- Invitation Status
- Looking for partners
- Posting Speed
- 1-3 posts per day
- Multiple posts per week
- One post per week
- Slow As Molasses
- Online Availability
- On fairly regularly, every day. I'll notice a PM almost immediately. Replies come randomly.
- Writing Levels
- Adept
- Advanced
- Preferred Character Gender
- Primarily Prefer Male
- No Preferences
- Genres
- High fantasy is my personal favorite, followed closely by modern fantasy and post-apocalyptic, but I can happily play in any genre if the plot is good enough.
Watching Hana scamper away with the journal pressed tightly to her chest, Karl was forced to acknowledge something he didn't really want to recognize. The quickest way to get Hana to leave him alone was to give her what she wanted.
Perhaps it was an obvious conclusion. There wouldn't be any reason for her to bother him if she'd gotten what she wanted. All the same, he didn't like it. He had no intention of walking to the beat of her drum in some misguided attempt to keep her away from him. Then again, at least he'd recognized it before he allowed himself to walk into that trap, out of some misguided habit.
Frustrated with both the memory of Hana's presence, and his own failure to extract the cube's secrets, Karl cast the book aside, allowing it to float back up to its spot on the shelf. He was done with black magic research for the day.
As the day progressed, Karl was forced to acknowledge that the 'give her what she wants' tactic might have been more effective a tactic than he'd expected. After her forcing her way into his presence three times in the past twelve hours since her arrival, Karl didn't run into Hana for the remainder of the day. At first it left him with a weird sense of anxiety, like there was some shadow stalking him through his own house. However, as time passed and the girl still didn't show up, Karl found himself relaxing.
It wasn't like he thought she was gone, or that she wouldn't eventually be showing up again. Instead, it was a sort of middle ground that left him with a faint tinge of nostalgia. This was how it had been back when people other than him had stayed in his house. If he was around, something that was far from guaranteed back then, he'd meet up with them briefly in the mornings or around lunch, share a few words or a brief conversation, and then Karl would be left alone to do his work for the day.
Of course, back then he'd been under a lot more pressure, having to constantly deal with integrating new artifacts safely into the house, and dealing with the inevitable backfire that would arise when some of them didn't get along. It had been long enough now that very few of the typically peaceful artifacts in his house raised issue with their imprisonment any longer. Without new additions to upset the balance, everything maintained a sort of timeless status quo that only inanimate objects could present.
Of course, with a very unwelcome new addition wandering around the house in the company of a young woman, Karl was certain that something was going to end up getting unbalanced again soon. He spent most of the day verifying the house's various fail safes, with special attention being paid to make sure that there was no way Hana would be able to accidentally stumble across a divine artifacts that would likely not take kindly to abyssal magic suddenly entering their personal space.
However, by the time the end of the day rolled about, Karl had finished with his work and was sitting quietly in another one of the house's gardens. The Lotus Garden was almost entirely dominated by a pond, which was covered by an ephemeral blue barrier. Inside the pond, it was easy to make out several white lotus flowers drifting across the water's surface, releasing a multi-colored smoke that curled lazily within the barriers. Only if someone stared long enough would they catch sight of strange, shadowy tendrils reaching out from dark objects within the pond. However, they would withdraw the instant they touched the cloudy mist coming from the lotus flowers.
Karl stared at the pond vaguely, his thoughts drifting back to the days when he'd first made this garden. It had been one of his more proud moments, realizing he could use the dangerous memory-erasing smoke that emerged from within the lotus flowers to control and subdue artifacts that fed on human emotion. In many regards, this house had taught him even more about the possible utilities of magic than his thousand of years of wandering. Of course, he never would have been able to put it into practice as effectively and efficiently as he had if it wasn't for the vast reserves of experience he possessed, but...
It took several long moments for the sound of Hana's voice to drag Karl out of the recesses of his memory. He blinked slowly, before eventually turning to stare in her direction as he dug the sound of her words out from his memory.
"There's six more of his journals," Karl answered flatly. "Although none beyond the third cover any basic magical knowledge. Just get them from the house if you want them. And didn't we go over that this morning? I don't..."
Karl paused abruptly, blinking slightly as the memories of their conversation from this morning rose unbidden into his mind. "No, I guess we didn't actually go over that. Verdammt. I don't know what that cube is, or what kind of magic is in it, beyond 'not of this earth' and 'bad'. Whatever is at its core, it's keeping itself carefully hidden, and it's on guard against me. There's more than one kind of binding, and unless you want to go through the tests for them one by one, along with all the potential risks that represents, there's no way for me to just suddenly know the answer."
Perhaps it was an obvious conclusion. There wouldn't be any reason for her to bother him if she'd gotten what she wanted. All the same, he didn't like it. He had no intention of walking to the beat of her drum in some misguided attempt to keep her away from him. Then again, at least he'd recognized it before he allowed himself to walk into that trap, out of some misguided habit.
Frustrated with both the memory of Hana's presence, and his own failure to extract the cube's secrets, Karl cast the book aside, allowing it to float back up to its spot on the shelf. He was done with black magic research for the day.
As the day progressed, Karl was forced to acknowledge that the 'give her what she wants' tactic might have been more effective a tactic than he'd expected. After her forcing her way into his presence three times in the past twelve hours since her arrival, Karl didn't run into Hana for the remainder of the day. At first it left him with a weird sense of anxiety, like there was some shadow stalking him through his own house. However, as time passed and the girl still didn't show up, Karl found himself relaxing.
It wasn't like he thought she was gone, or that she wouldn't eventually be showing up again. Instead, it was a sort of middle ground that left him with a faint tinge of nostalgia. This was how it had been back when people other than him had stayed in his house. If he was around, something that was far from guaranteed back then, he'd meet up with them briefly in the mornings or around lunch, share a few words or a brief conversation, and then Karl would be left alone to do his work for the day.
Of course, back then he'd been under a lot more pressure, having to constantly deal with integrating new artifacts safely into the house, and dealing with the inevitable backfire that would arise when some of them didn't get along. It had been long enough now that very few of the typically peaceful artifacts in his house raised issue with their imprisonment any longer. Without new additions to upset the balance, everything maintained a sort of timeless status quo that only inanimate objects could present.
Of course, with a very unwelcome new addition wandering around the house in the company of a young woman, Karl was certain that something was going to end up getting unbalanced again soon. He spent most of the day verifying the house's various fail safes, with special attention being paid to make sure that there was no way Hana would be able to accidentally stumble across a divine artifacts that would likely not take kindly to abyssal magic suddenly entering their personal space.
However, by the time the end of the day rolled about, Karl had finished with his work and was sitting quietly in another one of the house's gardens. The Lotus Garden was almost entirely dominated by a pond, which was covered by an ephemeral blue barrier. Inside the pond, it was easy to make out several white lotus flowers drifting across the water's surface, releasing a multi-colored smoke that curled lazily within the barriers. Only if someone stared long enough would they catch sight of strange, shadowy tendrils reaching out from dark objects within the pond. However, they would withdraw the instant they touched the cloudy mist coming from the lotus flowers.
Karl stared at the pond vaguely, his thoughts drifting back to the days when he'd first made this garden. It had been one of his more proud moments, realizing he could use the dangerous memory-erasing smoke that emerged from within the lotus flowers to control and subdue artifacts that fed on human emotion. In many regards, this house had taught him even more about the possible utilities of magic than his thousand of years of wandering. Of course, he never would have been able to put it into practice as effectively and efficiently as he had if it wasn't for the vast reserves of experience he possessed, but...
It took several long moments for the sound of Hana's voice to drag Karl out of the recesses of his memory. He blinked slowly, before eventually turning to stare in her direction as he dug the sound of her words out from his memory.
"There's six more of his journals," Karl answered flatly. "Although none beyond the third cover any basic magical knowledge. Just get them from the house if you want them. And didn't we go over that this morning? I don't..."
Karl paused abruptly, blinking slightly as the memories of their conversation from this morning rose unbidden into his mind. "No, I guess we didn't actually go over that. Verdammt. I don't know what that cube is, or what kind of magic is in it, beyond 'not of this earth' and 'bad'. Whatever is at its core, it's keeping itself carefully hidden, and it's on guard against me. There's more than one kind of binding, and unless you want to go through the tests for them one by one, along with all the potential risks that represents, there's no way for me to just suddenly know the answer."
“Verdammt” - “Damn it" (German)