He was no stranger to the Worth Woodsea, though the nature of the forest had significantly changed since his death at the hands of the Shadow Lord all those years ago. Where once he had seen a forest, presumably misunderstood, he now saw the veiled world just beneath it. One of his goals since being granted the title of Wizard Saint had been to exercise the place, but that had been easier said than done. At the current moment he was in the process of a fairly complicated spell which consisted of pulling the energies of the dead from the precipice of the void, into the world of the living, and opening a path to the underworld, thus allowing the souls to move through their cycles of rebirth or retribution. It was a very delicate process consisting of magic energies that crossed each other in the most random parts which meant that any minor distraction would be detrimental to the entire ritual. Despite the sadly fragile magics he was weaving, he was mostly used to attacking with his magic and this was anything but that. It was an unfortunate flaw most dragon slayers seemed to share, their magic was attack, defend, or buff, but rarely was it ritualistic or fine tuned, sustained, heavy control. "Black is for today, Tomorrow promises not, Rise now and crave light" He chanted, using the familiar template for a small ritual. It was the beginning part, bringing the souls forward and gathering them to his location.
Humans were weird. The more Tyr spent time around them, the less she understood. The opposite was supposed to happen, but then, every time she walked away thinking she understood people better, she found them doing... something like this. She was still a kid in dragon years, but she'd had plenty of time to learn various things... such as the fact that the woods here were supposedly haunted, and what he was doing sounded like some sort of exorcism incantation.
She wasn't far from him. She was actually in the top of a tree about thirty feet from him. He looked like it might be working... though... the whole thing confused Tyr. Sure there was the occasional talk of haunting and stuff, but that wasn't even the real problem. She'd been in woods like these before. The real problem were the many dangerous creatures that made it their home. If there were some sort of ghosts though... maybe they were agitating the creatures? What did ghosts look like, anyway? Tyr had never seen one.
With the assistance of her wind magic, Tyr hopped silently down to the ground, making no noise. She tilted her childlike head. Was his incantation almost over? The magic in the area was turning weird, cold. Yet she didn't feel like he was trying to do anything bad. She frowned, still crouched in an animal-like position. What was he doing? "Don't human priests normally do this?" she asked aloud, unable to contain herself. "You don't look very priestly."
Just like most of the instances where he had attempted to meditate, he was of course interrupted, and of course by a girl, never mind the fact that he had two kids who would generally do something similar, he was in the middle of a forest and... no Kotone, Verity, Charlotte... there was a track record and now he could add this girl to it. These thoughts flew through his mind as soon as the spell energies snapped. He could already tell this was going to be a horrible day at this point, not because he knew the consequences of the failure, because he really, really had no clue, but because he had yet to have a one on one meeting in the forest with someone that generally made his day better. Actually this reminded him that he had a fight to settle with Kotone.
In the seconds before the actual startle effect registered enough of Tatsuma's life had flashed before his eyes that he could positively say that he hadn't sensed her, and that fact didn't even occur to him until he hadn't sensed her. Once he calmed a bit, he decided to answer her question. "Human priests still don't fully know what they're contacting... and wait how and where did you come from?!?" He asked, finally registering she had snuck up on him, people didn't sneak up on him. She didn't just materialize from the void, he would have felt that. Whatever she had done she had come from no where or she had some sort of magic that allowed her to appear where she wanted. Was she an assassin? "And what brings a girl like you to a forest like this?" He asked, the air growing colder and more ominous the longer he waited.
"I was bored," Tyr shrugged, dropping to a sitting position, her hands still planted in front of her lap like a cat would plant its paws. Her curiosity wasn't unlike a cat either. Strange, for a dragon. At least, that was what most people seemed to say. "There's no forest bigger than this one in Fiore, so I thought I'd come here and look at animals after so many people."
She noted the energies in the area growing almost... angry as she talked, but she wasn't super concerned just yet. She was a small dragon, but she was a dragon nonetheless. "I came from the trees, by the way," she lifted one arm to point about twenty feet above Tatsuma, almost directly behind him. She continued her answer as soon as she'd inserted that little tidbit. "And now here's a people messing with nature. Er, person. A person. Stupid Fiorian tongue." She stuck out her tongue, closing one eye to try to glance at her own tongue as if it had betrayed her for the grammar slip up.
"I like that you dragon slayers all seem to react the same way. There's more senses than your nose and ears, you know," she lectured nonchalantly once she was done contemplating how one punished a tongue in a way that didn't hurt. "Though I'm confused why you have a third smell. Dragon slayers always smell a little like dragons, a little like humans. Yours is weird." She stood up after a moment, clasping her hands behind her back. "Oh, you should probably continue your incantation thingy. I'm not sure it would have worked though. It seemed a little weak for a place this big, and spirits don't much care to be interrupted from whatever it is spirits do."
Tatsuma shrugged as the area grew cold enough to start drawing frost from their breath. "It's too late now, whatever is about to happen is about to happen. I'm also something of a go between for these kinds of things so... wait why am I telling you all this? And I asked where you came from because I didn't sense your... breath... I didn't sense your breath." He said, stopping himself from telling her about his ability to sense people's bio-electricity, though he doubted she was going to buy the breath deal. Also there was something familiar about her bio-electrical signature, almost familial. She also didn't seem to have a great grasp at exactly what he was doing, but he didn't fully grasp every aspect of it either. The function he was using it for was fairly unknown too. That being said, between identifying that he was a dragon slayer, being able to hide from him, and the strange bio-electric signature, he was starting to believe more that she was an assassin. But then why hadn't she tried to kill him?
Besides his analysis on her, which was being hindered by the fact that he was also analyzing their situation and he was liking it less and less. He started to see that some of his magic had pulled off something of a reanimation effect except- "Well if you're here to kill me I hope it can at least wait until we've dealt with this." He said with a shrug as he started to see where this was going. Ashes gathered and he slid his hands up in front of him. From within the ashes a pair of red eyes emerged. "I'll have to thank the one who did this." The ash demon spoke, Tatsuma only realizing what it was when it had fully formed. That meant it was from the hell of being eaten by ash cats, which also meant... "This... I really hope there's more to it than you got bored." He said to the girl as humanoid corpses of burned flesh and flaming ashes. It was a ghastly sight, but the demon stood back and watched as hundreds of figures manifested.
"Didn't sense my breath?" Even the young-looking Tyr didn't exactly look convinced at that one. "What sort of magic is breath sensing?" She asked with a raised eyebrow even as the demon creature spoke. Ah! She knew a devil slayer who could- no wait she wasn't even in this part of Fiore. While she didn't doubt that this man didn't have breath sensing powers, he did say he sort of did this for a living. Which for a living? The weird incantations she'd never heard or the messing them up? She nearly asked the question, but by then the undead creatures were already risen and looking to cause trouble.
Tyr perked up a bit with a "hm?" sound as several of the creatures got near her. What was that thing again about evil spirits? Oh! right. They were hard to keep dead because they were already dead and walking anyway. Unless they weren't able to reform for some reason. Tyr stood up quickly, jumping gracefully out of the middle of them before clapping her hands together in front of her. A burst of aetheric wind burst from her hands, disrupting the magic in front of her. Even spirits required magic to function properly, so the technique easily shattered their forms and rendered those few unable to participate in their little corpse party... for a few minutes anyway. "Well I was bored, and I'm interested in dragon slayers," she answered, not really helping her own case. "So what's your plan now? You know this wouldn't have happened if you would have left the spirits alone, right?..." she frowned at him as if it were all his fault.
Post by Tatsuma Kiryu on Jul 15, 2015 20:30:37 GMT
"Breath sensing is an ancient art of the dragon slayers." He said, half joking but saying it completely seriously just because this wasn't that bad to him. It hadn't been lost on him that she didn't deny the comment about her being there to kill him, nor did she clarify that she was doing anything other than sating her curiosity and escaping her boredom. As for the ash ghouls he chose to hit them all at once. With his left palm outstretched he launched a bolt of lightning and once it struck one, it moved from it, to another, to another until all or most of the ghouls had been struck, once that was completed he held out his right palm, launching yet another bolt of lightning. Once the bolt struck a ghoul it split into several other bolts and the process continued until all of the negatively charged ghouls had been struck by the positively charged bolt. Laced into the magic was just a little bit of void magic to disengage them from reforming. It was a little more complicated than what the girl had done, but it was also larger scale. "And no, this wouldn't have happened if someone hadn't jumped out to surprise people trying to help spirits pass along. Also we may want to focus. We're promised some trouble." He said coolly, looking at the demon and the remaining three or four ghouls. So far it had more or less remained stationary, it bothered him that it wasn't doing anything.
"Um... yeah about that," The young dragon lowered her fists as the spirit energy dissipated around her. She could feel the magic, being a creature of magic herself, and it was already lighter than before. The boy claimed they should concentrate, having been promised trouble. "I'm kinda, sorta a pacifist. I don't really do anything except defend myself when I have to." She could easily be a powerful fighter despite her small frame, but she lacked any sort of real offensive response to things.
She watched the demon as well, ready to move again if she had to. She'd yet to feel herself being in any real danger, in part because of her natural strength as a dragon. She rarely worried, treating most of life as some sort of game. "Also, I wasn't the one playing with spirits." Not that she actually needed to keep arguing that it wasn't her fault, but she just didn't see it. Sure, she probably shouldn't have surprised him, but the forest had done just fine before he decided he was some sort of exorcist.
Tatsuma sighed as the girl demeaned what he was doing. She was naive, as most kids tended to be, but she had much to learn about magic as it stood. She seemed to be pretty strong, but she wasn't very experienced, and she was probably going to be more or less useless right now. Still Tatsuma had dealt with demons and even Yama kings, lords of hell viewed as forces of nature and inevitable manifestations of evil achieved only in the rarest of circumstances by human mages. "Ever noticed the animals in the forest and how aggressive most of them tend to be, or how many people have died here?" He asked, his right foot sliding out to make a square in the soil as he spoke. "Sometimes it's the little things, people accept stuff as normal but normal doesn't always mean good. I was removing the spirits from the area so whatever they suffered in life and continued in death would be gone. If you want to point fingers at who is to blame for this, you can blame your own whimsy, or you can stop pointing fingers altogether and step back." He finished as a large black structure began to form around the ghouls and the demon. The girl ran the risk of being caught in the cross fire, but he had learned to let things out at will, after all, it was the spell he had trapped Rhidran with deep inside the ground for a chance to reflect on her life and choices. This version, however, was geared toward destruction and he held up his hand as the black rectangular structure formed just below the treeline around them. He wasn't about to underestimate a demon regardless of the circumstances. He glanced to see if the girl had managed to completely escape so he knew whether to alter the spell to let her out just before he closed his hand into a fist to cause the structure to shrink rapidly into a marble-sized structure.
Of course Tyr wasn't moving. She wasn't running, and she also wasn't going to accept that she was the naiive one here. Well, not for the reasons he explained. "I'm not from Fiore, so no I haven't had time to notice a lot of things!" she shouted over the crackling sound of magic. The little dragon shielded her eyes as the structure shrank itself with a terrible shifting screech.
It was silent for a moment as Tyr shifted her arms downward slightly, peaking over them to see what had happened. Was the demon gone? No... not at all. In fact, she could feel a swelling of magic inside the structure, despite its now too-small-to-fit-a-living-mortal dimensions.
"Look out!" she jumped in front of Tatsuma, a shield of aetheric wind blocking him from the surge of demonic energy that blasted outward, whithering every bit of plant life in the area. "Okay! No more pointing fingers. I know what you were trying to do, but like I said, you did it wrong. It was right, but not for a place this big! And no, I don't know the rest of the altered version! I'm Tyr, by the way, in case you live through this." She dropped the shield, the only living plant life being in about a five foot circle around the pair of them. She moved to the side. She wouldn't hurt a living intelligent being, but she could help keep this one alive.
Tatsuma would have opened a hell gate, but the girl was apparently capable of blocking things on her own. Regardless the demonic energy probably wouldn't have hurt him very much, but he needed to get rid of it quickly. "Sky foresworn to darkness, tear ever slightly and bring forth thine raptor’s talons, dive near oh black beast and sever thine own throat. Spear of midnight black!" He chanted as a staff formed in his hand and opened with a blade into some void of the underworld. With that he whisked the marble sized bead into the spear, effectively banishing those spirits though not in the manner he would have preferred. "Nice to meet you Tyr. Now onto the other business. I was thinking that you were an assassin before that comment about not fighting, but since I'm not currently summoning demons and/or undead into the world of the living, what can I do for you." He said, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he spoke.
There was no need to hide any of his annoyance, but now that the immediate threat was dealt with he started wondering if there was anything he could do about the damage the demon had done to the forest. A quick mental inventory reminded him that there was and he held up one hand and snapped his fingers, maintaining the power of the spell while he continued his conversation as black energies enveloped the parts of the forest that had been damaged by the demon's magic. It was time consuming, but he was able to do it without using all of his focus and could at least talk while he was concentrating on the spell. Slowly, the forest covered by the black energies began to revert to the form it had been before it had gotten damaged, the magic denying the change that had been made to the plant physiology. If a human had died like that it wouldn't have been possible but thankfully plants weren't humans.
"Nah, I could never be an assassin," Tyr chuckled. "Especially against a dragon slayer. You know too much and it wouldn't end well. To be honest, I'm pretty weak for a dragon, even if I'm stronger than most humans." She shrugged, giving out the information like it was no big deal. "Really though, I've just been getting to know different real and fake dragon slayers. You all seem like good people so far, so I'm glad the other dragons picked their trainee kids so carefully." she nodded to herself.
"That's not really the reason I was prying, though. Humans are weird, and dragon slayers understand dragons a bit better, so it's refreshing to meet people who aren't either solitary and disliking of company like most dragons, or just completely clueless, you know?" Tyr messed with her green hair a bit as she talked, not really sitting still. She did sit again, though, against a nearby tree. "Last time I tried to visit my brother he berated me for intruding on his lair. Kinda rood for a nest mate, if you ask me. Then again my sisters always said I was the weird one. Neat trick, by the way. I thought the plants here were dead for sure. Maybe you do know a few more tricks than I've heard of in my travels."
Post by Tatsuma Kiryu on Jul 16, 2015 19:24:53 GMT
Wait did he hear her correctly, she was a dragon? If that was the case and she was a young dragon it could explain why she was so devil may care. She also didn't seem to be as aggressive or... murderous as the other dragons had been. "So you're a dragon, I haven't seen one since the whole dragon control machine ordeal. How did you fare with that?" He asked out of curiosity. Then he stopped to consider her statement. "As far as the plants, I only know the one healing spell but it has a lot of utility and it's pretty potent. I can't use it during combat though so it's not the end all and be all of healing magic. As far as humans go, I'm something of a wayward spirit myself." He added, feeling a lot more familiar with her now and recognizing why her bio-electric signature seemed so different. Dragons never really registered to him like humans did. "I'm Rhidran's child. Tatsuma Kiryu." He said non-chalantly. He recognized a chance that she already knew this, but he didn't care, he just hoped she wasn't aware of where Rhidran was now. "You mentioned brothers and sisters. I'm curious about which ones." He asked.
"Oh, that Nox thing? Yeah I wasn't really on his list..." Tyr admitted, standing back up and examining herself as if to see why she wasn't. "I guess I'm either not well known or just too weak." She shrugged, not really concerned either way. She giggled at the thought. She was more than a match for most humans, and even dragons her age. She was physically weak in both forms, but her abilities were what made her stand out. She was the superior magic user out of her siblings.
"I don't know Rhidran," Tyr shrugged. "There's more dragons than people think, but even we don't all know each other. Dragons are grumpy when you get too close to their lairs. Especially when it comes to other dragons. Well, usually anyway." There were exceptions, of course. Tyr, for example, was notably absent of the whole territorial, solitary dragon wish. "I have two sisters and a brother. I'm technically the youngest, but we were all part of the same clutch of eggs," she explained. The youngest simply meant she hatched last. Usually it was by a matter of minutes, she was hours later - prompting her mother to worry she was too weak to make it. "Daenerys is my brother, my sisters are Pyrath and Tynth. We get along a little better than my grumpy brother does. I think he's just jealous he was the only boy dragon that hatched." Tyr shrugged.
Well, no point in maintaining her scent masking aura at this point. She dropped that and started messing with the little dragon pearl orb hanging around her neck and staring generally at the ground. She recovered momentarily, giving Tatsuma a big grin. "I don't suppose you know any of them?" she asked. "Probably not. We're not prominent like the ones that lived in Fiore, and Mom always thought they meddled too much. I guess we disagreed."
Tatsu thought about the names that she had mentioned and listened to her stories, but was otherwise unfamiliar with them. It was a matter of fact that he hadn't met any of the other dragons at all and the ones that he did know of had been during the whole Nox incident. "I'm not familiar with any of those but it's not surprising since I wasn't familiar with you either. Rhidran and I rarely left our territory until the day she left. However, on the subject of dragon slayers and what not, have you met one named Kotone? I haven't seen her for a while and I was hoping to have a sparring match with her... maybe Raven too." He explained, thinking of all the fun times he could have with old friends and acquaintances. He hadn't ever sparred with Raven, but he desperately wanted to.
As his spell slowly finished he started shrinking the field, narrowing the scope to try to help it go faster. He was half tempted to ask the young dragonling if he could borrow her mana, but that would involve her either being a lightning element dragon or he would have to talk about one of his secret spells. Besides that, he also was something of a mana monster at this point and the whole exercise would have been overly personal anyway. "And I just realized, you're a dragon that doesn't like to fight? That seems strange to me."
