what he would call human, even by the derogatory connotation Drow used in defining the word. Sub-human, would be a fair assessment. Carmaic was comfortable with the thieves and cutthroats, for those were like home, and he knew how to avoid them. It was the crazies which made him uncomfortable. The people who muttered to themselves or - worse - addressed him in raving tones, clawing at his fine mage's jacket with grubby hands ending in jagged fingernails.
Such people frightened him, because at any given moment in the human realm he felt on the edge of passing out of sanity and into the safety and oblivion of madness. He'd gone mad once, and it had been like a vacation. Sadly, his House Matron had kept freakish healing mages working with him until he recovered. He was worth it to her, for reason she did not specify until later. He was a mage, too, powerful and frightening, in his former life. She wanted to harness his power and make him bend his knee and his will to her House. He didn't care.
He didn't care about most things. His lack of regard for his well-being, and his somewhat incongruous confidence in his own magical ability to defend himself contributed to his nightly strolls. He almost wished something out of the ordinary would happen to him. Something which could maybe shake off the oppressive feeling of ennui he had cultivated since Tebynah's suicide. Ennui was just as dangerous as depression and madness, he was learning.
Despite his usual indifference, the slight sound of a wail caught his sensitive ears' attention and his head jerked in that direction. Helping others was not in his nature anymore, as a Drow or one of the orb-born, but he found himself floating at a rapid pace until he found the source of the miserable outcry: another of the orb-born, an undera. He placed himself in the youngling's line of sight and waited.
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 11:34 am
Rituk looked up, confused, as something entered his line of vision. No. It hadn't just entered. It had floated. He looked up a little blankly, finding that he was assessing another undera.
"You..." He blinked slightly, trying to make his miserable expression a little less obvious. "Who are you?" His voice was quiet and slightly wary. He'd always been told not to talk to strangers, but this seemed to be another undera, just like himself. It couldn't hurt.
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 11:49 am
Carmaic hovered in place. He would not draw nearer to the young one without an invitation. Though he seemed to be alone, things were not always what they seemed, and he did not wish to aggravate some unseen viewer. He also did not wish to frighten the young...dragon maybe? He smelled a bit of brimstone and sulfur, which were smells Carmaic associated with dragons and the Southdark. Not that he could really recall much of the Southdark, as those memories were locked away with the rest of his memories of his past life, but he could recall that much. And it was common knowledge a volcanic city would smell thus. Rather like dragons.
"I'm Carmaic," he answered, pretending he couldn't see perfectly clearly how distressed the other orb-born was. The Drow were, after all, quite facile in the dark, though night in the city was still considerably brighter than he had been used to in the Underdark.
"Who are you?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 11:57 am
Rituk looked to Carmaic quietly. "My name's Rituk." He replied uncertainly, shuddering slightly. This undera definitely looked nothing like him. It made Rituk curious, though he hid it, mostly. He had to act like a grown up.
He blinked now, unsure of if he should say anything else to this undera. He seemed... strange. Strange to Rituk, who was conditioned to see a human as perfectly normal. He found he had no identification for the undera's race, either. He did look interesting, however.
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:12 pm
Carmaic raised one eyebrow, wondering how old of an undera Rituk was. If he had newly emerged from his orb, it was unlikely he would know anything of the Underground. It wasn't exactly Carmaic's job to inform the dragonet on that topic. Besides, despite having lived in the Underground and the Underdark for the last several years, and having the dubious distinction of being one of the only orb-born never to have completed his growth, he understood the Underground and King Jareth's orb-born only marginally better than most.
He now considered Rituk's reaction to him. The undera seemed uncertain of him, likely raised by a human, surrounded by humans, and unused to seeing others even remotely like himself. And the resemblance between Carmaic and Rituk was remote. Basically, they both had ribbons instead of legs, and that was where their similarities ended.
"I'm a Drow Elf," he explained, not convinced the term would mean anything to Rituk. "Or, I would be if I had legs. At the moment I'm in an awkward stage between being an undera and having legs again."
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:22 pm
Rituk blinked up to Carmaic as he explained, nodding meekly to the other. "Okay..." He replied, acting as if he understood it all, which he quite obviously didn't. He'd just go with the flow, whether it worked out for his mind or not.
"You're sort of like me." He spoke with muted surprise, looking sheepish. He hadn't ever really taken on an adult-like maturity. Not yet. Cecil treated him like a child.
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:28 pm
"Sort of," Carmaic agreed. "I'm older."
Significanly older. Years older. Probably decades older. But that wasn't very important, when there was every liklihood Rituk would fulfill his purpose here before Carmaic did, and Carmaic couldn't help resenting that a little, but he accepted it as well. There were worse things to be, he knew, than a failed orb-born.
"How is it where you live? Do you like the human you look after?"
He was a little curious, because he had not met another of the orb-born, despite the many years he'd been alive, both before and after becoming one of Jareth's creatures. Before, he had had no interest in the things, and after, the occasion simply did not arise. No one in the Underdark had ever received one of the orb-born from Jareth, and no one else knew of anyone else who had returned in disgrace and failure as he had.
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:32 pm
Rituk nodded slightly, assuming that this undera might be a year or two older than he, not coming even close to percieving the truth of the matter.
He looked up attentively as he was questioned. "The human I look after?" Rituk gave Carmaic a strange look. "Cecil looks after me." He declared. He wouldn't have said this if he'd known that it proved just how childish he really was. Of course Cecil looked after him. It was only natural.
"I live somewhere around here." He continued. "In Cecil's apartment." It would be nice if he could find that apartment right this moment, actually. His conversation with Carmaic had calmed him down, but there was still a trace of worry in his eyes.
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:39 pm
Carmaic smiled a secretive smile, one which said he knew something his companion did not. He quickly banished it and replaced it with a less offensive expression. Displays of power and superiority were all well and good in their proper place, but this was not one of them.
"Cecil," Carmaic mused. He had not heard the name before, but he liked the way it rolled off the tongue. It sounded somewhat serpentine. In addition to cats, Carmaic also liked snakes. He wasn't actually very fond of spiders. "I don't know where exactly you live, but if you'll allow me to do a casting, I can show you how you got here. The route you took to get here, that is."
It was a fairly basic spell due to its limited usefulness. Most people in the Underdark had an unerring sense of direction for dark, seemingly identical passageways, but that didn't stop their mages from developing more and more useless spells. Such as a spell to show a person where they've already been. He had never cast the spell, though he had memorised it some time ago, and was not sure exactly how it would work out, but he assumed it could do no real harm to try it, if Rituk allowed it. He would not perform magic on or near a dragon without the dragon's permission. Things like that got a mage in trouble.
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:46 pm
Rituk didn't really note Carmaic's smile. He was much too busy with his curiosity to really care about the Drow's facial expressions. He nodded absentmindedly as Carmaic spoke his guardian's name and blinked as he spoke of the casting.
"A casting?" The dragonet murmured, looking slightly disgruntled. He basically knew what Carmaic was talking about, but he always like wordy explanations on such things.
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:53 pm
"Mmm...A spell-casting. I know a spell which will make the route you took to get here visible. So you can trace your steps back to your home."
There was, of course, the possibility that the spell wouldn't take. Casting around dragons was not just dangerous because of the dragon's potential wrath, but also because dragons have magics of their own which, being innate and generally unstudied, play havoc with most other, more disciplined formes of magic. Though, as a Drow, which was a form of elf, though neither race would welcome the comparison, Carmaic's spell had a better chance of taking than most others' would.
"It won't hurt, and there should be no ill-effects."
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:58 pm
Rituk nodded slightly as Carmaic explained. "...Okay." He replied, unaware that he was narrowing his eyes at Carmaic slightly. There was a point at which he abandoned his manners and went with pure instinct. And Rituk wasn't actually a very nice undera. He had the personality of your average dragon when he wasn't heeding Cecil's words.
He just didn't want there to be 'ill effects'. This was the reason for his expression, really.
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 1:21 pm
Carmaic noticed the narrowing of Rituk's eyes and approved of his wariness. One should be wary of magic-users. Even the most pleasant, well-meaning ones occasionally made unpleasant mistakes. Not that Carmaic had made any mistakes that he could recall. Perhaps in his first, former life he had made errors during his training, but now his studies were more like reminders. He usually needed only to be shown a spell he had done before and he could cast it again. This was only the case with spells he had cast before, of course. He had not cast this particular spell before.
That being the case, he was very careful in defining the spell's parameters and in making certain that there would be no spillage of magic. This world was not friendly toward real magic, and he didn't wish to waste his power. To be honest, he wasn't entirely sure why he was using his powers to help Rituk, except that it seemed appropriate, given the situation and the remote kinship between them as both being orb-born. When he was finished outlining the parameters of the spell, he spoke the words very softly, so that they were barely more than soft sussurations.
Some mages had to make gestures or use tools to focus their power. Carmaic was fortunate not to be one of them. After his initial casting of a spell, he rarely even had to bother with saying the requisite words. The same went for the peripherals most spells seemed to require. Blood was always popular in that function, and since Carmaic preferred to use his own blood in his castings, just to be safe, it was a well he didn't have to do so very often, or he could find himself anaemic.
For this casting's necessary blood, he borrowed a metal bottlecap and made a small, jagged cut on his elbow, from which welled up four drops of blood. A sufficiency. It was a small casting, and so required very little blood. He had memories of spells which had left him faint with bloodloss. Those sorts of spells still required blood from him, but less than most people required. Part of the reason for that was that the use of mage blood in a casting made it that much more potent, and so it was not necessary to use as much. Of course, most people just used others' blood, making the sacrifice much easier.
When he was finished the magic made strange markings on the ground, as though someone had dangled ribbons dipped in paint along the surface, with occasional handprints and places where, presumably, Rituk had brushed against something. The color was a hot color, like Carmaic would see if there was no light whatsoever and he could only rely on his infrared vision. He didn't realize that he was, in fact, seeing the traces of the heat left by Rituk's passage, and that Rituk probably couldn't see it.
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 1:29 pm
Rituk watched the spell being performed before him a little impatiently, watching the blood spilled with a small frown. He was confused by the spell and annoyed that he didn't understand it.
The annoyance turned into slight suspicion as Carmaic seemingly finished. Rituk didn't like this. He regretted agreeing to it. It somehow felt... bad to him. He shut his eyes, childishly ignoring as much as he could now.
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