light_mischief | [come sail away] ic inbox (season 1)

[as if this old man knows anything about your trifling teenage affairs, he just doesn't want it getting out that he was assisting her with FUCKING BLOOD SIGILS. real responsible man, super great work]

If you wouldn't mind drawing it, yes. [here's a piece of paper from a memo pad and what looks like a counterfeit-bill pen. it's just a regular pen but it has red ink.] Natsuno sent me some sigils, but it won't hurt to cross-reference and make sure I know which ones are which.

[the thing about Jenny forgetting herself??? yeah, not reassuring.]

The process that the Captain and Jenny go through in order to travel to various realities is prone to causing... memory loss. Madness, mostly, from what I've heard. She's likely slowly losing her own self in pursuit of defeating the Captain.

[...hm. a sigil that represents herself.] I wonder if the Captain has a sigil like that. If we've seen it, maybe, and just don't realize it.

[ he takes the paper and pen to start drawing from memory, quite accurately, jenny's sigil, as marginally incorrect as it may be. a pause, then he starts to repeat it over and over to try to mimic the frenzied pattern of it all over her walls. ] It looked like this, scrawled over and over again on the wall, as if maybe she were trying to write it over and over to remember it. I gave a copy of it to Yuuki so yes, he or other people have seen or collected more of them than me. He and Clarke, probably. [ who, well... yes, she'd be pretty reckless with trying to experiment with blood magic. on the other hand, someone should??... but yes admittedly, probably someone with more self-preservation than her?!? ]

I've also speculated that the Captain should have a sigil and perhaps if we could 'restore' it or something, it would help him. Or if we could restore Jenny's. I don't imagine just trying to play with or draw random additions or modifications to the sigil would work, though.

There's a certain erosion to the self that occurs with long, long life. But I imagine traveling realities so much would do the same... it's not as if we could simply ask the Captain to stop, though.

Edited 2022-08-09 02:53 (UTC)

[Skulduggery takes a pause in his own work to look at the sigil and accompanying pattern. it.... isn't very reassuring at all, is it? there's no way to tell what it was meant to look like originally, or how far it's degraded.]

No, I don't think it would be wise to add to the sigil blindly. You risk setting off some more catastrophic magic, experimenting wildly like that... [ C L A R K E ] ...But restoring the sigil for Jenny would likely help her maintain her sanity. I'm not so sure there's anything like that left to save in the Captain...

[but that hasn't stopped him from looking for hints of something buried deep, nor has it stopped him from thinking, sometimes, that he might have glimpsed something behind the void.]

...Still, until we know for sure, it's best to keep all options open. That's including asking him to stop -- although so far, that hasn't panned out.

Mm, I suppose... magic I know isn't exactly defined or activated with sigils, though there is symbology associated with various magic. However magic works in this realm uses a different system than what anyone knows, or else someone should be able to use whatever 'intent' it is to activate a sigil.

However did you use magic to create that invisible wall, anyway? [ come to think of it, skully is a very magical skeleton himself. ]

Symbol magic is one field of magic in my reality. Not one that I spent much time with, though, unfortunately for us all. I keep hoping we'll conveniently wake up to find a sigil expert has come aboard, but so far, no dice.

[man, there are a lot of little fiddly bits to this star map. Skulduggery's copy is going to be accurate in scope, but the details will likely be slightly off. hopefully not so much that it affects anything...]

I can manipulate the elements; the walls are a matter of restructuring air particles into a solid shape. I learned to do those more recently.

The elements... you mean to say you could manipulate more than one? [ a veritable avatar of a skeleton. ] I've only known one person to be able to do that, where I come from. But it seems there are those from different realities who really are a lot more capable... for instance, to even hold power over celestial bodies! I wouldn't know if the 'moon' counts as an element!

[ does he have moon PTSD.

m a y be? ]

[it's a funny coincidence, right? ~~surely not a formative influence of any book canon~~]

Elementals are relatively common in my reality, but most tend to favor one or two over trying to master all four. [three, technically, because earth doesn't count...]

I think the moon counts as a very big rock more than anything. Impressive, certainly, but really... he's just changing the trajectory of a boulder.

[ the moon... a big rock... actually the sheer unimpressedness of skulduggery in the face of that moon spiking almost has him stunned, but maybe he's biased for being the victim of said moon spiking. ] A boulder--

Is that truly what you think of the moon, a boulder now! [ ... ] Though, I can't say whether the moon in this realm is even real, as real as those false stars might as well be, such inconsistency they hold in the sky. It felt more painful than a big rock, I've had those thrown at me a-plenty!

[ thanks no thank you zhongli. ]

[he said it was impressive!]

A moon is a celestial object that controls the tides and has a direct effect on gravity. When Ebalon hurls heavenly objects, they do not result in natural disaster. Therefore, [and here he lifts his pen to point, even if he's not looking directly at Venti,] he chucks boulders at people.

[a brief pause]

Rock, boulder, or moon -- when it's coming for you, it doesn't really matter what it is. Hopefully, there won't be a repeat experience.

[ the moon in genshin is... questionable. that being said, the very sky itself and the heavens are questionable so, kind of much of this goes over a silly spoony bard's head. ] It resulted in a natural disaster for at least one person! [ he taps a hand to his chest. him! it was a disaster for him!!... kinda?! ] But if I think of it as a boulder... hm! So I should simply try to avoid or dodge next time.

[ which, funnily enough, is the captain's advice as well. so.

... ] I don't suppose your invisible wall could block something like that, could it?

Or blow it up, I suppose. [shrugging like that's totally a thing you can do] I would recommend avoiding getting into the position to begin with, although that was obviously not a choice at the time...

[hmm] I wonder if there's a way to redirect it back towards him, the next time he decides to fling asteroids about... Spike the moon, so to speak. [oh, right, Venti's specific question was about his own power...]

I haven't learned how to manipulate a large space as of yet, so creating a barrier large enough to stop the moon would be... tricky. And that isn't something to easily test...

Looking back on it, it could have been a choice. I should have kept my head, I... [ but he'd seen mizuki die, his mind reeled back two thousand years to maybe the most pivotal and defining moment of his life, the silhouette of a boy falling to arrows. the pierce through. he falls quieter, a hand going up subconsciously to his chest, the memory that hit harder than bullets, fatal shots.

a blink. he drags himself from the mire of the past. the scritch of skulduggery's pencil or pen tracing the map. the present, which deserves focus. ]

We've quite a collection of magic users on this ship, and yet we can barely understand the Captain's...

Perhaps we could practice? I could throw things using wind, if you'd like to test your walls more.

[come sail away] ic inbox (season 1)

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