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Post by Noa on Oct 6, 2020 3:54:43 GMT -6
Aster dove to one side out of sheer instinct, honed through years and years - a lifetime, really - of dangerous living, and barely missed being assailed in the head by a flyaway shard of burning wood.
He stared at it. The splinter, now lying on the ground, burned violet. And it wasn’t just heat radiating off it either, but something… searing, a sensation that reminded him of cold so acute it felt like fire… or heat so brilliant it burned him numb.
He blinked quickly. Then he turned to Nightshade, who was regarding him with an expectant look, as though he expected to be praised.
... Right, well, if he wanted some direction as to what they ought to work on next, Aster supposed that would be a great place to start. In fact, they had better get started right away, considering the sheer destructive potential that he had just witnessed.
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Post by Noa on Oct 6, 2020 3:54:53 GMT -6
Aster wanted to know that Nightshade could control this skill, the way that Avander could control the most dangerous of his own abilities. It just… hadn’t quite occurred to him that Nightshade would have such a thing.
The flames were of a color with the patterns on the Wiurn’s hide, which was the only hint or connection he could derive. And as he hadn’t been looking at Nightshade when he did it, he didn’t know the exact mechanism by which Nightshade was doing it either. Was it like a breath weapon, or did he just light something on fire with his mind?
… Well, Aster did have to motivate him to do it again, so he should probably praise Nightshade for doing it this time, especially since the Wiurn looked as if he expected it. “Good boy,” Aster said, walking over to give the Wiurn a pat.
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Post by Noa on Oct 6, 2020 3:55:22 GMT -6
That got Nightshade’s attention, and he pressed his nose to Aster’s shoulder, nudging him for more. But Aster wanted to get some more work out of him, so for the moment, Aster didn’t comply. Instead, he moved to the next bit of flammable debris he had set up, and said, “Fire.” And then looked at Nightshade, wondering if just the context would be enough for the Wiurn to piece together what he wanted.
It wasn’t. But then, Aster figured it was probably a long shot anyway, so he wasn’t too disappointed by the development. The real question now was how to elicit that same reaction from Nightshade again. It had been easy to prompt Nightshade when what Aster wanted him to do was to make a specific noise, but…
… Ah, wait. The general pattern of the games they had been playing so far had been for Nightshade to copy whatever it was Aster was doing, or showing him.
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Post by Noa on Oct 6, 2020 3:56:16 GMT -6
Aside from when Aster had been teaching Nightshade to see in the dark, anyway. Still, 'copy me' games had comprised most of the work they'd done in the gardens. Hell, maybe that was what Nightshade thought was going on this time too. Aster had been the one who had started setting things on fire, and… his Wiurn just wanted in on the fun, or something like that. Was that it?
Experimentally, Aster called forth a few sparks into his palm. They guttered and flared and ultimately went nowhere. “Fire,” Aster said again.
Nightshade glowered at the unlit wood, and it burst into violet flames behind Aster.
Aster’s eyes widened. He hadn’t quite expected that, even though he had contemplated the possibility just a moment ago. If he was being honest, he really did expect it to be a breath weapon, just because that was what it usually was, right? Fire and ice both.
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Post by Noa on Oct 6, 2020 3:56:30 GMT -6
Ah hells, he didn’t know. And it wasn’t time for him to get philosophical about it either. Besides, this particular way of manifesting had its advantages. Even if Nightshade’s jaws were sealed shut, he would have access to this ability. He couldn’t really say the same for Avander’s frost breath, could he?
Besides which, he now had a way of prompting Nightshade to make the flame. From there, the path forward seemed much more clear cut.
“Good boy,” Aster said, giving Nightshade more chin scratches this time. The Wiurn made a low rumble of satisfaction, and Aster indulged him a moment longer before peeling himself away. Quickly, he set about erecting more targets for Nightshade. The two that he had lit were both quickly destroyed. The cold portion of the flame apparently didn’t hamper its efficacy at all, and it was making real short work of the shoddy wooden targets.
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Post by Noa on Oct 6, 2020 3:56:54 GMT -6
But hey, Aster was just going to light it all up anyway, so it was just as well. No real loss on his part.
As soon as Aster finished setting up more targets for Nightshade, he stood at the first one, said, “Fire,” and summoned the sparks to his hand again. Nightshade obliged him more readily this time and set the target alight almost immediately. Aster smiled, though it was a little grim around the edges, and praised the Wiurn for a job well done.
And then, onto the next.
They continued like this for a while. At the fifth target, Aster figured Nightshade had had enough time to form the connection, and stopped using his own magic altogether to prompt the Wiurn. It worked; he said, “Fire,” and Nightshade lit the thing aflame.
It was just as well though, since Aster’s access to fire magic was finite, thanks to the way nodes worked.
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Post by Noa on Oct 6, 2020 3:57:26 GMT -6
And even if the sparks didn’t cost him much, they cost him something. And by that point he was pretty well tapped out, having done it several times in succession.
They lit a few more targets this way, all with Aster giving only the verbal cue. By that point, Aster felt sure that Nightshade was beginning to get the hang of the cue. That seemed like a good place to stop for the day, and anyway they had run out of targets again by then, so Aster cleaned up the worst of it, and then the two of them headed for home together.
The next day, Aster brought Nightshade back to do more of the same. Initially he would have liked to get this down as quickly as possible, of course, but based on what he had seen the day before, it looked like Nightshade actually had pretty good control.
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Post by Noa on Oct 6, 2020 3:57:36 GMT -6
At this point it was more of a matter of Aster teaching the Wiurn cues to see where Aster would have liked him to direct that flame… And they could take their time with that.
There was no getting around the tedious process of actually setting up the targets though. Aster thought, for a moment earlier in the day, of using some of the poorly built scarecrows he sometimes used as targets for his bigger creatures to practice on. Those were built to be destroyed, after all. But in the end, he decided against it. They still took time to make, or money to source, even if they were cheap. The scrap wood and brambles lying in a pile in his garden were free, and needed only a little elbow grease to set up.
Well. Not a little elbow grease, and he wasn’t otherwise so sedentary that he needed the exercise, but still.
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Post by Noa on Oct 6, 2020 3:57:54 GMT -6
After a little while though, he did get them set up, and Nightshade’s patience seemed to come more easily now that he understood that these were for his use. When Aster was finished, he stood back, and Nightshade appeared at his side, apparently at the ready.
“Fire,” Aster said, moving to stand next to a target, because that was how they had done it the previous day. Nightshade lit the target on fire. Aster took him through two more targets that way, by which point he felt pretty confident that Nightshade recalled what they had learned yesterday.
Time to move on. Aster went back to Nightshade’s side this time. There was only one target left, conveniently, so Aster simply said, “Fire.” Nightshade looked to him for a moment, then lit the last target on fire. “Good boy,” Aster said, highly satisfied with the outcome of that particular attempt.
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Post by Noa on Oct 6, 2020 3:58:53 GMT -6
In a Pit fight, there was usually only one opponent at a time anyway, so this was already pretty good. Standing next to his intended target wasn't practical, but this new arrangement suited Aster just fine. He had them practice that way for a time, and then they practiced a little more with a handful of targets to choose from, where he pointed to the one that he wanted Nightshade to light up. It didn’t take long for Nightshade to get used to being pointed at a target, since he already knew how to follow pointing in a general sense.
All in all, it was going well. Much better than Aster had expected. They would probably be ready for the contest soon, if they weren’t already ready now. Aster didn’t expect them to be winners or anything, but at least they might make a decent showing of it.
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Post by Noa on Oct 7, 2020 0:32:05 GMT -6
Now that he was done teaching Nightshade how to use his flames though, he had the problem of what to do with all the brambles and scrap wood that was still left over. He had planned to make a bonfire out of it before deciding that it would be a pretty poor idea just because of the sheer amount of heat involved, but…
… Hold that thought. If the heat was the only issue, then why couldn’t he just use Nightshade’s strange cold fire? After all, it burned as hot as it did cold. It wouldn’t melt anything, so long as they kept it contained. Aster wouldn’t have said that the combined effect of the hot and cold aspects of the flame cancelled each other out to make it a comfortable experience to be around, but at least this way there wasn’t as much of a risk of collateral damage, right?
… Right?
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Post by Noa on Oct 7, 2020 0:32:23 GMT -6
Well, it was also true that there wasn’t as much wood to go through now as there was anymore. So it wouldn’t necessarily be a massive pyre that they were setting alight, which had to help too. That, and at this point Aster wasn’t really in the mood to find a different solution than the one that he had already set his mind on.
What was the worst that could happen? “Nightshade,” Aster said, to get the Wiurn’s attention. He had never formally taught Nightshade his name, but they had known each other long enough that Nightshade had sort of picked it up anyway. There were a lot of things, by this point, that Nightshade had informally picked up, to the point that Aster wasn’t really concerned about issues like basic obedience. It wasn’t like he needed Nightshade to be able to play nice with other people, or listen to what they told him to do.
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Post by Noa on Oct 7, 2020 0:32:58 GMT -6
Nightshade wasn’t their creature, and they hadn’t trained him, after all, so why should he? It also wasn’t like he was going to loose Nightshade unaccompanied outside the property limits.
The Wiurn picked up his head from whatever he was inspecting. “C’mere,” Aster said, waving him closer, and Nightshade joined him at his side. Pointing at the big stack of wood, he said, “Fire.”
Nightshade obliged him immediately, glowering at the stack of wood until it burst dramatically into flame. Thankfully nothing exploded this time around; somehow Aster had forgotten that particular detail of the first time that Nightshade had used this particular ability. But since they’d been practicing with it, Aster hadn’t seen much more in the way of explosions, so he figured that occasion had just been a fluke that came from Nightshade’s lack of experience and control at the time.
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Post by Noa on Oct 7, 2020 0:33:14 GMT -6
The wood sure caught fire pretty well though - even this strange fire that burned hot and cold. Or maybe it was because the fire was strange that it had worked. After all, Aster was pretty sure it was the kind of flame that could sear a living thing, nevermind something as dry and flammable as wood was to begin with.
The color of it did look a little strange. Now that there was a lot of it to contend with, Aster was greeted with the full force of looking at a violet bonfire. Even the light it cast was tinted with that color.
It shouldn’t have been such a strange prospect to him. It wasn’t as if normal fire threw clean white light either, so it made sense that a purple fire would throw purple light. It was just that he had never seen something like that before personally.
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Post by Noa on Oct 7, 2020 0:33:32 GMT -6
That, and the fact that he had a long and mostly fond relationship with fire of the normal sort, so he remembered very vividly what it was supposed to look and feel like. The fact that it didn’t felt a bit incongruous.
“Good job,” Aster said to Nightshade. Whatever his misgivings about Nightshade’s flames not living up to the sanctity of a good, normal bonfire, it did seem to be steadily consuming the wood that Aster had wanted to burn. Ash was a lot easier to clean up than wood debris, and it wasn’t like there was anything more useful he could have done with it. Nothing that really came to mind, anyway.
This felt like a good place to end the day too, with a giant pyre. Aster would have liked to go home right then, but it also didn’t really feel right to leave while this thing was still burning.
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