Stratos Caelus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
auspex_caelo) wrote2018-11-25 03:55 pm
auspex_caelo) wrote2018-11-25 03:55 pm
Loud and Clear
[Follows from this post.]
Arvenna’s papers had been illuminating. He’d never know whether she’d intentionally hidden so much information, but bundled in with her own research had been much older journals, observations and collected instructions going back several generations of their family. Knowledge they hadn’t immediately missed, but much of it very relevant to his interests indeed. He’d risen before dawn to take one particular set of notes back to Skyrim with him. To practice and experiment for a few hours before he called his best friend and lieutenant into his tent.
Stratos breathed in slowly, eyes on his target. Celann waited patiently as he had a thousand times before. Illusion magic was something you could at least try out on your friends – if you were skilled, and careful in the spells you tested on them. Doubly careful if you wanted them to remain friends afterward.
In Celann’s case, the knight knew enough illusion magic of his own to resist any ill effects, and he’d helped Stratos test the silence spell before, many times. He knew firsthand that so far the observed effects were absolutely non-existent. Which was frustrating when their ancestors had regularly bought and sold detailed tomes for the spell. A mere two centuries later, Stratos had struggled for months to try and recreate the effects. To his credit, Celann didn’t ask if Stratos really thought it would work this time. He waited patiently as his friend wound his way through the modified gestures and hit him with a burst of pale green light that wrapped over his skin and left a faint glimmer atop his skin.
Celann frowned, lifting a hand to inspect. “Well, it doesn’t hurt, but I do feel… let me try.”
He curled his hand to summon a spell, and Stratos held his breath. Nothing happened. Celann’s eyes narrowed as he strained almost visibly, but Stratos sensed nothing, and not so much as a glint of light appeared in his hand.
“It’s worked, hasn’t it?” Stratos said quietly. He felt himself smiling in a way he hadn’t for years.
“I can’t cast at all. By Magnus, I think you’ve really done it!” Celann sounded as excited as he felt, now, beaming beneath his mustache. “Gods, but it’s strong, too.” He paused. “How long do you expect it to last?”
“Ah.” Stratos opened his mouth, shut it, and drew it ruefully. He sighed and reached into his research satchel for an hourglass.
Celann laughed. “All right, then. I shall fetch the dice, and you can explain how in Oblivion you finally silenced me.”
“If we can learn to cast it quickly and easily, we can disarm their wizards with a single spell.” Stratos paced the forge floor. “It won’t work so readily on the strongest minds, but it’s an advantage we’ve been missing for centuries.” Every lowly Thalmor soldier had potent magic on their side as well as armor and blade. Few legionnaires besides the actual wizards could match that deadly advantage.
Marcella leaned a hammer on her workbench and folded her hands on it, chin resting on her knuckles as she watched him. “I’d love to see one of those bastards’ faces when they realized you’d bound their magic. But that doesn’t really solve the problem, does it? You and your knights and the other Legion wizards may master the spell, but the average legionnaire won’t be able to use it when a pack of elves starts throwing fire at him.”
“No, indeed.” Stratos shook his head, but he was still smiling as he turned to her. “The Seventh is full of Bretons, they may have more use for it. But if we could turn it into an enchantment and bind it to a sword – or arrows – any auxiliary can use…”
Marcella leaned back and lifted a callused hand, despite her own – small – smile. “Slow down, black horse. I’d love to, but you’d better work out just how many soul gems you expect the Legion to use. Magic weapons need to be powered, remember?”
“…That’s a wise concern.” His enthusiasm tempered, Stratos nodded slowly. “Of course we’ll need to determine the most efficient deployment. Some logistical studies…”
“And besides,” Marcella went on pointedly, bringing his attention back to her face, “I only take one commission at a time.” Her mouth curled into a true grin as Stratos blinked at her. “Don’t you want to ask how it’s coming along?”
She showed him into her private workshop, behind the heavier doors and walls, and from the safebox set into the floor she took out a set of devices like metal rods with heavy bases or handles, setting them on the work table. Stratos shut the door firmly behind them. It was near two years now since he first came to his cousin with a question, an offhand thought Felix had mentioned during a Nexus conversation. A tiny seed that might, perhaps, have finally borne some fruit. At least, to judge by the smith-enchanter's good mood.
“I had to work out what to do with the pulses,” Marcella was saying. “And tuning it to respond to such a tiny stimulus. I ended up making each signal rod and listener together, to attune the resistance enchantment properly. They’re paired, now.” For a woman who’d been so dubious about the bizarre project her cousin had asked her to undertake (who put a lightning resistance enchantment on a weapon? Why?) she was fiercely enthusiastic about explaining it now. “I had to redesign the basic enchantment from the ground up, just to get it to do half of what you wanted. It’s combined with an absorption enchantment and then I had to make it audible.. I still haven’t fully solved how to stop it from responding to anything and everything, by the way. I had to bundle it up to stop it making noise while I was enchanting a shock mace next door.”
“But the concept works?” Stratos picked up one of the smaller rods with handles: a signal wand, as he thought of them. There was a button inset in the handle. Stratos pressed it cautiously, and felt the faintest tingle in the air. One of the rods on the table let out a bright tone like the chime of a Nirnroot. Delighted, he pressed it again for a couple of moments, and the chime lasted two beats.
“Marcella,” he breathed excitedly. “Do you realize what you’ve done here?”
“I know what you told me,” she replied. Her eyes were shining with the pride of a craftswoman as she watched, arms folded. “But- they’re clever devices, I’m not too humble to say so. I just don’t see how they can work across hundreds of leagues, as you say. There’s barely a petty soul in each of them, and far less than that power in each casting. How can you expect them to reach so far?”
“Perhaps they won’t yet. But it is possible, trust me. We just need to test if we’ve achieved that.” And if we prove the concept is sound, this could be a far more powerful weapon than a mere silence spell.
Marcella picked the other chiming rod from the table and handed it to him. “Go on, then. I’ll start in ten minutes.”
In Bruma, Stratos set the things on his bedroom table. Occasionally the receiving rod chimed softly, at random. The effect of distant lightning storms, Stratos told himself, with mingled impatience and hope.
Then, finally, a long, clear chime. Three steady notes. Silence. Three more. A long tone.
Stratos laughed out loud, with no-one around to hear. He snatched up his own wand and repeated the message back. A simple little sequence, with a heavy meaning behind it.
It said, I hear you.
Arvenna’s papers had been illuminating. He’d never know whether she’d intentionally hidden so much information, but bundled in with her own research had been much older journals, observations and collected instructions going back several generations of their family. Knowledge they hadn’t immediately missed, but much of it very relevant to his interests indeed. He’d risen before dawn to take one particular set of notes back to Skyrim with him. To practice and experiment for a few hours before he called his best friend and lieutenant into his tent.
Stratos breathed in slowly, eyes on his target. Celann waited patiently as he had a thousand times before. Illusion magic was something you could at least try out on your friends – if you were skilled, and careful in the spells you tested on them. Doubly careful if you wanted them to remain friends afterward.
In Celann’s case, the knight knew enough illusion magic of his own to resist any ill effects, and he’d helped Stratos test the silence spell before, many times. He knew firsthand that so far the observed effects were absolutely non-existent. Which was frustrating when their ancestors had regularly bought and sold detailed tomes for the spell. A mere two centuries later, Stratos had struggled for months to try and recreate the effects. To his credit, Celann didn’t ask if Stratos really thought it would work this time. He waited patiently as his friend wound his way through the modified gestures and hit him with a burst of pale green light that wrapped over his skin and left a faint glimmer atop his skin.
Celann frowned, lifting a hand to inspect. “Well, it doesn’t hurt, but I do feel… let me try.”
He curled his hand to summon a spell, and Stratos held his breath. Nothing happened. Celann’s eyes narrowed as he strained almost visibly, but Stratos sensed nothing, and not so much as a glint of light appeared in his hand.
“It’s worked, hasn’t it?” Stratos said quietly. He felt himself smiling in a way he hadn’t for years.
“I can’t cast at all. By Magnus, I think you’ve really done it!” Celann sounded as excited as he felt, now, beaming beneath his mustache. “Gods, but it’s strong, too.” He paused. “How long do you expect it to last?”
“Ah.” Stratos opened his mouth, shut it, and drew it ruefully. He sighed and reached into his research satchel for an hourglass.
Celann laughed. “All right, then. I shall fetch the dice, and you can explain how in Oblivion you finally silenced me.”
“If we can learn to cast it quickly and easily, we can disarm their wizards with a single spell.” Stratos paced the forge floor. “It won’t work so readily on the strongest minds, but it’s an advantage we’ve been missing for centuries.” Every lowly Thalmor soldier had potent magic on their side as well as armor and blade. Few legionnaires besides the actual wizards could match that deadly advantage.
Marcella leaned a hammer on her workbench and folded her hands on it, chin resting on her knuckles as she watched him. “I’d love to see one of those bastards’ faces when they realized you’d bound their magic. But that doesn’t really solve the problem, does it? You and your knights and the other Legion wizards may master the spell, but the average legionnaire won’t be able to use it when a pack of elves starts throwing fire at him.”
“No, indeed.” Stratos shook his head, but he was still smiling as he turned to her. “The Seventh is full of Bretons, they may have more use for it. But if we could turn it into an enchantment and bind it to a sword – or arrows – any auxiliary can use…”
Marcella leaned back and lifted a callused hand, despite her own – small – smile. “Slow down, black horse. I’d love to, but you’d better work out just how many soul gems you expect the Legion to use. Magic weapons need to be powered, remember?”
“…That’s a wise concern.” His enthusiasm tempered, Stratos nodded slowly. “Of course we’ll need to determine the most efficient deployment. Some logistical studies…”
“And besides,” Marcella went on pointedly, bringing his attention back to her face, “I only take one commission at a time.” Her mouth curled into a true grin as Stratos blinked at her. “Don’t you want to ask how it’s coming along?”
She showed him into her private workshop, behind the heavier doors and walls, and from the safebox set into the floor she took out a set of devices like metal rods with heavy bases or handles, setting them on the work table. Stratos shut the door firmly behind them. It was near two years now since he first came to his cousin with a question, an offhand thought Felix had mentioned during a Nexus conversation. A tiny seed that might, perhaps, have finally borne some fruit. At least, to judge by the smith-enchanter's good mood.
“I had to work out what to do with the pulses,” Marcella was saying. “And tuning it to respond to such a tiny stimulus. I ended up making each signal rod and listener together, to attune the resistance enchantment properly. They’re paired, now.” For a woman who’d been so dubious about the bizarre project her cousin had asked her to undertake (who put a lightning resistance enchantment on a weapon? Why?) she was fiercely enthusiastic about explaining it now. “I had to redesign the basic enchantment from the ground up, just to get it to do half of what you wanted. It’s combined with an absorption enchantment and then I had to make it audible.. I still haven’t fully solved how to stop it from responding to anything and everything, by the way. I had to bundle it up to stop it making noise while I was enchanting a shock mace next door.”
“But the concept works?” Stratos picked up one of the smaller rods with handles: a signal wand, as he thought of them. There was a button inset in the handle. Stratos pressed it cautiously, and felt the faintest tingle in the air. One of the rods on the table let out a bright tone like the chime of a Nirnroot. Delighted, he pressed it again for a couple of moments, and the chime lasted two beats.
“Marcella,” he breathed excitedly. “Do you realize what you’ve done here?”
“I know what you told me,” she replied. Her eyes were shining with the pride of a craftswoman as she watched, arms folded. “But- they’re clever devices, I’m not too humble to say so. I just don’t see how they can work across hundreds of leagues, as you say. There’s barely a petty soul in each of them, and far less than that power in each casting. How can you expect them to reach so far?”
“Perhaps they won’t yet. But it is possible, trust me. We just need to test if we’ve achieved that.” And if we prove the concept is sound, this could be a far more powerful weapon than a mere silence spell.
Marcella picked the other chiming rod from the table and handed it to him. “Go on, then. I’ll start in ten minutes.”
In Bruma, Stratos set the things on his bedroom table. Occasionally the receiving rod chimed softly, at random. The effect of distant lightning storms, Stratos told himself, with mingled impatience and hope.
Then, finally, a long, clear chime. Three steady notes. Silence. Three more. A long tone.
Stratos laughed out loud, with no-one around to hear. He snatched up his own wand and repeated the message back. A simple little sequence, with a heavy meaning behind it.
It said, I hear you.