quicktoanger | Second Casefile: Casting Lines [Action/Written]

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Second Casefile: Casting Lines [Action/Written]

[Action]

I'd been keeping myself busy for the past week or so, starting when Molly arrived, and had thus far found very little success with anything. There were no thresholds to work with, there were no ley lines to tap into, there were no places rich with magical energy to utilize, and I'd be damned if I was going to try and open a gate to the Nevernever again.

I did not need that bitch of a migraine to come back.

So, along with my apprentice, I began scouting around the village looking for any significant mystical resources. She was also interested in the Filial spirits, but frankly, they sound too much like the Fey for my taste, and I've had quite enough of that, thanks.

Today, however, I was doing something more personally significant. I was going to make myself a new staff, because clearly the old one wasn't showing up any time soon. Unfortunately, this process takes freaking forever, and I had no idea where to start.

So I figured I'd phone a friend.

[Written- filtered from Richard Sharpe 3%] [Hey, he sucks at filters, give him a break.]

Hey. Any and all spellcasters, magic-workers, witches, wizards, and anybody else who knows how to work with magic and spellcraft, I was hoping to get some input on the local situation.

Are there any local magic sources, aside from the Filial spirits, that can be tapped into or accessed? Are any of the local flora and fauna significant at all, mystically? Have there been any difficulties you've had using certain kinds of magic? Anything considerably easier?

In essence- What's the deal, anyway?

[Feel free to encounter him as he surveys the village and surrounding environs- he'll be doing odd things like marking, taking paint scrapings, and making notes on a map- or as he surveys the woods for a tree that will provide adequate wood for his staff.]

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Offered a challenge by Captain Jack Sparrow. And I was gonna back down.

Not a freaking chance.

"Oh, I'm up for it. Never done a proper vision quest before."

"Right! First off, I say the magical words." There were no magical words. Jack was making this part up. "Eensy ponsy tikki ikki fondue." He poured some of his hot water into Dresden's mug, reserving some for himself, and dunked the salamander into it.

Man, he was gonna feel pretty silly when he learned I could do real magic.

I took a whiff of the tea. It smelled about as appetizing as fresh-poured tarmac.

"Lovely. How long does it need to steep?"

"Let me put it this way: the longer you steep it? The more exciting your vision quest will be."

Leonard McCoy had seen seals popping their heads out of the living-room carpet.

"How long would you recommend for a first-timer like me, then?"

I grinned.

"And how long would I have to wait for you to not mock me as a total pansy?"

"Sir, I barely know you. I'd say, though, that the total pansy period has passed already. Other than that, I can't quite pin down what one should and shouldn't have. The great shamans would have already popped it out."

Well. Captain Jack Sparrow had deemed my tea not-pansyish. There are high points in life...

I gingerly plucked the dessicated thing from my tea and plopped it onto a cocktail napkin, then brought the tea to my nose and smelled it.

"... Well, here goes my sanity."

I took a generous sip.

"Oi! Slow down, now! It's not always all unicorns and rainbows when a man drinks tea of that caliber!"

I frowned. I hadn't intended more than the sip, but apparently even that was an alarmingly high dosage.

Seemed like something to tell me in advance, actually.

That said, it apparently hadn't kicked in yet. Everything still looked fine. I wanted to tell him so, but...

Wait. I wanted to tell him so...

... Wait. No, I was trying to talk. Why wasn't I...

...Oh, hey, there it was. Apparently it was going to start with the cognitive-

"Everything still looks fine."

...Reasoning skills.

Hell's bells, what had I just gotten myself into.

"Course it does! You're in the tavern! Everything in taverns usually mostly always looks fine enough! I, personally, enjoy the sweet yet nutty flavoring of it." Jack dunked just the head portion of the creature in HIS hot water for a few seconds before taking a dainty sip.

See, now, see, that was just ridiculous. He only had it in there for a couple of seconds.

If I had the capacity for speech, I'd object to that, but apparently the delay between my brain and my mouth had undergone some sort of relativistic temporal shift.

Also, his hands were starting to blur. I blinked.

"Also? It's BRILLIANT for hangovers!" Look at those blurry hands, Dresden. Look how they swirl before you.

"This seems like it would intensify a hangover, somehow."

Huh. I could talk, as long as it was a snarky response. Go figure.

I was also becoming rapidly convinced that Jack was constitutionally incapable of holding his damn hands still.

Wow. There were some fascinating prismatic effects going on there.

"Hmmmmm...Nah. The headache, I mean. The pounding. This gets rid of it, mystically."

I was contemplating a response to that, but there was a problem.

And that problem is that I felt my eyes, my mind, opening up.

My Sight.

Oh, this was gonna suck. My Sight was opening up and I couldn't quite recall how to-

"Oh, holy hell..."

"You...you alright, son? You look as though you are slowly becoming a ghost."

Jack pushed back slightly so he could gain a better view of the other man. This salamander...this was apparently a potent one, by every reckoning.

"... Mneh? No. Nonono. No, it's..."

... Hang on, I was saying something.

"... Sight. My Sight. Tea opened my damn..."

I turned and faced him. That was a mistake, obviously, and as soon as I saw him I remembered why I don't do that.

At least he wasn't evil. He was, however... avian. Very avian. His eyes were sharp and cunning, piercing like a hawk, and a tumult of colors flashed over him like the feathers of some tropical bird. Even as he sat and watched me, I could sense the need for movement. A bird not meant to be caged. Somehow it didn't surprise me, much.

What did surprise me, and more specifically, what disturbed the hell out of me, were the wings. They were not part of him. They were like black, twisting chains, extending from his shoulders into the ground. Keeping him alive, but keeping him prisoner. I quickly turned away, and out of a fit of morbid curiosity, looked over my shoulder at my own wings.

Again, in place of the black feathers I found a tangled knot of black, twisting chains, running from my shoulders to the ground. My stomach turned, and I closed my eyes, gritting my teeth against the Sight trauma as I struggled to shut it off.

"You have Sight? You have a mystical magical Sight?" He'd known people with Sight before. Tia had it. Jack leaned closer, unaware of chains or avian features or anything of the like. "Tell me: do I free the Pearl? Do I become a rich man? Do I get the girl? Lots of fat babies? "

Oh, come on, man, my brain isn't working yet.

"Not... not that kind of Sight. More like... I can see your sort of... true self. Is what."

Stars and stones. Okay. There. Had it under control.

I blinked at my mercifully Sightless sight, then faced him again.

"I can't actually see into the future, I'm afraid."

"Hate to say it, mate, but your Sight sounds rather useless. I could simply tell you my True Self and save you the trouble.

Captain Jack Sparrow.

Knowing the FUTURE, though, eh? That's highly useful to a pirate like myself."

"Well, it's typically more useful for seeing magical effects that aren't visible to the naked eye. Curses and hexes and wards and magical sensors meant for spying. And magical beasts masquerading as mortals.

That said, your True Name is a link to who you are, and it's actually something wizards of my sort could use against you. Were we feeling somewhat unscrupulous. So it's a similar concept, I guess."

Luckily -- VERY luckily in this case, perhaps, for Jack -- Sparrow was not his true name.

"Interesting! And did you see any whatnot -- curses -- did you see anything of the sort upon me, friend?"

"... The only things I saw were those damn wings."

Well, on the plus side, the hallucinations seemed to have passed. I wasn't intoxicated any more.

On the downside, I wasn't intoxicated any more. I needed a drink.

"That. That was some damn tea."

"Oh. My...wings. Aye. What of them?" He'd died, once, when his wings had been ripped out by a Third-Party Elite.

"... They were..."

Even brushing on the thoughts brought the memory up in my mind as if I was seeing it all over again.

One of the fun little blessings of the Sight. It never faded. Never went away.

Ever.

It was sort of mitigated by the memory of Jack's own vibrant visage. There was a certain nobility to it, a majesty belied by the antics and cunning and air of mischief, and it was not at all an unpleasant aura, unlike those damn chains.

"They're like chains. Chaining us to the ground, keeping us prisoner. Fused into us. Made part of us. It was..."

I shuddered.

"Wrong."

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[action] You gotta help me out here, what're the typical effects like?

[action] I leave them ENTIRELY UP TO YOU. : D

[action] Lord in heaven, what have we done.

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Been long enough. I'm going there, now.

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Perhaps not that luckily- Harry wouldn't have used it against him anyway.

XD

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