Re: Inexorable Altercation [Round I- The Sleeping World of Rock]
06-13-2010, 03:41 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
They say that powerful witches can become invisible with a thought. They say a lot of things about powerful witches, in fact, and a lot of it is true; this particular rumor, however, is only partially grounded in reality. Witches can't become invisible, or generally choose not to: invisibility is a complex thaumaturgical headache involving bending light or altering the properties of matter. It's unsubtle and involves too much actual use of magic. It's flashy wizardry is what it is. Instead, witches learn how to simply fade into their surroundings so completely that people simply don't notice them until they want to be noticed. Like much of witchcraft, it wasn't about slinging around spells, it was about convincing other people that the world is how you say it is; it's about attitude and bearing, two things Annaliese sadly lacks.
Annaliese is actually such a bad witch that in this particular respect she loops back around and approaches the skill from the other direction. Rather than disappearing through force of personality or use of powerful spells, she became effectively invisible by not mattering at all. She was meek and forgettable, and slipped out of people's awareness without even trying. She's not even aware of it on a conscious level beyond knowing she often has to remind people that she's talking to them mid-conversation, and up until now it had been nothing but an inconvenience.
Still, from the moment she'd frozen up on being grabbed by Loran to being tossed like a ragdoll across the arena, she's been too petrified to say a thing or move, and she had rapidly gone from "competitor" or even "person" in the minds of the others to "faceless hostage" and eventually to "blip on the radar" before being ignored entirely. She had scuttled to the wall and pulled herself up, breathing heavily and staring with wide eyes at the others who had been all-too-recenly bargaining with her life.
Okay. Okay so. Those whoevertheyweres were serious. Everyone here was trying to kill Anna or kill the people trying to kill her or just plain kill everyone. Metal dragons and knife-wielding psychopaths and a very odd-looking man with odd ideas about prophecy... Plus giant stone things and little stone things and... stones. Even a great witch like Anna couldn't handle all this at once, and nobody seemed to be paying attention, so..
With a lengthy mumble that anyone who had given a second thought to the witch might have heard as "Mnrffnmffflrmmmnf mmnflmm n-no, umm. Mmnflmn. Mmmnf?", Anna began her escape. There were a few seconds of not much happening save very dramatic and serious dialogue between two people Anna might have thought were talking way too much if she were a less charitable soul; with no warning and less visual effect, there was a pop of inward-rushing air and a very bedraggled hummingbird where Anna used to be. It had appeared at about eye-height, but it was near knee-level before it actually managed to start flying and right itself.
There was no sign that anyone had noticed the change, and the little bird flitted towards the upper stands, hoping there was an escape up there that wasn't sealed by a slab of rock. For all that she was the size of a small mouse, hummingbird-Anna could actually cover distance rather quickly; it was only a few moments before she had topped the stone lip above the arena, and only a moment more before she was making towards a door.
"And just where do you think you're going, Miss Nibbs?"
Startled by the sudden address, Anna's concentration lapsed, and a fully-human witch crashed face first into a stone chair with all the momentum she'd had when zipping through the air.
They say that powerful witches can become invisible with a thought. They say a lot of things about powerful witches, in fact, and a lot of it is true; this particular rumor, however, is only partially grounded in reality. Witches can't become invisible, or generally choose not to: invisibility is a complex thaumaturgical headache involving bending light or altering the properties of matter. It's unsubtle and involves too much actual use of magic. It's flashy wizardry is what it is. Instead, witches learn how to simply fade into their surroundings so completely that people simply don't notice them until they want to be noticed. Like much of witchcraft, it wasn't about slinging around spells, it was about convincing other people that the world is how you say it is; it's about attitude and bearing, two things Annaliese sadly lacks.
Annaliese is actually such a bad witch that in this particular respect she loops back around and approaches the skill from the other direction. Rather than disappearing through force of personality or use of powerful spells, she became effectively invisible by not mattering at all. She was meek and forgettable, and slipped out of people's awareness without even trying. She's not even aware of it on a conscious level beyond knowing she often has to remind people that she's talking to them mid-conversation, and up until now it had been nothing but an inconvenience.
Still, from the moment she'd frozen up on being grabbed by Loran to being tossed like a ragdoll across the arena, she's been too petrified to say a thing or move, and she had rapidly gone from "competitor" or even "person" in the minds of the others to "faceless hostage" and eventually to "blip on the radar" before being ignored entirely. She had scuttled to the wall and pulled herself up, breathing heavily and staring with wide eyes at the others who had been all-too-recenly bargaining with her life.
Okay. Okay so. Those whoevertheyweres were serious. Everyone here was trying to kill Anna or kill the people trying to kill her or just plain kill everyone. Metal dragons and knife-wielding psychopaths and a very odd-looking man with odd ideas about prophecy... Plus giant stone things and little stone things and... stones. Even a great witch like Anna couldn't handle all this at once, and nobody seemed to be paying attention, so..
With a lengthy mumble that anyone who had given a second thought to the witch might have heard as "Mnrffnmffflrmmmnf mmnflmm n-no, umm. Mmnflmn. Mmmnf?", Anna began her escape. There were a few seconds of not much happening save very dramatic and serious dialogue between two people Anna might have thought were talking way too much if she were a less charitable soul; with no warning and less visual effect, there was a pop of inward-rushing air and a very bedraggled hummingbird where Anna used to be. It had appeared at about eye-height, but it was near knee-level before it actually managed to start flying and right itself.
There was no sign that anyone had noticed the change, and the little bird flitted towards the upper stands, hoping there was an escape up there that wasn't sealed by a slab of rock. For all that she was the size of a small mouse, hummingbird-Anna could actually cover distance rather quickly; it was only a few moments before she had topped the stone lip above the arena, and only a moment more before she was making towards a door.
"And just where do you think you're going, Miss Nibbs?"
Startled by the sudden address, Anna's concentration lapsed, and a fully-human witch crashed face first into a stone chair with all the momentum she'd had when zipping through the air.