PoTM: Destruction, Lesson Two

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    These were the days of Resdaynia, when Chimer and Dwemer lived under the wise and benevolent rule of the AMLSIVI and their champion the Hortator. When the gods of Veloth would retreat unto their own, to mold the cosmos and other matters, the Hortator would at times become confused. Vivec would always be there to advise him, and this is the third of the three lessons of ruling kings:

     

    'The ruling king will remove me, his maker. This is the way of all children. His greatest enemy is the Sharmat, who is the false dreamer. You or he is the shingle, Hortator. Beware the wrong walking path. Beware the crime of benevolence. Behold him by his words.'

     

    I AM THE SHARMAT

    I AM OLDER THAN MUSIC

    WHAT I BRING IS LIGHT

    WHAT I BRING IS A STAR

    WHAT I BRING IS

    AN ANCIENT SEA

    WHEN YOU SLEEP YOU SEE ME

    DANCING AT THE CORE

    IT IS NOT A BLIGHT

    IT IS MY HOUSE

    I PUT A STAR

    INTO THE WORLD'S MOUTH

    TO MURDER IT

    TEAR DOWN THE PYLONS

    MY BLIND FISH

    SWIM IN THE NEW

    PHLOGISTON

    TEAR DOWN THE PYLONS

    MY DEAF MOONS

    SING AND BURN

    AND ORBIT ME

    I AM OLDER THAN MUSIC

    WHAT I BRING IS LIGHT

    WHAT I BRING IS A STAR

    WHAT I BRING IS

    AN ANCIENT SEA

     

    'You alone, though you come again and again, can unmake him. Whether I allow it is within my wisdom. Go unarmed into his den with these words of power: AE GHARTOK PADHOME [CHIM] AE ALTADOON. Or do not. The temporal myth is man. Reach heaven by violence. This magic I give to you: the world you will rule is only an intermittent hope and you must be the letter written in uncertainty.'

     

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.

     

    For the past few days Grulmar was consumed with improving his skills with spells that drained magicka, practicing as often as he could. His test subject was usually Mahti and frankly he was the best test subject he could hope for. Every liiving creature possessed magicka, the Riekling wasn't an exception, but he had so little that when Grulmar cast his spells on him, he barely noticed anything.

     

    His success with Mahti inspired Grulmar to try to push his research a little further, experimenting with Daedric runes, trying to figure out the right combination for a spell rune that would drain magicka from anyone who would trigger it. But he wasn't making progress fast enough, so he got frustrated with it, shifting his attention onto something else.

     

    His endless frustration with the Destruction school, especially with its elemental spells, came back to haunt him, but this time, he decided to crack it. He could cast a fire spell transmitted through his hand - though he always had to cast Restoration protection from the fire to counter the pain. But here on Solstheim, especially with Ash Spawn, he realized that fire wouldn’t be of much use to him - unless he wanted to warm his tea or something.

     

    So he began practicing with the cold.

     

    His first tries weren't very successful - well, not at all successful, to be honest. He tried to imagine a cold stream, a frozen river, and tap into it,  but that didn't work.

     

    He was standing next to a well a mere two hundred steps from Tel Mithryn, with a bucket of cold water at his feet and he was frowning it with annoyance. How do ya create cold? He knew that heat was created by the quickening of magicka's fabric and when he tried to reverse the process by slowing the oscillation of those tiny parts of magicka, all he got was a minor temperature drop. But nothing so drastic as freezing the water in the bucket.

     

    What the tusk is cold? he wondered, sorely tempted to kick the bucket and spill the water onto the ash-covered ground. What am I doin' wrong? He wasn't capable of creating cold out of nothing and he wasn't able to freeze something by compressing the cold around him either. So what the tusk was the problem?

     

    He shook his head and began pacing around the well, steam coming out of his mouth as his hot breath clashed with the cold air. What is cold? It was the opposite of heat, that was clear.

     

    Grulmar suddenly stopped and frowned. He looked up at the sky, covered by thick clouds which prevented the sun’s rays from reaching the earth, giving it its warmth. “Cold,” Grulmar murmured, deep in thought. What if there is no such thing as cold, at least on its own? What if cold is basically the lack of warmth?

     

    If ya make a hot soup and put it in a cold room, it will eventually cool down to the same temperature as it is in the room. But how does that cold gets in the room in the first place? Cold air goes down, warm air up. So if there is a draft of cold air goin' into the room and then somethin' that lets the warm air go up, the cold will take hold of the room. So warm or heat has to go away.

     

    That could be tuskin' it!

     

    He cast a protection against cold spell on himself - just in case - and rested his hand on the water's surface. He reached out, feeling the magicka all around him and he began pushing at it, pushing the warmth away from his hand. His hand began steaming as the temperature around his skin suddenly dropped and the water began cracking with frost, the water slowly turning into ice as Grulmar poured more and more magicka into his spell, pushing away the warmth from the water.

     

    The water completely froze, along with the wooden bucket and Grulmar grinned. He started to rise to his feet, only to scowl when he realized that his hand was frozen in the water. “The shit?” he cursed and pulled, trying to get his hand free, but all he did was lift the heavy bucket full of water, still attached to his hand. “Shor's frozen dickhole!” he growled, shaking his hand. How the tusk could ya forgot to take yer hand out, ya tuskin' green-skinned idiot!? “I'm goin' to melt ya, ya damn ice cube!”

     

    He cast a fire protection spell on himself and then reached into the stream of fire, drawing from it, quickening the magicka's flow around his hand with the intent to create fire.

     

    And fire he created.  

     

    The ice was engulfed in flames, only it didn’t melt. “The tusk?!” he nearly yelled in frustration, and then he figured it out. The fire protection spell. It included the ice cube! Ya idiot!

     

    “Setting ice on fire? Now that's a new one,” a voice behind him sounded and he noticed Talvas standing behind the well, with an amused look on his face. Amused? More like he's tryin' really hard not to die laughin'! Tusk!

     

    “Don't just stand there like an idiot! Help me, for tusk's sake!” Grulmar growled. “Don't want to run around with ice cube on my hand forever!”

     

    “I don't know,” Talvas shrugged, his eyes twinkling. Oh, y’are loving this, aren’t ya? “I think it sort of suits you. But what do I know about these things, right?”

     

    Bugger! Grulmar knew Talvas was only messing with him, but it was so...infuriating. Once again, Grulmar proved that he didn't think it completely through, that he overlooked the obvious and thus proved what a bungler he was. At least, that’s how he saw it and he had a suspicion that Talvas saw it that way too, no doubt in his mind.. Which really hurt. “Fine!” he barked, frowning at the cube of ice. “Tusk it!” He lifted his hand along with the cube and bucket and then smashed it against the well. The bucket and ice shattered, taking a pieces of skin from Grulmar's hand with it, and he growled in shock and pain. “Mothertusker!” he cursed, holding his throbbing hand. Why do I always have to injure myself?!

     

    “Oh,” Talvas raised his eyebrows and clicked with his tongue. “That must have hurt.”

     

    “No shit! How did ya figure that out?” Grulmar retorted, sarcasm dripping from his voice like poison while he held his slowly bleeding hand. First burned - several times - and now tuskin'...I don't even know what this is.

     

    “Care to explain precisely what you were doing?” Talvas asked, leaning against the well with a smirk on his face.  

     

    Grulmar sighed. “Trying to figure out how to freeze the water. I cast a protection spell against the cold and got my hand stuck on the ice. Then I cast protection against fire, so I could cast a fire spell to melt it and free my hand.” He then shook his head. “Now that I've said, it out loud, it sounds really stupid.”

     

    “Yeah, it does. Why didn’t you just cast a fire spell without the protection?”

     

    “Because I get burned!” the Orc grimaced. “What a tuskin' bungler am I, right? I just can't get it right, I can't ignore the fire.” He sat on the ground, sinking into the ash, and leaned his back against the well.

     

    Talvas sighed and sat down next to him. “I don't know, Windbag, but have you considered that maybe you're just trying to swim against the stream?” Grulmar looked at him with a frown and Talvas raised his hand, to stop him before he could speak his mind - which would most likely involve quite a lot of cursing. “That's not an insult. Listen, what I'm trying to say is that maybe Destruction isn't something you are supposed to focus on. Just look at that stuff you do with knives and telekinesis, or your Illusion spells. You're good at them, really good.”

     

    Grulmar sighed. “I know, but...I still feel like a bungler, ya know. I see ya mages do all this fancy stuff like throwing fireballs or ice storms and what can I do? Throw rocks and toothpicks.”

     

    “Bullshit,” Talvas barked and the Orc looked at him with raised eyebrows. “You can do much more than that. I have an idea.” He stood up and then looked down on Grulmar. “Come on, get up off your arse. Let's try something out, f’lah.”

     

    “F’lah?” Grulmar asked with suspicion.

     

    “It's meaning is similar to the way you use ‘matey’ all the time,” the Dunmer smiled and then took a deep breath. “Alright, so you’ve seen me cast ice storms or those ice spikes, right?”

     

    “Yeah?”

     

    “So here's the thing. When I cast the spike, I freeze the air and water in it, shaping it into the spike. But how do I throw it? I don't use telekinesis for that. The spike is propelled forward by a strong gust of cold air. So it is not controlled by magic once it is created.”

     

    Grulmar narrowed his eyes and tilted his head to the side. “I'm probably stupid, but yer point?”

     

    “The ice, either the spike or the shards whirling in the ice storms, is a solid object created by magic but not magic itself,” Talvas said and Grulmar suddenly grasped the meaning. He got on his feet, holding his hand and grinned.

     

    “Solid objects. They can be grabbed. By telekinesis,” he murmured, feeling his face light up with a smile.

     

    “If you can catch them of course,” Talvas added and Grulmar just chuckled at that.

     

    “Stupid question. Ya said it yerself: I'm good at that shit.”

     

    “So let's give it a try then, shall we?”

     

     

Comments

7 Comments   |   A-Pocky-Hah! and 7 others like this.
  • Caladran
    Caladran   ·  March 6, 2018
    Through mistakes we learn.. :)
  • Sotek
    Sotek   ·  July 6, 2017
    The water completely froze, along with the wooden bucket and Grulmar grinned. He started to rise to his feet, only to scowl when he realized that his hand was frozen in the water. “The shit?” he cursed and pulled, trying to get his hand free, but all he d...  more
  • Paws
    Paws   ·  June 22, 2017
    “Shor's frozen dickhole!” Kyne winces at having her sacred grotto referred to as such.

    Telekinisis on ice spkes is pretty sweet. Sweeter than snowberry slice or snow throat pie.
  • BlueDremora
    BlueDremora   ·  June 18, 2017
    O.O = face of love
  • A-Pocky-Hah!
    A-Pocky-Hah!   ·  June 18, 2017
    Trying to catch ice spikes using telekinesis? Now that's something unheard of...
    • Karver the Lorc
      Karver the Lorc
      A-Pocky-Hah!
      A-Pocky-Hah!
      A-Pocky-Hah!
      Trying to catch ice spikes using telekinesis? Now that's something unheard of...
        ·  June 18, 2017
      Why not, right? They are solid objects lacking the "magicka" that prevents telekinesis from working. As Talvas said, ice is frozen water propelled forward by strong gust of cold wind, so once the spike is flying it is a normal solid object. It literally b...  more
      • The Sunflower Manual
        The Sunflower Manual
        Karver the Lorc
        Karver the Lorc
        Karver the Lorc
        Why not, right? They are solid objects lacking the "magicka" that prevents telekinesis from working. As Talvas said, ice is frozen water propelled forward by strong gust of cold wind, so once the spike is flying it is a normal solid object. It literally b...  more
          ·  June 18, 2017
        Even though I'm not using this take on magic myself (elemental spells use Magicka as a conductive substance in RTHL) I really like where you're going with this, Karver-jo. You can apply the same theory to fireballs too, assuming that they're simply a bund...  more