Kronshi

Magic in the Park

@Remram@OwO

Stubbornness might be a trait the pair shared, but Ozymandias thought that bearers of Dynamicism always wore it the worst. In the most general sense, Dynamicism is an aspect of change and freedom, a bending of rules and standards. The antithesis of preconceived notions, and yet this woman held fast to her belief that their duo would work poorly together and refused to give him any real details. He hoped she wouldn't come to regret that choice.

Oz had spent his entire life studying the different facets of the universe. Physics, aerodynamics, aquadynamics, quantum-mechanics, dark matter, the list goes on; you name it. He was well versed in how existence breathed. His specialty was the changing of rules, of establishing new ideas. Something he thought Dynamicism could use well, but he digresses. There was more important things to be concerned with.

Like before, the essence of the Dark City quaked but this time instead of sensing displacement all around him, Oz felt himself dragged through the riftways feeling as if he was being sifted through gravel. Everything twisted and wrenched around him as he concocted a protective formula, an establishment to kill his momentum at the cost of nullifying his weight. He waited into the end of this mad ride to cast the spell, speaking aloud, "Establish, Halt, Null." He spoke as he slammed into pavement, his hand busy tracing formulaic expressions on the other. Before making a second impact, he would freeze midair. All speed stopped, but no weight for gravity to pull him down.

Oz would dispel this effect and tumble to the ground, still worse for wear but better than his compatriot. He brought himself to his feet as he took stock of his surroundings. The beast, soldiers, and a duo of what looked to be independent mages. First assumptions were simple, this beast had somehow dragged him here and likely the rest of this group as well, and so the creature would also likely be his hunter. The situation wasn't ideal but if he could stay on everyone's good side then at least the numbers would be in his favor.

Guns acted first, their leader sending spikes to impale the beast. Leader was likely of Manifest then with such an immediate display of power. The large one in even larger gear could be anything really, mages that kept up with physical improvements tended to surprise people with how they used their magic. The woman with a fog following her was likely pact-bound and based on the form it took, she was likely granted powers of Obscurity. The other two seemed like gunners first, mages second, which likely meant support magic of some kind. A well rounded team, but with his ally being of Dynamicism and the independent mages looking like they could very well be werewolves what with the one having slitted pupils, meant that there was a good chance every aspect was represented here. That would only make it harder to support them with team-wide effects, and so Oz decided to instead focus on impairing the half-incorporeal being.

When a target of his establishments interacted with a non-target, weird things could happen as the two were following different laws of nature and the Dark City would only expound on that strangeness. He needed a law that would mean almost nothing to those gathered here, but would hopefully cripple the beast so that he wouldn't need to exclude the others from his effects. His hands went to work as ideas entered his mind, a light blue arc of energy surged from his fingertips and lingered in the air as he wrote. Trying to balance the fantasy of his desires with reality.

"It's for the best if you all listen to me when I speak, don't blame me if you can't pay attention. I hereby establish that any limb in contact with a tangible, inanimate object must also be tangible from phalange tip to the joint that connects it to the torso at least. I establish that each eye's maximum effective visual capability is divided by the amount of eyes it's owner has open. Finally, I establish that maximum effective visual capability is doubled, but every third eye an entity opens is blinded."

Speaking his intended results aloud was not necessary, but he had gotten into the practice of using keywords to help him keep separate the various applications of similar formula. Here though, no one would understand what they meant and so at the cost of the beast knowing what to expect, Oz fully laid out how things would now operate. With these effects in place, the beast's limbs should always be valid targets for attack. Furthermore, everyone's eyes should stay unaffected since they only have 2 eyes, while the beast would either have to keep all but two closed or divide it's eyesight while also losing vision in a third of it's open eyes. Of course, observant listeners would also be able to note that they'd have twice the effectiveness in one eye if they closed the other.

Now to see if this truly helped anyone, but Oz was prepared to drop his spells should they prove hazardous to victory. All that was left was maintaining his detection on the horror, so that even if it went completely intangible, he could determine it's location to keep it affected.

Magic in the Park

Displaced and disoriented within a Dark City, with a demon chasing after him no less, was not how Ozymandias imagined celebrating his success. There was no sign of the assailant via sound, sight, or magic and worse still was that his companion was equally lost. If only he still had his barrier-knife, Oz could take the time to think out an efficient route while protected but that also was warped away from him.

Opening a portal out would only lead to chaos for the mundane, while staying inside risked injury and death and there was no guarantee that an existing portal would even be close enough to be reached. Oz saw only a single option and stopped in his tracks.

"Running around will only tire us out if we don't know a way. We can't surface from this darkness, so why not descend further into it? I can't detect it anyways, so entering the Labyrinth won't blind us any further and may inhibit its ability to hide, or better, deter it from chasing us. I'm going to start opening a Dungeon. A saw a rift earlier so the space between here and there should be weak enough for this to go quickly. You should prepare for a fight either way. My combat magic works best in support of others, but I need to understand how you fight to avoid screwing you over. Explain your strategies to me while I work."

Oz darted into a nearby alley, using the wall of a building to support his doorway. His magic energy sparked from his finger tips as he started constructing his Dungeon formula. Opening a Dungeon inside of a Dark City was something he hadn't tried before, or even heard of for that matter, but no matter how complex it would be if it needed doing, Oz would get it done.

Entering coordinates was difficult, and aligning his formula with the physics of this world more so, but alternate physics and esoteric locations were his magecraft's bread and butter. If he could meditate and open a mental Labyrinth while in a Dungeon, then surely overlapping Manifestations on top of each other was possible.

One train of thought on the door, a second on detecting signs of the entity, a third on solving the complexities needed to make the door, a fourth on the woman's dialogue, and the fifth on battle strategies based off her fighting capabilities. A veritable train station of a mind that was Ozymandias's was full of traffic and noise, passengers and luggage. The second mental evolution he would go through in one day was occurring, his philosophies expanding to encapsulate all he had to do.

This was familiar.

Opening a door, that fought back due to the strangeness that is the Dark City, to reach a place of higher power and closer to divinity.

That was familiar.

A challenge presented by someone that sought his growth and enlightenment, even at the cost of his safety and well-being.

Oz had never experienced as much fear, as much confusion, as much suffering, nor as much anger as he felt in this moment. Whoever is behind all this owed him answers after all this, and he was determined to get them. With his mental senses and emotional limits being overwhelmed, Ozymandias grinned thinking of what would come next.

Magic in the Park

I'll be writing up my post sometime tomorrow.

Magic in the Park

I have posted. Sorry for taking so long.

Magic in the Park

It worked, it shouldn't have but it worked. The form of the disturbance had been unraveled, but Oz couldn't help but feel frustrated that he still doesn't understand what was obstructing him in the first place. It felt as though his mind had become a brace for the door's weight, not unlike searching through the labyrinth via meditation, except this enigma could hardly be called a door, it was more of a window into a new space. A space that doesn't take being observed kindly and the figure within was nothing more than security. A watcher that was being puppeteered by the true denizen further inside.

Every fiber of his being vibrated with energy as he felt ripped away and displaced everywhere and nowhere. Ozymandias shook as he stood, his legs becoming re-accustomed with there being ground beneath them. Every sensation felt new and wrong somehow, like his body forgot what the real world was like while he was entranced by his vision. As he took stock of the situation, he noticed a few oddities. Only a quarter of his etchings remained, some buttons on his jacket had disappeared, and one of his shoes now lacked laces. The door in front of him now felt mundane making it clear that whatever he witnessed took the liberty of scattering this location into multiple fragments. He had shattered the glass of something holy and now it may be gone for good.

"It was a small thing, humanoid, with strings trailing off into the distance. I think I've set off the alarms to something's home and now its servant is after us."

"We need to move. Now."

With that, Oz ran. He grabbed the girl's arm as he did, knowing that while she didn't witness what was beyond, she still saw him open the door. He needed that right now, or he'd think he hallucinated. Who cared if she threatened him, that's the norm when your a lone mage in a Dark City. Everything and everyone is predator and prey but the situation can quickly change and make fast friends if something higher on the food chain arrives. Fighter, Witness, Friend, whoever she wanted to be in his presence, it didn't matter. Oz needed her to live if there was any hope of getting out and dissecting what he just experienced. However, there would still be one large obstacle to overcome if he hoped to get out.

He no longer knew the way out. After spending so long on this problem, the portal he used to enter was surely gone. So he bolted out into the streets and simply chose whichever direction he thought his hunter wasn't in. The howling was gone, and there was no telling where the creature would come from, but towards the edge of this manifestation seemed the best way to go for now.

"I don't suppose you know the way out of here, do you?"

Magic in the Park

I'm going to be a few days. Recent developments have killed my motivation to write but I'll spring back before long.

Magic in the Park

ASU! ASU! RA!~ RA!~ RA!~

You've recruited a band of crazies.

Magic in the Park

I look away for a second and half y'all have posted

@Asuras

If it wasn't for my sleep schedule getting fucked up and sleeping when I would normally be writing, my post would have come out around the same time as everybody else's. I still made sure to post in under 24 hours though so our pattern of four of us posting extremely quickly continues!

Magic in the Park

Hypothesis #18 had failed like all that came before it. It seemed no amount of spell editing would force open this last lock and yet, the desire to see it open has already caused Ozymandias to reinvent the wheel eighteen different times. He knew there would be unfathomable depths to the magecraft he had specialized in, but never had he been confronted with something so esoteric that it forced him to put it into practice. This door had proven to almost be a crash course in how his spells could be utilized and that made it too valuable to give up on even if this all seemed fruitless.

Oz picked back up the one weapon he had in case of emergencies, an enchanted dagger that he had forced a barrier onto and then rewrote so that instead of protecting the knife from damage, it instead allowed him to create barrier circles by carving the boundaries into the ground. He had been using it for a different purpose currently though, he needed more room to take note than a piece of paper in his journal offered and so he took to carving his formulas into the ground around him. The mad scribbles often overlaying one another. His mind raced as he started to write down more ideas equations with only one last idea in his head. If the circuit is broken, he'd have to fix it. He couldn't expect a vault with missing cogs to open even if he knew the code.

Suddenly, a tingle went up his spine as he sensed someone enter the range of his detection spell. No, that's not right, they were already within range and dangerously close. He started turning to face his visitor before she even spoke, eyes wild like a beast caught in a cage. Of course he was struggling, and last thing he needed was more distractions. It risked him missing fallacies within his arguments and hurting himself from forcing a spell he didn't have enough expertise to cast. On a different note, if she was capable of slipping past his detection, then the gun in her hand was no empty threat.

"I'm already going as fast as I can, this isn't exactly high school algebra I'm doing here. And waving that weapon in my face isn't helping me think y'know? I'm probably 23 different establishments deep into trying to rewire this door back together so that it can actually be lock-picked in the first place. Not even I'm keeping up with all the intersections of all the rules I've put in place. For all I know, if I stand up my body may unravel as the electromagnetism holding my atoms together fails. So, unless you want to join me in this spiderweb, how about you put the weapon away and we be civil about this?"

Besides his new "friend", the howling laughter is the only sound he's heard for hours. The first girl was a big enough problem, so two was not something he wanted to deal with. Oz stared at the scratchings on the floor, picking apart ideas and tossing them aside without testing them. One more failed attempt and this lunatic may just shoot him. He needed to be certain, he needed an answer. He could almost feel his father's hand on his shoulder like the man used to do whenever Oz was struggling with a test, but this test was different. His father's designs were more intricate and purposeful, each step you made gave you an answer on how to take the next. This teacher was more strict, just a red 'X' on any proposed solution that was incorrect. It almost felt like this door was made on accident.

As he thought, Oz scribbled away while making sure to never complete the barrier loop around him made from his etchings. He needed to get close to that result in case things took a turn for the worse, but for now it would only incite the violence he wanted to avoid.

The fourth seal always causes the others to lock back up, any tampering with it leads to a reset within the spell. Well, not exactly any tampering, but any that seems likely to break it. Order doesn't matter, doing all 4 at the same time doesn't work, there's no counter spell on the door or if there is then not one I can invert, it's not on a timer, so what is causing it to lock back up? If this was a real lock then I could put tension on it in order to keep any set pins from falling back in place, but I don't have that luxury here and keep having to do my work over and over again. I almost wish it was as simple as there being someone on the other side that just keeps recasting the spell every time I get it open but I'm not noticing that kind of frequency. Removing complexities leads to a reset, adding them feels like I'm patching holes but I keep reopening them when I try to turn this last lock.

A crossroad had been reached. He was going to have to try some poorly thought out ideas to experiment with how the door reacted if he had any hope of getting it open. If Oz was only going to get one chance, then he was going to try all of them at once. Multiple ethereal formula crackled like electricity around Oz, as he wrote up an equation to overcome the first seal, an equation to establish that the seal could not lock while the fourth seal was locked, an equation to write up a new barrier seal to replace the position of the first that was still locked but easily opened, and then he maintained tension on the first seal by constantly putting energy into the unlocking spell. He repeated this process with the second and third seal, with his hope being that they could not lock unless the fourth was unlocked but if all were unlocked then the door would have some non-zero amount of time that all locks were open. Then the tensions spells would keep re-unlocking the seals, and hopefully it wouldn't take so much energy that it was impossible to open the door while the cycle was going. In addition, there was also the hope that the first three wouldn't even lock up again, because new locks had been put in their place and that could lead the fourth seal to be tricked into believing that they were already locked. The final step was writing up a barrier that constantly wanted to open but couldn't like a pen spring. Once pressure is applied to attempt to lock the barrier fully, it will crack open and unlock. Oz then bound that seal to the fourth seal, in the hopes that a barrier that keeps closing when opened could be balanced out be a barrier that keeps opening when closed. Brute forcing everything open at once wasn't exactly elegant, but no one could belittle a man writing twelve magical formula at the same time.

Magic in the Park

God, we ate the plot like a pack of ravenous beasts. All responding in a little over 24 hours.

We really went, "Asuras, more story pwease~"