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Post by Susan Daunt on Jul 26, 2010 1:17:22 GMT -5
Dream lore or no, Susan's eyes widened as her shield met a grissly fate in the jaws of the spell, the Daunt scion tumbling away from the explosion. She hastily cast a series of little spells as she fled along the edge of the tower, little spheres of magical energy pinging at Freeman with maniac enthusiam and sharp screams of discharging energy.
Much harder than it looked, firing them off and feeding them like that, each a thread of power in itself, but at least it should buy her some time to think of something through this fog.
Elsewhere, somewhere dark and damp very far away as dreamscapes go, something opened an eye and closed it again, stirring in it's slumber.
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Post by Prof. Michael Freeman on Jul 26, 2010 1:35:02 GMT -5
"Keep your shields up!" Professor Freeman yelled, summoning a couple (very small) levin-bolts to drive the point home.
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Post by Susan Daunt on Jul 26, 2010 1:47:00 GMT -5
While being tough enough to not really be hurt by the shots, she did slide to stop against one wall and conjure up the shield again, straining to stabilize the thing even as the last few shots hit it, torrents and streamers of power carolled and pleaded into place with almost hasty applications of willpower.
She panted from a half-crouch, adding a few more layers even as she answered, "Sorry, Mr. Freeman. Your spell looked too big to block. So I dodged."
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Post by Prof. Michael Freeman on Jul 27, 2010 1:34:45 GMT -5
"Regardless, shields are your life. If you have to leave them behind, the first thing you should do is to rebuild them."
There was no denying that Susan was very good at what she did. She was a quick thinker, good with power, and very agile - something that many mages seemed to have lost track of. She could avoid many conventional attacks entirely without using magic. It was time to re-think.
Three words and a gesture drew a thin, glowing red circle around Susan, and a fraction later, the entire area inside it - ten feet across - exploded.
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Post by Susan Daunt on Jul 27, 2010 1:51:56 GMT -5
Susan was sent bouncing out of the blast, trailing smoke behind her, a hemispherical shield not exactly great protection against an all-around blast. She levered herself to one knee and twisting an interesting spell that had popped up out of the dream lore while she was wishing she could just *punch him*, opened a rift in front of her.
She punched through the tiny warp, the other end attempting to unfold a few inches from Proffesor Freeman's face, just far enough away to take to superstrong roundhouse punch unless the effect fizzled somehow.
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Post by Prof. Michael Freeman on Jul 27, 2010 2:24:28 GMT -5
Professor Freeman's shield, under normal circumstances, was designed to not be penetrable by such spells. Any shield that would let an attack through if it happened to ask the right way really wasn't a shield worth its salt.
Dreams were not normal circumstances. Instead of harmlessly redirecting the other end of the rift to somewhere outside and pointed away from Professor Freeman's shield, Susan's desire to land the hit bent the entire dreamscape for a moment, contact was made...
And Professor Freeman, shields and all, was launched into the air and off the tower.
For a moment, nothing happened. And then, all the power running around and through the tower drained away. A giant shield sprung into existence around the tower - not a physical barrier, not a defense against attack, but for one very specific purpose - drawing all the magic in the area to a distance just out of Susan's magical reach, and locking it away from her grasp.
Magic, much like nature, abhors a vacuum. The ley-lines in the area twisted and wrapped around the shield, straining against it to fill the void in the middle. Breaking the shield would release an incredible amount of power - not a single tsunami but two, crushing everything inbetween.
Borrowing a touch of the circling power to keep in the air, Professor Freeman hovered, still shielded, well above and clear of the tower and surrounding maelstrom.
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Post by Susan Daunt on Jul 28, 2010 23:15:37 GMT -5
Susan's last thoughts as the exploding tower crashed down around her was a strangled 'help!', the fall, according to all dream logic, sending her out of REM state and rocketing towards consciousness.
But even as the dream world of Babylon That Was collapsed toward the last remaining interloper in the Daunt scion's head, the air rang like a twisted bell and a massive... thing appeared from nowhere. As tall as mountains, with sand-colored scales marked in arcane sigils both profane and holy, and shadowed by feathered pinions that blotted out the horizon, the monster swung at Professor Freeman with a paw many, many, many times his size with all the speed and force of a horizontal waterfall that stank of blood and musk and fear.
To be hit was to be crushed and to be crushed was to be caught by the Avatar of the Daunt Family Legacy, consumed and tortured for subjective aeons for the crime of violating Susan's mind.
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Post by Prof. Michael Freeman on Jul 28, 2010 23:40:30 GMT -5
Subjective time slowed to a crawl. It was just a dream, Professor Freeman reminded himself, unconvinced. Cheating, certainly, and very impressive - but only a dream.
Or was it? Professor Freeman recognized some of the symbols - characters so profoundly powerful that no mere Master had ever seen them in the modern age. The paw - the size of a skyscraper, approaching as inexorably as a glacier - glowed not just with fear but with very, very real Power.
It was time to cheat. It was beyond time to cheat.
With a touch of his own Power, Professor Freeman added to the power circling around the void-shield and the ruined tower until it glowed as brightly as the sun. And then he dropped the shield, gripping and shaping the power as it slammed into the empty space.
A millisecond before the power slammed together, it formed a single arcane character: the sigil for energy. Half a millisecond after that, Professor Freeman dropped his essentially useless shields and reformed them into an inverted bowl underneath him.
Contact. Unimaginable energies - the entire magical output of the entire world - was channeled into a single, massive blast. That entire blast was directed straight up, into the waiting shield above. Ruined city and monstrous paw vanished below Professor Freeman and as decoys invested with a touch of Power shot off in every direction, Professor Freeman willed himself awake and broke the dream-walking spell at the same instant.
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Post by Susan Daunt on Jul 28, 2010 23:56:40 GMT -5
The thing growled like an earthquake as the dream fully collapsed, pitch-black eyes with scarlet, diamond-shaped pupils narrowed in great pain but far greater anger before returning to the formless mental depths from which it had come. It would remember as it always remembered all slights... And if the intruder came again...
In the 'real world', Susan shot awake, fingers indenting the armrests of Professor Freeman's chair before she calmed, staring across at her teacher with wide, blue eyes.
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Post by Prof. Michael Freeman on Aug 2, 2010 22:11:34 GMT -5
Professor Freeman woke shortly thereafter, perhaps slightly less ruffled-looking than he felt.
"Well," he said after a few moments. "Did that explain anything?"
He left the invitation open - would Susan remember how to control power?
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Post by Susan Daunt on Aug 2, 2010 22:27:24 GMT -5
"You spar just like my big sister Mary, Mr. Freeman," she answered a little ruefully, rubbing at the dents she poked in his chair's arms, "But, yeah... I think..."
She concentrated and inhaled. Will summoned power. Power flowed into form. Form gave birth to hesitant light, and... The rush started to leap from her bloodline only to meet a firm 'No. Not now.' and turned back.
The magelight didn't quite dance up and down the spectrim of colors as easy as it had in the dream or respond as quckly, but it held and made slow little orbits around the Daunt scion's head. And that was enough to make her smile hesitantly up at her teacher.
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Post by Prof. Michael Freeman on Aug 2, 2010 23:39:30 GMT -5
Professor Freeman nodded, appreciatively.
"And that's how it's done. Congratulations, you've mastered the hardest lesson of magic."
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Post by Susan Daunt on Aug 4, 2010 18:08:21 GMT -5
The Daunt scion frowned a little, thinking back to the class and how easily the others had gotten the magelight stop exploding without something as... invasive as this. Okay. So she was remedial. She'd deal with that. The magelight popped gently out of existence.
Susan stood up and bowed her head slightly, "Thank you for your time, Mr. Freeman. It'll be nice to be able to practice this without giving my Suitemates heart attacks every five minutes."
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