Kronshi

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~"

Magic in the Park

Everything about this felt wrong. The door, the halls, the silence. Not exactly a new experience within the confines of a Dark City but Oz could tell there was something about this that was different.

Leaving the letter leading him to its exact location aside, someone had managed to hex a door with a magical lock so complex that Oz had spent around 7 hours just cracking three of the bindings and 7 more on this last one alone. He was certain that this time the equation was perfect and... no, the door remained bound. The young man stood up and began pacing as he thought, keeping an eye and ear out for an approaching threats as he attempted to figure out why his magecraft was failing to open this path.

Rewrite's core function is the ability to change

Whoever left me that letter is aware of where I live,

the criteria that spells function under,

as well as has insight into my capabilities if they know

barriers included. This particular barrier

my skill with lock-picking spells. They also knew about

had 4 bindings with their own set of

this door and likely have some idea of what's behind it.

criteria and no 2 bindings could share a

What are their intentions with having me open up this

criteria but they could contradict each other.

barrier? They could have set a trap for me somewhere,

Balancing out the requirements for these

but then why not grab me while I'm focusing on breaking

bindings is difficult and runs the risk of a

the bindings? They could simply want what's behind

magical backdraft if done incorrectly. However,

the door, but how do they know I won't just take it for

I have gotten the formula close enough to not

myself? Similarly, they could kidnap me and force me

notice any repercussions for failing to unlock

to open the door if they don't want me taking anything.

the binding which leads to my next question.

Yet, nothing within this place has made a move.

Am I actually failing? It could be that I got

Likely answer, this is a test and my suspicions of

a previous binding wrong and didn't notice,

being watched are correct. They have some manner of

but the more likely conclusion is that the

keeping their eyes on me to witness how I crack this

barrier spell actively resists my tampering

vault and what methods I use to approach solving this

with a tampering of its own. That's it.

puzzle. Likely some form of detection spell, but they

The reason there's no recoil is because my

would have to be better with it then I am my own to

formula is always balanced by an inverse spell

be out of my range or have some means of obscuring

produced by the door. If I'm right, that means

their location that my Detect can't get through.

whoever created these locks knows how to use

Seeing as they thought that only I could understand

Counter and understands Rewrite well enough

this door and yet seem more knowledgeable than me,

to be able to use Counter on it. Alright, now

I have to presume that they bear a different crest

to test this hypothesis, I need to create an

than I do. Which also means that whoever is

inversion of an inversion of Rewrite but to do

testing me didn't make the barrier themselves

that without just casting another Rewrite spell,

but likely knows who did. Furthermore, I can

I'll need to utilize Establish and set a condition

assume that since this door requires the three

for imaginary variables. Negative of a negative

spells that I have learned during my training

is a positive, but the root of negative one is i

with my father, that these people knew him

so I just Establish that i squared can remain

personally and it is equally likely that

as i² within the natural numbers. Then it'll

the door-maker is in fact my father such

be equal to negative one but be a positive

that his disappearance is what makes me the

natural number, meaning I can invert it to -i²

only one who could understand this door.

and that is not equal to one, meaning my formula

The keys to this door were chosen deliberately

would not simplify back into Rewrite.

for me to be the only one who could unlock it.

With all that being said, Oz went about undoing the Counter security hex placed upon the door. It took him some time to verify his math was correct as this was his first time trying to do such a thing but when there was no recoil, he breathed a sigh of relief. That meant there was a spell that his formula affected, and his hypothesis was correct. Unfortunately, that also meant that all the bindings were likely never unlocked to begin with and he now had to start over. This was going to be a long night, but at least he was accustomed to pulling all-nighters.