Post by Jan on Oct 1, 2010 1:39:12 GMT -5
Kel
The forest was loud with bugs and birds but somehow peaceful, thanks to a heavy shroud of thick gray fog that spread across the trees and the undergrowth and the streams like icing on a cake. It made visibility rotten; one could walk right into a tree if they weren’t careful. The dew that the fog left behind was beautiful but terribly wet and had the tendency to stick to you when you touched it. It crept into one’s soles to dampen their feet, clung to one’s hair and chilled them. All in all, it was not a very pleasant day, but fairly decent to look at as long as you weren’t in it.
Unfortunately this was not the case for Kel, who had wandered out of the safety of Bastion Tower to collect some herbs to grind up. He was not worried about predators; he was too confident for that. Neither did the threat of Witch-hunters occur to him. They were rarely so close to the sanctuary, if ever, and if they did show, well – he had more than his own safety to worry about. In any case he felt no qualms at all about waving a lantern around to help himself see, if it only illuminated a bit more to him. According to his nature one would expect him to be furious at the weather, but as snappy as he usually was he found little to complain about here. There was no use berating natural occurrences such as fog, however tempted he might be to do so, for it sounded like a neither helpful nor productive thing to do. Besides, he had herbs to find and damned if he had to wait another day. Bastion Tower was a fine place in its own right, but being cooped up anywhere for too long had serious consequences for anyone. He had to leave sometimes. Even if it involved stooping in mud all day.
He wrapped the shawl closer around his shoulders. He looked like the Dead standing there: covered in fog, holding the lantern in front of him as though he were leading some kind of procession, his face white as bone and his hair too, whisking briefly in the faint wind behind his back. Idly he scuffled at the ground, kicking away some root in favor of a clump of borage deeply embedded in the dirt. He needed some badly for his Curse magicks, a magic very much dependent on the process. It was well-known that Curse had the potential to do the most damage but was a purely passive art; that was, it was done in secret and (preferably) far from the intended target. It was tricky and elusive, but greatly rewarding if you were the sadistic sort. Where other areas of magick succeeded in destruction or healing or otherwise instant gratification, only Curse enabled one to slowly decay an enemy both physically and, in some cases, mentally. It left much to be desired in cases of immediate danger, except for a few scant spells, but these were the hardest to master of all and asked the most out of the caster themselves. It was one of these that Kel had the mind to hunt ingredients for.
A touch of previously mentioned borage and leaves of gingerfern for the taste, to be exact.
Because every Curse witch who actually knew what they were doing, mind you, came with a last defense and Kel was a firm believer in such. Even Witch-hunters, who were trained to fight magic, were often left in the dark about the exact nature of Curse. When they came into contact with one most are wont to dismiss them as harmless on the spot, due to their particular practice being a lengthy process, and are usually extremely and unpleasantly surprised when they find their limbs rotting or their phobias coming to life right before them regardless. It had to do with a small walnut-shaped thing, prepared beforehand with a mix of natural ingredients and Dark Arts. It is then swallowed whole and left to ingrain itself deep within the caster’s stomach for use later. Leaving it there for too long could have terrible effects, however, including food blockage and, in the worst case, a Curse being released onto the caster’s own body.
Luckily a skilled Witch would be able to cough it up like a human hairball.
And so it was a very nasty business, Curse magic, but it was what Kel did the best and he was not ashamed of it. In fact sometimes he rather liked it. Enough to get his hands full of mud while scrounging for herbs, anyway.