poll_the_stars | You know honestly I can't say I expected this

Inavet hisses a creative curseword, and slams the door shut, and reaches for her magic. The door to the building she's hiding in becomes to all appearances an ordinary wall. It'll take her pursuers time to find it - none of their arcanists are any good at crystal craft, from what she can tell. It won't buy her enough time, but it'll buy her some, and every second counts.

She starts trying to patch herself up while she looks for an escape route they're not covering. Blood craft's not her best, but she's gotten a lot of practice at it, lately. Enough to stop herself from bleeding out from the wound in her side (because of course it's deep) and keep herself from collapsing from exhaustion. Too slow - one of these days it'll kill her.

But not yet, she thinks, as she spots a window to an alley. Out go her magic senses - no one's alive and breathing in that alley but a cat rummaging through the garbage.

She dumps an illusion over the alley, to appear exactly as it was before she entered it. She can't get the cat right in a rush, but she doesn't need this to hold out for very long. Just long enough to get away. Song disguises the sound of the window opening and her scrambling out of it. She's conscientious enough to close it behind her. Easier than another illusion. Maybe they won't notice the blood.

Which way? Mm. One that way, two to her left, three are - oh look they found the door, she needs to hurry. She takes a right, and runs.

And comes face to face with - a snake? With a mirror for a head? What, how in the -

It's very fast. She was not expecting it. She didn't even sense it, like it appeared from nowhere, she raises her knife but she's not fast enough -

And then there is darkness.

Darkness and pain.

She'd scream, but the air's sucked out of her lungs in a whoosh. She snaps her mouth shut and flails, lashing out with something, anything - but she feels nothing around her. Nothing at all. Not even air. It's like a pressure, on all of her, but instead of pressing in it's pulling out -

Is this how she's going to die? Some Ministry snake monster thing?

Not. Likely.

She isn't the best at blood craft, but she knows enough to keep herself alive. She knows enough to snap her eyes shut and cover her nose and mouth and push magic at herself so her body doesn't shut down. It's hard - there's so much to monitor, she has no air... But she can keep herself alive. If she doesn't move and she focuses near entirely on self preservation. For - for a little while, anyway. Not forever.

Time crunch, then. Well. She was always good at those.

Her lesser crafts won't do her any good here. No way to make sound with song, no air to ignite in fire with heat, no time for aura anything, nothing to move and change with breath. Forget stone and metal, even when she's not in a crisis she's awful with both, not to mention there's nothing around for either.

But she is good at crystal, and crystal deals in light.

If she's not the brightest fucking beacon the world has ever seen, it won't be for lack of trying.

Maybe someone will find her. Or maybe she'll blind the bastards who put her here. Either way, it won't hurt to try.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

poll_the_stars

Plant is sort of hard to explain even in a non broken language. It's - changing plants to do certain things. Except 'do certain things' can be a lot. Blood's healing and changing of the body, we gained longevity from it, but I didn't have the words to explain it. Metal deals traditionally in metal, but it's - finding weaknesses and shoring them up. Finding strengths and sharpening them. The traditional candidate is metal, because metal's good for that sort of thing. Stone's construction and moving of the earth and land - you can build houses with it, or roads, or dig out caves - as far as I know it's very slow by itself. Does that make more sense?

From:

warpfairy

I think so. It sounds fascinating. Is it hard to learn once you've got it?

From:

poll_the_stars

I wouldn't say hard, exactly. A bit time consuming, maybe. It's pretty easy to grasp the basics of your strongest craft, usually someone has those down in a week or two. It's - learning what to do to help something best or what not to do in order to prevent making anything worse, branching out to stuff that isn't your basic strengths, mixing them, inventing things that combine several crafts - the nine groups are kind of vague, actually, there are a few things that are arguably part of several.

From:

warpfairy

Is there a way to guess in advance what someone will get?

From:

poll_the_stars

No. Nor a way to guarantee something. Not that I know of, mind, and I'll be the first to admit I don't know everything. Sorry.

From:

warpfairy

I'd be happy with any. By and large interesting powers in this universe are a matter of being the right species. I have a little touch-telepathy from my father's side but nothing else.

From:

poll_the_stars

Huh. Strange. I wonder what caused the mechanism for 'species get the interesting powers'? You'd have thought genetic tinkering got somewhere if you have space travel.

From:

warpfairy

I'm not sure what you mean. Although actually one of the traits I don't like about the Federation is that genetic engineering is illegal.

From:

poll_the_stars

... I am confused as to why they would ban it. Why would they ban it? There are abuses, but that's true of most things.

From:

warpfairy

There were wars about it a while ago; some people were genetically engineered and decided to try to take over all of the everything. I don't think it makes sense to ban augmentation in general, but there are historical reasons.

From:

poll_the_stars

Well. I'm technically genetically engineered through blood craft. It makes it so it's harder for me to get sick and there aren't any genetic diseases that I know of that still exist, and if I take care of myself and stay healthy I'll live to around ten thousand years. I just. Why would you give that up? Because some people tried to take over all of everything? Lots of people try to do that, let's ban people with ten toes because almost every human that has tried to take over the world has ten toes, obviously they must be responsible. That is ridiculous.

From:

warpfairy

I agree with you completely. Fortunately for you, you're the only one of your species around and no one will be able to tell that you're genetically engineered if you don't tell them.

From:

poll_the_stars

... What, would they arrest me? I didn't even choose, it was when I was in the womb!

From:

warpfairy

It would probably depend. You're technically ineligible for certain government jobs. Imprisonment per se unless you were found to be engineered after getting a job that you're forbidden to have would be unlikely.

From:

poll_the_stars

Why am I technically ineligible for certain government jobs? That. Doesn't make sense.

From:

warpfairy

It's considered unfair. I'm really not the person to defend the policy.

From:

poll_the_stars

Right, yes. Ugh.

From:

warpfairy

I'm sorry.

From:

poll_the_stars

It's not your fault, I'm just - annoyed at the system.

Does she have a gift for finding corrupt governments, or for spotting them? Mystery for the ages...

From:

warpfairy

It's one of only two things that really bother me about the Federation. It's mostly very nice.

From:

poll_the_stars

What's the second?

From:

warpfairy

The noninterference policy with civilizations that haven't developed warp drive. Since you don't have a civilization attached here, and anyway I couldn't have known that to begin with, I'll probably get away with having rescued you.

From:

poll_the_stars

... But if I were, for example, I don't know, being attacked and stabbed by my own people, and you were aware via - I don't know, something, you would not be allowed to interfere to save anyone involved, or even stop the altercation, because we don't have a warp drive.