Magic class on the beach!

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

On a cool spring evening, just as the sun was setting behind the hills, Professor Freeman arrived (class in tow, for those who want) at the beach. He'd done some prep work already, collecting driftwood and hewn cedar and pine logs.

"Each of you will need your own fire," he said, repeating what he'd covered in class. "It's important that you set and light it yourself, although you can use magic to assist you. The moon will rise over the ocean in half an hour, with totality in the eclipse five minutes after that. You should be ready to cast by then."

Professor Freeman dropped the backpack he'd brought, and started assembling his own fire pile. He'd come prepared for something different - included in his backpack were two bottles of olive oil and a collection of fist-sized crystals, along with an assortment of smaller magical odds and ends.

[Shihab]

Shihab nodded silently, picked up an armful of wood, and wandered off to find his own spot on the beach, maybe twenty-five, thirty feet away. He'd spent a few hours beforehand meditating, trying to make sure his head was in the right place for a very concentration-heavy spell. More or less oblivious to his classmates, he marked out a circle carefully, and took his time setting the wood up inside, making sure it would be a stable, long-lasting fire.

When he'd fully prepared the wood, he pulled a fair-sized knife out of his pocket and began shaving thick curls off one of the smaller driftwood sticks, for kindling. He had only the pertinent notes, written in Very Shorthand in his pocket, a flint, and the knife; he was dressed as simply as he could manage while taking the cooler weather and seabreezes into account. He was absolutely determined to make this spell go right.

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less retreated to his den, about fifty feet away. To his annoyance, the collection of firewood he had gathered had been taken away by someone. With a grumble, he went back to the rest of the group and collected a few branches. It took him a short amount of time to light his own fire with the battered tinderbox he had brought from home, but a goof fifteen minutes to arrange the wood so that the fire didn't send smoke at him. This probably would not have taken so long were the werewolf working with caribou dung like he was used to doing.

He had managed to get in contact with his pack by emailing a poorly-edited message to one of the human alphas in Arviat, who had passed it on to Negotiator. They had succeeded in narrowing down the time-frame for the battle to between twenty-five thousand and forty thousand years ago, and Mother of Alpha had given him a few tips on keeping the spell focused. Hopefully, the ice disk he had made would stay frozen until it was time to cast spell.

[Susan Daunt]

Susan, in contrast, went about making her fire with a soft song on her lips, an old IEC piece about the loyal guardian who skillfully served the Law and was rewarded for it with the chance to do so again, one of those songs that naturally repeated themselves so you could sing it forever. She was dressed down to an older sweater and pair of pants just in case something did explode. With luck, one of the older Chosen would be in the area tonight, but... If not, she'd be ready to back up Mr. Freeman.

Her firewood piled into an impressive cone and lightly dabbed in glistening lighter fluid, Susan plopped down next to it and cradled her amulet in both hands, song on her lips as she waited for closer to the event to try her Spark spell. The Daunt scion had liked looking that one up, her first damage technique really.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

Professor Freeman's preparations were significantly more complex than just building a fire. He used half his oil to draw a braided, three-banded circle, with complex knotwork around six crystals, placed at seemingly random intervals around the circle. A seventh (larger, quartz) sat in the center, and after casting multiple spells on it and the circle at large, he began moving firewood.

The firewood, though seemingly selected at random, was placed with all the care of a feng shui master building a garden. Spells were cast on the logs, and characters were written on them with oil - not so much spells as building-blocks for spells that would assemble as the fire burned. After casting even more spells on the assembly as a whole (all of which connected, or would connect as the fire burned), Professor Freeman pulled a small vial from his pack, uncorked it, and poured liquid fire (a borrowed Olympic flame) into the heart of the pile.

The fire grew quickly, and Professor Freeman looked to see how everyone else was doing. Moonrise was nearing.

((OOC - this is about five minutes to moonrise - feel free to have his look-see at the end of your posts. Magic is fun.))

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

"Professor Freeman?" Less called after he set up one of his pack's strengthening spells around the fire. He wouldn't activate it until the teacher told him it was safe to do so. "Will you check this, please?"

The werewolf had laid out several strips of rabbit leather in concentric circles around the firepit. Bits of bone and precious wood were arranged in a manner that appeared haphazard, but was actually a basic pattern altered to suit how the fire would change the flow of power. A metal frame that would soon hold the ice disk was buried in the sand between two of the leather circles, about two feet from the fire.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"It looks to be right," Professor Freeman said, after looking it over. He tweaked a few of the pieces - turning them a few degrees. "Those weren't quite buttressing perfectly, but for what you're doing, that shouldn't have caused any trouble."

[Shihab]

When Shihab had finished building his fire, he pulled the flint out of his pocket and began to light the kindling-- it took a few minutes, but as soon as his fire was lit, he set the flint down and walked a few paces down to the ocean, scooping up a handful of wet sand-- as wet as he could get it. He found himself taking deep breaths on the walk back. Apparently, despite his attempts to completely calm and clear his mind, and although he knew his next step (theoretically!) wouldn't be harmful, it was... not easy to do cold-blooded.

Which was the point, maybe. Magic takes a lot. He reached the fire, took one last deep breath, and thrust his left hand into the center of the small blaze, feeding quite a bit of energy into the his fist at the same time. If he'd done it right, the fire should get hot-- just around his hand-- and melt the sand, giving him a fist-sized glass focus. It wouldn't be a perfect sphere of glass, but it would contain quite a few bubbles of ocean-water, which, he figured, could only help with a spell where one of the power sources was the ocean.

Pulling his fist out-- as he'd suspected, the fire hadn't damaged his flesh at all-- he looked down with a mixture of relief and disappointment, which he quickly suppressed, taking more deep breaths, and setting the glass, which was a lot smaller than he'd expected, down halfway between him and the fire. With the preparations finished, he did exactly the wrong thing and decided to look around, which more or less destroyed his concentrated and silent mood.

Growling angrily aloud at his lack of self-discipline, Shihab immediately turned back to his fire, after one glance up at the moon, and drew back inwards.

[Susan Daunt]

At the sight of the others lighting up their blazes, Susan held her hands out at the hollow pyramid of wood and it's nest of kindling. Will into power, power into form, and form into glorious dancing life as she let her bloodline's magic pulse full roar into the spell in the wake of the amulet's spark.

The rush of it and spitting torrent of sparks that hurled into the glistening contruct made her smile, a smile that only widened as the kindling caught and lighter fluid spread the incipent blaze up the stouter timbers.

Off went the spell and away went the amulet, Susan plunking down by her embryionic blaze to wait for the signal.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

As Professor Freeman's fire continued to burn, it grew hotter and hotter as spells came into alignment. Power circled around and around, tying massively complex knots into a single whole. The fire grew brighter and brighter - not a warm glow, but the blaze of a magnesium flare. Professor Freeman paid it only the slightest attention - much like cooking, it needed to sit and bake without being poked at.

"Miss Daunt," he said, as she finished lighting her fire. "I have a question for you. The Blackstone Charter forbids both performing obvious magic in the public eye and the use of magic to interfere with mundane events, yes?"

[Susan Daunt]

Susan frowned and paused for a moment in thought, answering cautiously, "When such would be to the greater detriment of the community mundane and mystical as confirmed by a formal judgment of an IEC hearing, but generally yes."

Her eyes were wary, waiting for the barb that was probably coming.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"So," he continued, "Let us say, for a moment, that there is a rock up there the size of a large stadium that's going to hit Earth in twenty or so years. NASA provably isn't going to see it coming until it's too late, however, to nudge it out of the way now would be visible to the astronomic community at large. I should, therefore, request a hearing and wait for the IEC's judgement before I do anything, right?"

[Susan Daunt]

"No, you can apply after the fact with evidence that emergency action was needed to avoid sanction or present evidence if charged," Susan answered a touch hotly under her respect, "But if you ask before hand we can potentially help solve the problem *and* disguise the event. Something like that is like a threat from Outside I guess, Mr. Freeman. The IEC stops those."

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"Interesting," Professor Freeman said. "A more resilient system than I'd been led to believe. Unfortunately, we're out of time. The rock is, in fact, much larger - and magically warded against scrying."

He nodded towards his spell, which continued to self-assemble. The flames licked around and through a cone of light, with a point sharp as a flame to punch through anything, and a massively complex spell behind - the key to a lock keeping the magical world unaware of the impending doom.

"I don't know what other defenses it has, so I intend to take advantage of the eclipse to shatter its wards. I would appreciate it if you would file a report with the IEC. This... situation is going to require a lot of collaboration to resolve, and every minute we wait brings the inevitable fifteen hundred miles closer."

[Susan Daunt]

Susan's eyes widened, "Ummm. I can get you in touch with my family and you can work with them to get the contact info for the local IEC Outpost if the school doesn't have it. From there, it should take one to two weeks to arrange a formal hearing, but the Outpost should respond quicker. I'm *technically* an Enforcer Trainee only, so I'm slightly useless for something like officially saving the world beyond the reach of my fist."

She blushed and looked down at her swelling blaze, "...Yeah."

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

...Good Lord, was she serious? Two weeks? Somehow, Professor Freeman guessed that they'd be much faster to crack down if they thought he'd been breaking one of their laws.

He decided to test that theory.

Along with all the other spells he had to cast, he added another - a brilliant flare that would ride along with his spell, at least until out of eyesight. Bright shooting stars are rare - and one that goes up would be obvious to anyone looking in the right direction.

Judging the progress of the moonrise, he continued speaking.

"Very well," he said. "The eclipse is almost upon us, be ready. You'll know when."

[Verin Vetis Malphus]

Verin arrived late, descending from the sky with several pieces of wood. He'd realised where he was meant to be when he felt the absolute darkness encroaching. A surge of power, and he felt just like he did in the netherworld. Capable of anything, even if only for a moment... what a pity he had a class to attend.

"Sorry." He was, in fact, too happy to be sorry about anything. He threw the wood to the ground and started an intricate sigil in the sand.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

Professor Freeman raised an eyebrow at Verin's comment, but said nothing. He was here and doing something that was at least mostly related to the assignment, that was two contingencies out of the way.

He continued casting his spell, every layer adding dimensions of complexity to the spell forming in the fire. Even now, it would take a book's worth of paper to diagram it completely - and once the eclipse proper started, that complexity would double.

[Susan Daunt]

Susan was trying to ignore the distractions, and focus on her mnenomic, fingers moving in time to her song. This was going to be a lot of power to channel and even if controlling it wasn't as impossible as she had thought it could be, she'd heard too many horror stories about magic gone wrong to take this lightly.

A tiny concern bubbled in the back of her thoughts at whatever Mr. Freeman was doing, but she tried to not think about the reaction of the no doubt overworked IEC branch office. Even if he thought it would take too long to go through proper channels, negative attention would only make his request harder... Oh, Powers That Be...