Welcome to Gaia! ::

Erik didn't dare interfering with the attempt, thinking another demon would just complicate things. When Siber asked him if he wanted to learn, he eagerly accepted, "That would be great!"

Tomas merely muttered in the back of his mind.


Erik couldn't hold back his surprise.


or a woman's touch. That's cowardice at the age of seventeen.>

Tomas didn't answer. Erik just felt an annoyed, almost sulky aura.

Erik automatically took the role of a highly inquisitive student, "Wait. Is there any way to control what demon you summon? Is it random? Also, is this thaumaturgy? The way you talked about a metal object made it seem that way. When you're concentrating on the plexus, will the demon just be summoned, or is there a release step as with the circles?"

Erik decided not to answer.

"If you're manipulating your shadow, there's something you can do that is, in my opinion, much better," Alan observed. "I'm pretty good at Shadow manipulation, so here's a trick I use: Displacement. Manipulate the light such that rather than it reflecting off you and back, it's reflected off you, pulled to the side, and then released. Like this." He blinked and twitched, and suddenly was four feet away.

"Shoot the image if you want. This is a simple one with no sound alteration," Alan explained, his voice coming from the empty space where he had been. "Oh. Another thing. If I don't combine it with a Chameleonic, it looks like... this." His original body appeared again, with the image of him next to it. "Now, if I do this several times and Chameleon myself..."

There were five of him now.

"Of course, none of those are real," Paul heard from several feet away from the images. They all faded and the real Alan became visible again. "The thing is, Chameleonics and Displacements tend to be a lot of natural aptitude, sometimes. It's easier for thaumaturges, though. I'd suggest if you're creating a Shadow-based direct defense, bind it to something like blinking, combined with the will for the defense, and give it an effect of direct motion alteration of anything entering a certain area, for instance. I'm an evoker, though, so I can throw out many and varied Shadow techniques... but I have shitty natural mana reserves, so I tire far too quickly."

"Alright. Let's see now..." Paul muttered, deciding to try the illusion trick Alan had done. He closed his eyes, focusing willpower towards the light, wanting to be able to move it, make it go how he wanted to.

The image came clear against the back of his eyelids, and suddenly there was another Paul. Paul opened his eyes. The other Paul did too. The first Paul thought for a moment... and the second Paul whipped out his pistol as though of his own will and let off three false silent shots, though the muzzle flash was real enough. The real Paul had done none of this.

"Hey. That's pretty cool."

Good, because I worked pretty hard on it. So... to create a shadow shield, maybe the light-bending trick will work again?

Paul closed his eyes, willing the light to bend away, willing his shadow to leap up into the empty space he had created, to protect him, to be capable of doing so.

He leaned backward, grabbed onto what felt like silk, and pulled his shadow up and around him.

"Awesome. Absolutely awesome. Although... I understand now I guess how you do things. My question is, what kind of things should I do? Thaumaturgy, or at least my interpretation, seems to be giving specific things powers beforehand to make them available at bidding, but surely there's some other theory to its use."

"Well, the closest thing we have to a working reason for its functionality is that you sort of... infuse each of the particles the thing with a little bit of the... effect, we'll call it, for the sake of a metaphor," Alan mused. "Anyway. You infuse a small portion of the magic into each of the particles, you key it to a trigger and when the trigger's conditions are fulfilled, it activates it, like a lysogenic virus - it becomes part of it, and when it's triggered, you're activating a changed part of it, the part that consists of the pre-formed magical effect. The thing is, when it's released, the part that was changed goes back to how it was before. We've looked at thaumaturgic foci under microscopes, they look exactly the same.

"But then, maybe using science to explain magic isn't such a good idea. Only magic can really explain magic. It's impossible to achieve something if you believe it can't be done, but that doesn't make it so you can do anything you believe you can. The closest thing we have is measuring that when we tell people that a spell has a certain percentage chance of working, and they cast it, it only succeeds exactly that often. That's why you have to have total confidence and open-mindedness to cast effectively. I've seen something the Shadowmen do - where they target disbelief at the magic, wielding it like a weapon, and it shorts it out, sort of. The magic ceases to function. But they know magic exists, or they wouldn't be Warlock hunters. We think they do it by training their very state of mind to simultaneously acknowledge it as a threat, while targeting disbelief at it so forcefully as to disconnect it." He paused for a while, then added. "Of course, they could be bullshitting and using some sort of other method, but we don't know much about them."

Erik was ready to keep going on the chakra summoning but he knew he probably shouldn't. It was about time for bed and rest.

"I'll come," he said and followed Siber toward the door.
Tomas taunted.

Joe didn't relax his stance. "Umm...I suppose."
Roland? Do we tell her?

He nodded, relaxing slightly. "Yeah, I'm one of those people that hear voices. My name's Joe." Joe extended a hand. "My ancestor's name is Roland."
He glanced over and saw Siber. "Here's another one. His name is Siber. I think his ancestor's name is Keldan, or something. Care to introduce yourself?" he asked Kayla.

Siber grinned mischievously at Kayla's words. "The wizard has made himself absent, as far as I know. He had us preparing some simple- something you've clearly already begun, if you can taste magic residue."
he asked Keldan.
"We are apparently going to free some brethren tomorrow. Have you come to join us?"