Quintessential lessons

[Solomon Ward] The basement was chill. Not cold, perse, but it had that cool below ground sense to it. Not quite damp, not quite dry. The scent of old stone work and the earth, it's man made construction just short of Cthonic. Perhaps more conservative Choristers, at least amongst his fashion, would have looked ill on such a place as this. He's seen old places though. In Europe and a few in the Middle East, he is well traveled. Secret shrines and gardens and caves, old places, mostly relics and historical sites now. Secret places of worship...not by pagans and witches and others of ill repute. Hidden shrines to the Perpetual Virgin and to Christ, in places where the faith was once, or still is, persecuted.

This is a far cry from a secret 'church', but he understands the concept well enough to to damn it. He believes strongly enough in the sacrosanct being of a Node that once can usually not make ill of their location. For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.

He has it lit by candles. A menagerie of them, along the well and the floor, in corners, placed on some of the looser stone brick of the walls that jut out slightly. There are enough to read by with out causing head ache, enough to see one another clearly. It's softer than artificial light, but it works as well. He has brought down two small rugs and a small stacks of books, most from his own collection. Leather and wood bound things with loose papers and notes crammed in them less than fastidiously as some might imagine Solomon.

He let her do her rounds, making sure all was well in the building above and then he waited.

[Emily Littleton] Emily, too, has been many places. She has seen the face of God reflected through many cultures. They could argue semantics, whether those gods were the One True God, whether those idols were the type forbidden by the commandments that He gave unto Moses at the peak of Mount Sinai. She did not take the Sanctuary and Sanctity of the place for granted, however it was shaped. However cold the below ground place was.

She has been at the Chantry all day, minding the foot traffic of other mages through, keeping watch that they obeyed the rulings about the restricted places. Cleaning. Cooking. There are meals, now, for the sentries that follow her in the rotation. Small containers with cards taped to their lids about how to reheat their contents. Fresh bread, and fresh pumpkin bread, and green salads, and fruits. It seems almost a proper house, if one looked into the refridgerator, or sniffed at the oven.

Emily pulls on a sweater before she wanders down the stairs to the basement. It's a knit thing, warm enough to keep out the cold. It's another layer to the long-sleeved shirt and tank she's already wearing, that keep out the Autumn chill. Her sneakers have good enough grasp on the worn stone steps. This path is better known to her now, to the fingertips that trail along the margins of the walls as they narrow, as the flicker of candle light breaks through and she emerges into the Node Room proper.

There they two are, a seasoned Knight and an Aspirant. A weathered Disciple and an Initiate not yet out of her Catechumenate. "All's quiet," she tells him. There's a hush of reverence to her voice, here, even as Catherine slumbers. "The House is empty save us, now."

It's a late hour. It's unsurprising. She smooths her hands over her jeans, glances around at the darkness of the well and the bright puddles of illumination thrown by the candles. Emily waits.

[Solomon Ward] Solomon Resonates. His resonances, stronger than most average Disciples, almost hum. That sense of righteousness, unyielding and archaic in its intensity in this world, this day and age. He's done a working, and recently too. One of the books is laid out in front of him, where he sits cross legged on the rig. His cruciform sword, a hand and a half blade, a relic from another age and older than most modern Western countries, sits by his side; unsheathed, but resting upon it. The blade is fired black, but a keen eye can see the dozens of archaic inscriptions set in the blade. Most are undecipherable. It is otherwise a very plain item, if misplaced in this time and era.
Much like Solomon himself.

"I have set a watch. Don't fret about breaking studies in order to check the house or should you hear some thing. If any one enters, we'll know."

He leans forward then, tapping the open book and its yellow aged pages. There's a large diagram that takes up both pages of the open book. It consists of a Magna David enclosed in a circle, very similar to a Solomonic Seal. The circle is double thick, detailed with various Hebrew glyphs. The notes scrawled around it how ever, and those tucked under it (later additions), start out written in Greek. Some of the more modern ones are Latin.

"I found that manipulating what many call Prime, at least on a conscious and controlled level, to be difficult. It's real and surreal and unreal. We know it exists. We have seen it, breathed it, been empowered by it. It flows through all life, deeper than blood and more vital than air. Hard science is still attempting to discover the source of spontaneous life, the well spring of the big bang. An apprentice sorcerer can point his finger at an element most mortals don't understand and say 'there it is. I have found it'. Ironically it is that simple, and so much more complex. Invoke your second Sight and observe"

Perhaps Emily knows that Solomon uses odd phrases when it comes to what many call magic. He seems to occasionally call the Spheres by other names, or apply principles and laws to them others are unaware of. Other times he seems ignorant of basic concepts. Its a sign of his education, done so with out the Traditions and their terminology. He uses it, finds most of it fitting perhaps, but it wasn't part of his base education and it shows, from time to time. Second sight , what some call Prime Sight or to Watch a Weaving.

[Emily Littleton] [Prime 1: Watch the weaving; base dif 4, unique focus]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 5, 9 (Success x 2 at target 3)

[Emily Littleton] Solomon has learned, by now, that Emily takes her studies very seriously. Be they purely academic, or mystically inclined, or even the more menial tasks he may assign her in the name of mindfulness or general apprenticeship. She is not too proud, either, to begin back at the basics with a new mentor. To address and relearn any deficits he may have found; to tailor her language to his, where it makes understanding easier. Emily is a bright girl, and one who has learned to listen and reflect. To absorb, assimiliate and find mid-points between cultures.

Perhaps that is why she seats herself quietly across from him with the proper amount of reverence for the relic by his side. Why she offers up her own heirloom of past times, lives past, with a small grace. She as not mentioned its importance to him more than once. Surely, at some point, she has said It belonged to my god-father. And at another, unconnected time, he would have heard her mention He was also a Singer, my god-father, and a Knight of St. John which was not an Order within the Chorus but rather a humanitarian branch of mortal means.

Her dark hair is braided back, as it often is at their lessons, and she sits with the straight back of a rigid childhood, a posture learned that cannot be disregarded so easily. When he tells her to open her Second Sight, Emily nods and bows her head. Her fingertips rest on the prayer beads for a moment, then take them up. They are familiar to anyone of the Catholic Faith; rosary. Stone beads, worn, slip through her fingers as she focuses. Counts. Centers. They carry no crucifix or mark of the Virgin at their end, rather an eight-armed cross of Malta (the crest of the Order of St. John).

It does not take long. She is practiced in this pursuit, now. It is one she had no knowledge of when they first met. The year has changed them both. There is a building Reverence, a sense of grace, that Unrelenting thrum that builds around her. It is quieter than his own, for now. For a long time to come, but it is insistent already beyond most first-year magi's.

As the Sight settles around her, Emily exhales. Her fingers stop working over the beads, but do not set them aside. Her eyes slip open, then she looks to him and nods once.

"I am ready."

[Solomon Ward] "I may have trouble explaining this, and you comprehending. This is fact, so please don't be put off by it. My art is based on the concept of high ritual, and seems less than 'divine' in nature to the uneducated. I don't believe magic is simple,but that has more to do with my perception of the world and how to alter it than certain truths.. regardless..."

He speaks, and in her Prime Sight the man is a battery of quintessence. It infuses his Pattern, locked with in. The deepest amounts of it, at the core of his being, is average. It resonates as all his other magic does, it is no more or less intense than many mages carry within them. The rest... the older man is infused with it. Any where else the resonances of them would have clashed. Some of it is his own. Some of it is touched by Israel, and her pattern can be felt emanating from his own, a soft echo like the scent of some one who has recently left the room. Some of it is destructive in nature, some of it stable. Like a man that has been picking it up here and there, as he finds suiting.

He glows with nearly half the energy of the node.

The Node is visible as well, though not as strongly as it once was. Damaged in the Nephandic raid, it has yet to put out as much quintessence as it once did. Not as steadily, and when it caps off, reaches the brim so to speak, it is not so much as it used to be. By about a third, in Solomon's studies and estimation. Catherine still Slumbers.

"Touching the fifth essence is an exercise of Will. It can't be moved with the hand or pushed with ones breath, though many of us make the motions because they are comfortable and familiar. At this stage of its understanding its still an incredibly static seeming thing. You can see it inside people, or objects, but can't yet touch it. It's too tightly wound in their patterns. But your own fount of it, as well as Tass, those you can use. That is merely direct manipulation of it as well.. simply understanding the principles can allow you to create wards against others magic. The study of Prime is the study of magic itself. It can be used alone for amazing things, and with amazing results, but its most versatile use is in how it affects all other magic. Just as Prime is the Light and the breath of God, prime can be used to create, or take from, or alter, all other forms of magic... but those are other lessons. Right now I'm going to teach you to use Prime, alone.

Where you taught the basics of the defense most call anti-magic?"

[Emily Littleton] Among the many things Solomon is teaching Emily, comes patience. It is not even low on the list or lesser of import. She is patient with his explanations, which are longer than any teacher's she had to date. She is patient with his ritual and rhetoric; more than patient, she is curious and a sharp study. Watching the room as she is, Emily is acutely aware of how diminished the Node is. There is still a pang of guilt for it every time she is reminded, a moment when she closes her eyes and remembers what it felt like to know that Catherine lashed out, and then fell quiet.

She remembered what it was like to stand in this room, scanning and inventorying bodies.

Emily shuddered, slightly, against the memory of it.

He is a bright point, a beacon, a tower of God's fury, and wrath, and brilliance. She is a lesser star, bright for what she was, rebuilding her inner store of grace and brilliance slowly, over time, in a way that would not be too taxing to Catherine.

She does not interrupt, tell him that she has assisted in shaping, in using, and wielding Prime. She is not a petulant child. She is not so needful of his approval. Emily waits until he asks her a question, and then replies.

"I have used Counter Magic," she says, testing to see if this is another situation when her vocabulary runs aground his. There's no added drama, here. Solomon already knows, or has heard, or perhaps doesn't need to know that it's her quick use of Countermagic that saved her own life in the Labyrinth. It's not worth bringing up as a digression.

"I have seen a countering effect woven, in direct opposition." Again, she senses this is not the same thing. Her brow furrows, and then she shakes her head. "Then, no, I have not learned of Anti-magic."

Through the grapevine, or directly from Emily, he might know these things: In the breach, during Edom's assault, Emily helped Kage wield Holy Stroke; in the Node room, here, in a time of relative quiet, Emily helped Israel fashion healing charms; in the Chantry, here, after the Assault, Emily helped Kage building Prime-and-Correspondence wards; in the Labyrinth, Emily defended herself against an unholy Prime assault. There is a firm basis for what he will teach her, though the media have been varied and the lessons under duress thus far.

[Solomon Ward] Solomon nods to her explanations. It isn't his intent to teach or train her childishly. Solomon doesn't believe in such, and if she had behaved in such a way this wouldn't be occurring. It's more akin to having a new professor for a subject one has already studied. The differences in education and thesis, the approach of the practical application. They almost have to start from the beginning, because what she has learned, or what she has learned in order to do things, may be totally alien concepts to one another.

It's a slow, but necessary, process.

"We shall start with anti-magic, as some call it, then. I know it as the First Shield, because it is the simplest form of defense, but the most costly. Much like an instinct reflex it can apply to almost any attack or invasion of Will, but to varying effect. It isn't always the right thing to do, and it will cost you in the stored essence you carry. The Node can afford to lose a little, and so we'll go over this and then replenish ourselves."

He watches her for a moment, the expressions that had passed her face, the tone of which she explains things. Solomon is oddly comfortable with the girl. Young woman, he should correct himself. Many would see their sense of mannerisms and propriety to be dated. Stodgy, uptight. To two with which it comes so casually, its simply a matter of familiar comfort.

"The relationship between this and the next stage of direct manipulation is this. Prime affects reality. Directly. It can be used to increase or decrease the very magic of nature. To add or subtract its strength, likelihood, or potential. The Creator designed to Creation to more or less operate itself. His hand does not touch everything, as tragic as that is to the pious. That said it meant He created fundamental laws. Physics, for example. The world is a clockwork, in a manner. These laws can be manipulated. Some are broken or fluid, others merely flexible. Still others are immutable. Prime, quintessence, has the ability to shift the balancing scales.

You have used it to empower your own magic before, yes? You will the quintessence into the actually weaving of the rote, spell, invocation.whatever you care to coin it. By placing the essence, entwined with a suitable resonances if possible, magic simply becomes..easier. The laws of what should and should not exist become slightly more flexible, and the effect occurs either more easily or with greater results... but you are, in a way, diminished by it... you understand so far?"

[Emily Littleton] She is quiet for awhile, again, before replying. This time, the Initiate has more to say. Some of it may be in conflict, and others may run directly parallel to what he is teaching. Emily's mindset has not be fashioned and honed by one hand; it is not a thing of one origin aimed toward a single end. She has a Dynamic essence, and that dynamism pulls from many sources, focus that light and knowledge through her, and disperses again like a beam refracted: beautiful, varied, but not singular by any means. It is part of why she has grown so quickly; it is part of why they must constantly retrace, regroup, and re-evaluate her studies.

Luckily for them both, she is bright enough to take these things in stride.

"There are fundamental clockworks, mechanisms, pathways, patterns beneath other spheres as well. A solid understanding of Anatomy and Biology can inform the use of Life, perhaps indicate where best to push, to prod to influence patterns."

She draws this analogy because Life is the first pattern she has learned to manipulate. To do more than just see. To touch, bend, shape, encourage. This, too, helped her survive the Labyrinth, but it is a side-step. An agreement and a tangent drawn in together, bundled up, reflected. She listens. She can rephrase the lesson in slightly shifted words. This is a key teaching style in many other cultures, recitation and call-response.

Emily also nods. "Only recently have I begun willing the quintessence into my workings. In the last few months, since I gained the rudimentary understandings of Prime. I have been more mindful, as well, of the resonances in working with others, and how they can affect the ease or ill-ease of what we do. Being closer to the Node, too, helps. Working with familiar tools. Taking one's time to focus, though these are less about quintessence and more about habits and practices," she concedes, of the last.

[Solomon Ward] "Familiar tools and focus indeed. Being near the Node is an astute finding. Magic is easier around the Node because the existence of the Node is the existence, undeniable, of magic. Regardless of the consensus and what reality currently allows, so long as these things exist then so too will our wunderworks. They are, in a way, similar to a heart valve. We can go with less than what we require. The extent of our being and magic and life is not based solely on one of them existing or functioning properly. Take them all away, damaged or killed or non present... and it dies, like the body. Perhaps that isn't the case, but I've yet to see any evidence other wise and both the use magic is easier and the Shadow tends to be more accessible here. regardless, you have the gist of it."

"I am going to create light. Move it, in actuality. What I want you to do is to stop me from doing so... with out using your knowledge of the lore of the Funda--I'm sorry, Forces. This is an exercise in Prime only. Before, how you willed your magic to be easier, stronger, by investing yourself in it. I want you to work the concept in reverse. I want you to deny magic. Its existence, its ease, that it can be done. That it can be done by another person. I want you to deny that, and place your Will, empowered by the essence, into it."

He removes a small token from one of his breast pockets. It is perhaps the size of a smaller sand dollar. Not quite his palm. Metallic, round, not entirely solid. Similar in nature to a Solomonic Seal, it's nearly identical with the exception of being a precisely measured and shaped three dimensional disc, vice a drawing.

[Emily Littleton] [Anti-magic: No sphere declaration; dif 8; for each success, spend 1 quint to increase Sol's target difficulty by 1.]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 8)

[Solomon Ward] [Forces 2, Vulgar without witnesses 4 = 6, -1 node 5, foci -4, +1 due to anti magic = 5]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 5, 8 (Success x 2 at target 5)

[Emily Littleton] It was not that long ago that Emily was a Sleeper. It was not that long ago that her presence alone would make the fundamentals of these workings more difficult; vulgar acts in the presence of unEnlightened witnesses were more difficult. That much she had learned.

Solomon explains the exercise and Emily wraps her head around it, sets aside what she knows of Forces -- which is a less codified understanding than this, to be fair, as she'd woken up into with an innate and inarticulate awareness. There's a slip of stone beads through her fingers again and Emily repeats to herself, inwardly, with each passing bead, that this thing Solomon wishes to do, spontaneous illumination; it is impossible.

Beyond improbable. Beyond unlikely. Well outside the realm of potential outcomes. It is a thing she knows with unrelenting certainty, with unwavering truth: he cannot do this. Her Will pushes out to make that so, to swallow away the possibility, to carry it away.

And it is harder, by far, to deny a possibility than to create one. It is a difficult thing, this unrelenting persistence, and there seems at first to be very little Reverence to it. Emily would not be surprised to find out that the Hermetics had created this fashion of Will-working. It seemed very Hermetic to her, but she does not say so aloud.

[Solomon Ward] This is the simplest of Will-working, one of the oldest and most basic, in a way. For every thing man has ever feared he has created a defense, whether solid and real or simply hopeful and imagined. Long before its codification by a certain order of haughty wizards who collected and codified concepts, it was used to stop curses and banish spirits. It is a simple thing, once one wraps their mind about it, but costly.

Flames flicker and dance. He clarified not to create, but move, though they as well be the same. What ever it is that Solomon does to make his mojo happen, it usually involves muttering in some arcane language and brandishing about specifically prepared objects (many mages have preffered foci... Solomon seems to have one for nearly every effect or ritual he conducts..), it works.

Flames danced. Candle sized flames that detach themselves from the candles and hover across the air, collecting up in a growing pool of light, and heat, with out a visable way to feed themselves from the wick.

"Close.. I felt the resistance of it. A little more and they would have flared, perhaps moved, but I couldn't have sustained them hovering, or away from their fuel. Do wish to try again?"

[Emily Littleton] He asks if she would like to try again. Emily is not so petulant and frustrated as to challenge, outright, but she does accept the offer. Her voice is a little marred by concentration, the effort of sorting out a new thing, using her Will in a new way.

"I think I'd quite like to, thank you."

That marring doesn't keep her from being polite. She has two advantages, now. One: she is more determined, and will sink her Will into this in more than name alone. Two: She has seen the architecture of his effect, now. Perhaps it will better shape and inform her denial.

Again the beads slip through her fingers. Again she gathers, focuses, pulls her Will into a thing wielded as much as a weapon as it now must be as a defense. Solomon is gathering light, but one day another may be pulling a Force more deadly together for less instructional purposes.

It is not possible. It cannot be done. There is no magic. Not even here, in the upwelling of the Node. Not even here, in a place of quiet Grace. These things are not magic. They do not ease his working. It cannot be done, this levitation of flame, this gathering of light. Impossible. Impossible.

The inner mantra slips past like the beads through her fingers. Emily pours her Will into it, whatever Quintessence she can.

[Anti-magic: No sphere declaration; dif 8; for each success, spend 1 quint to increase Sol's target difficulty by 1. +WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 2 (Success x 1 at target 8) [WP]

[Solomon Ward] +1 sustained effect.
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Solomon Ward] He lifts his hand over their heads, pinky and ring finger enclosed, so that he points with index and middle, thumb stretched outwards. The flames break apart again, but not for her effort or Will. The break into a dozen spinning lights, two, and swirl about over head like a ceiling fan of small lights.

He twirls his fingers in a round motion using his entire hand, a small tight motion, and the flames dance wider as if the amount of force required is not proportional; Which of course it isn't.

His hand makes a fist, then flings open again rapidly, all fingers splayed outwards. All the dancing lights return to their candles, attached to their wicks. Solomon is a proponent that magic is a tool. It is the means by which to accomplish an end. It is never the end itself. Usually he would avoid such a trivially blatant display of it, but this was for a purpose...

"Admittedly you're at a minor handicap, given the nature of a node and what it is you are attempting to do. You understand the basic concept, though we may have to work on mental focus and approach... and that's ok. It was a first attempt. Even failing it was the stepping stone to the next part of the lesson. Once you've learned to push quintessence from your pattern and guide it with intent and purpose, you can begin to enchant things... whether short term effects or longer lasting charms..."

So begins the real lesson, in actuality. This was preamble. An exercise in the expenditure of quintessence to receive a desired result. One of the simplest results, really, using your innate essence against anothers magic. It is much easier to deny than to create.

He is firm and patient, explanation when she has questions, aware of when she may require breaks to aid in focus or relieve bodily needs. Solomon is not a man that believes people just 'do magic' because they can. Obviously a firm understanding of what they are attempting to do is required. How does one bend, break, and deny the laws of physics if they don't understand the metaphysical mechanics, after all?

This may be a long night...

"Now, as I was saying..."
[Emily Littleton] There is purpose here, even in the sort of flagrant magic they were practicing now. This was the sort of showy stuff neither of them would do just to prove they practiced an art above glorified prestidigitation. Emily has been awake long enough to know that she stands on the downhill side of an ability and aptitude gap. That proximity to the node makes magic easier was something she'd begun to understand. That practiced rotes are simpler was something she well knew. That counter magic and anti-magick were always, necessarily, more diffcult that an effect itself. Well. That was just an extra hurdle to overcome.

In her mind this wasn't a failure. She'd managed to grasp the underlying pathways of what he wanted her to, even if should hadn't scaled the disparity between their skillsets and triumphed over her his Will with her own. She also hadn't been able to push Ashley from her Mind, all at once. But she learned how to push, and that was an important first step.

It's not always about winning. Emily is an Architect, not a Competitor. She sitting here, tonight, because she was able to wrap her Will around eroding another's effect -- it's literally the only thing that saved her in the Labyrinth. There is a strong scaffolding, now, from which to build her next advances into manipulating Quintessence. Solomon has given her another tool, and while she wields it awkwardly just now she has learn to grasp onto it.

It's all about practice, finesse, and knowing one's boundaries from here on out.

So he tells her that it's okay she failed, and there's no wounded pride in the even, blue-eyed gaze she casts back at him. There's no inflated ego, either, to imply that she thinks her failure is a trick of consequences or an unfairly stacked deck.

And she has questions, pragmatic things like what, if anything, can be done to make Anti-magic easier -- does it benefit from practice like rotes and effects? Is it always rigorously challenging, like countermagic? And he is firm and patient, and clear in his answers. There is a give and take between them, and so she is ready when he says Now, as I was saying...

And she is attentive, even as her Will is partly spent and she has two unsuccessful attempts behind her. (Thing tinge of something Unrelenting was no mistake, you see...)

[Solomon Ward] He explains it all in a slow and confident manner. Not slowly as one would with say.. a slow student, but with the patience of some one that has been doing this for years. Decades. Some one that struggled hard and long in the beginning, that mentored himself. Some one who has to translate tems he learned early on, or made up, or researched, into commonly accepted parlance by both Tradition and Traditions.

No rush, no hurry. Thorough details, pedagogical remarks.

Not that I am aware of, he had said. Anti-magic was what it was, and nothing made it easier that he knew, The Quintessence reinforces reality. It can be paradoxical. Working magic to cancel magic, not by unWeaving it, but by denying it. Of course you don't have to deny it to all reality. Just your own... again, a paradox, but much like what the Traditions call Spheres, when you finally grasp the duality of it... a snap of the fingers.

That was the problem with much of his teachings. They were High Ritual. They felt like some thing you'd learn from a Hermetic, only with less pagan and more Judeo-Christian roots... the complex ideas and the symbolism were the same though. Ideas of Sympathy and Contagion, Will, divine law, symbologic logic and it's mathematical surety.

Emily is a smart girl, yes he often does stil lthink of her as a girl. No matter how prim she is or makes herself to be, self sufficient, or fast as a study... he is what he is, and so is she.

"Prime by itself is a powerful thing, but it is most powerful, and most important, in relation to the world around it. The importance of quintessence is that it exists in all forms of reality. Spirits, the human life, the forces of fire or wind, the magnet, the battery, inert stone. By empowering our Will with it, we make our magic simpler to enforce in our world... or more difficult for others to do the same, though this his harder to do. One way to look at it is that empowering your Will requires you push you're reality on another. To create the anti-magic, however, requires that you push against two desires of reality.. the natural one, and your opponents idealization of what he intends to create."

"Either way, it requires you understand the basic tenets of Prime and that you can manipulate such. What Spheres have you studied most, in addition to Prime?"

[Emily Littleton] Solomon's magic has a mathematics to it that reminds Emily of programming. It's a very different sort of language, and a very different set of strictures, but the science of it is there. Her mind is already keyed to these things, so it's a furious scramble to catch up on the parlance, and syntax, and base assumptions of his world view, but it's not beyond her capability to understand.

Her mind would have lent itself well to Technocratic pursuits, had they found her before the Deviants, but let's hope her Praecept doesn't linger on these thoughts too long or too closely.

If he explains the laws of Sympathy and Contagion, she may regard them skeptically at first, for the base rules of Hermetic magic are somewhat counter-intuitive axiomatically to a scientific mind. She's not used to looking at magic as a set of metaphysical laws, but there's comfort to them if she can prove herself they hold with enough surety to be more than theories and glorified hypotheses. Not that she would ever call her skepticism forward to challenge him -- she has already learned there are as many paradigmatic nuances as there are Awakened people in her life. Everyone has their own take on how the world goes around.

"Primarily Life. It's the only study I've reached an Initiate's understanding of just yet. I started studying from a Verbena, who is recently returned to town incidentally. I studied further on my own, in the Library, and then from a Ms. Carraway, the Knight who was also present at my Initiation.

"I've just completed a rudimentary study of Mind, working with Dean McGowen," she adds, though it feels odd to refer to Ashley in such formal ways. Her friendship with the Dean is not structured like her interactions with Mr. Ward. There's a little clash, but it doesn't drag down her words or cause her pause. "I have not furthered my studies, yet, in the Arts I was aware of when Awakened."

[Solomon Ward] Solomon nodded, though at mention of study under a Verbena he waved his hand dismissively.
"Be wary of such. The Verbena are unapologetic pagans to the core. We have country witches and candle witches and conjure boys in the Choir, but at least the admit to one Creator. The Verbena think for the world to come into creation the Creator had to split in two, procreate, and give birth to every thing like some thing base and mortal. Many claim to be decedents of this."

"Just because some one else' magic works doesn't mean either person is right, or wrong. The metaphysics apply to every one.. the manner of accomplishment varies. The Verbena though.. jsut because some thing works doesn't make it right. Be wary of them"

Yeah... he's a little Old Guard.

"Israel would be better at explaining the interplay between Prime and Life than can. My skills in such an art are non existent. As to crafting charms and tokens of magic, I have more experience in this, and I believe what you know of living things is sufficiently high enough to heal yourself?"

"If so, I can teach you to use Tass and make it your own. One of the most basic and earliest forms of charms a sorcerer learns to create is to take his magic, which can only affect himself. Imbued in a charm, how ever, and suddenly 'ones self' is whom ever you can use the charm. It's a very interesting backdoor to the laws"

[Emily Littleton] "It is," Emily says, and there's a surety to that which brooks no argument. There's no flinch at the memory, just now, because she's better grounded this night than most, but Emily has put herself right again after a surprising amount of damage. She had to, to be able to walk out of the Labyrinth (or even to take Israel's teleportation charm as an expedited route to the Chantry).

"And I have had to do so."

In case there was any doubt where that firmament came from, she spelled it out for him. It was a better anchor than replying to his theological beliefs. Part of her vows were to care for her neighbor, to better mankind, but wars over worldviews with non-hostile Traditionalists was not how she chose to spend her time. For Emily, there was One True God. For Others, well, she hoped they found redemption where they could.

"I would very much like to know how to craft charms. They've been indispensable this year, and, I would like to be able to supplement or support what Israel provides in times of need. She let me assist her once, and it was an arduous ritual."

The girl, for that's how Solomon sees her and it's often aptly how Emily paints her own self-image, is concerned with being helpful. With helping them all achieve readiness. With being not just able but capable and one day adept at providing measurable goods and assistance to the Chantry, her Tradition, and her cabalmates.

[Solomon Ward] "They are taxing, and require a significant investment of Quintessence. More sophisticated knowledge of its manipulation allows one to use any source. Simpler understanding requires that it's resonance correlates with the effect, or that it be drawn from Tass. You know Tass, yes?"

If not, Owen's education to her had been lacking. If so, all the better. Either way he is more than prepared to teach her, if needed.

"But by investing so much raw magical energy into the thing, it seems to accept the ability to affect a singular pattern regardless of whom invested it. The same knowledge of Prime to take ones magic and invest it in an object also opens the gate way to more complicated magics. The ability to conjure raw prime into the physical world as a weapon or shield, or to hedge out another's magic with a form of ward. When applied to Patterns, such as fire or water or even things such as wine or books, one can create them from nothing. We'll start with quintessence, alone, first, however. I'll ask Israel to show you how to weave it with Life if you like though".

[Emily Littleton] He asks if she knows Tass, and Emily nods.

"I am familiar with the concept, though I've not worked with it directly before," she tells him. And then she listens. Solomon's lessons remind her a lot of her early education, which was primarily with a tutor or in very small classrooms with less than five students of all ages and abilities. Perhaps that's why she's able to sit straight backed and focused for so long.

On the matter of using Prime, on its own:
"I have worked with Kage, when she used Quintessence as a weapon," Emily tells him. "I have seen Owen do the same," she adds. Then, with some hesitance, she tells him, "The Nephandus we faced in the Labyrinth did something similar, so I have also felt its effects firsthand."

There is a lot for him to pull on here, in her past experience. Emily has already told him that she has assisted with Wards -- though Solomon would also know that; her resonance had been intermingled with Kage's on the ward they'd cast to keep the Nephandi prisoners in after the Chantry attack.

She's actually done a phenomenal amount of working above her paygrade, by virtue of being willing (and conscious enough) to support other Willworkers in times of Getting Shit Done, where protocol was infinitely less carefully followed.

On working with Israel, she is grateful for the opportunity, and keenly interested. Joining her studies of Life and Prime seems to be one of her key goals in studying both spheres.

And also: "I have not assisted in any workings of Prime in conjunction with physical, nonliving patterns yet. That interests me, too."

[Solomon Ward] "Good, good" he nods as he listens, picking out details and tell tales. Terminology, past experiences, what she has heard or studied in theory and what she has comparable, and practical, experience with.

He spends a little longer going into the 'science' of it as it were. Some people, some Traditions or individuals, thought the codification of magic was a terrible thing. Solomon saw it as the greatest concept or invention the Hermetics ever put forward. Sure, to codify a thing was to name it, judge it, and value it. To place a limit on it, much as math and physics and genetics had on hard science.

On the reverse side, to codify some thing gave it rules, or explored the rules that already existed. It gave it limit, value, and worth.. things that could be traded, shared, expressed and dissected. He may have learned the 'Spheres' by a different means than most Trad' mages did in their early studies, but once he had gripped on to the concept... it made magic easier.

So he explains the idea of manifesting quintessence. Again, it is another lesson in potential paradox. Not literal backlash, but duality. To take a thing that exists in all things and manner and facets of Creation.. and then to draw it in to creation. To concentrate it, focus it, make it intractable with the world around it, where once it had been an unseen, unfelt thing. The idea ran parallel to adjusting frequencies or wave lengths, or perhaps it was more along the lines of dimensional singularity... the terms were alternatively archaic or modern, as Solomon and his beliefs understood them, but the concept was similiar enough...especially for one who understood programming. It was simply a matter of making the leap from 'hard science' to 'metaphysical theory'.

[Solomon Ward] [Done!]