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Apr. 9th, 2010 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lichbornesome ace attorney au fic, prompted off of, "oh god, what happens if kristoph actually has a soul in his scar." I want to work on this more, but right now i'm too lazy.
The thing about ritual magic was, it never went quite the way you wanted it to. There was always that problem - always that little thing, even if it was just the smallest technical error - that went wrong. In many cases, the part of the ritual that went awry was not its main purpose; generally rituals were done to solve at least two or three problems, and normally only worked for half (if that) of the problems in question. And as such, rituals were normally heavily layered with useless requests, hoping those were the ones that malfunctioned, and not the big ones the owner so desired.
And as such, ritual magic was not taught in school. The mage-schools got barely any budget as it was, and wasting the money and time on magic that so frequently didn’t go right was simply not worth it. Not to mention that a ritual could do almost anything, if it went right; you could have someone drop dead for no reason at all, if that’s what your ritual desire was. You could have a pile of bills just appear, from the sky, and land on your head. Magery needed to be limited, the teachers knew, and giving angry teenagers the possibility of summoning up a fae or turning into a vampire was just a terrible idea.
Most mage-students wouldn’t even ever use the magic beyond for the simplest chores; everyone knew there was really no job in magery beside being an academic. Extended mage studies just lead one to becoming a teacher, a studier of magic for magic’s sake, or, in most cases, some combination of both. Magic could be fickle and angry, and it was not a good idea to start using it for the big things in life, unless you were very sure of yourself.
There were four classes, each filled with twenty students each, who came from all over the world. One of these students was a slight child, blonde, with glasses and a chill look in his eyes. He was an adamant perfectionist, a loner, and generally downright brilliant. He was German in origin, though he spoke very little of his home, besides that he had a younger brother.
Now, generally, teachers tended to find that each group of eighty possessed five or six kids who were truly gifted, and often one or two of them who should, under no circumstances, be allowed to practice magery. On the other end, there were always one or two children who would go on to summon up a non-profit organization overnight, the sort of people who would spend their magic and their lifeforce creating food for starving children. Magic was not endless, and it certainly was not free: under almost all circumstances, casting a spell was killing just a little bit of yourself off.
Which brings us back to rituals. Ritual magic tended to be more dangerous, more powerful, pulling from the world itself, and, instead of sapping magic from the caster, sapped just a fragment from every person in the world. It was said that every mage could feel a ritual work. There’s only so much you can do with your own life energy, but the magic of everyone in the world?
So, this blonde boy, who possesses two sharp blue eyes and narrow, elegant fingers, is one of those gifted children. The jury’s still out on what he intends to do with his magic, but he’s certainly got the talent for it, even if he doesn’t seem exuberant and extroverted enough to match the life-strength he’d need.
He goes home because the school can’t keep him over the summer, home to his crappy little apartment. He used to have a manor, and a great family, but his father turned into a drunk and his mother went crazy, and now it’s just him and his little brother, trying to pull something together. The brother’s smart but lazy, more interested in pulling girls’ hair than he is reading books. The mage-school looks after the boy so they can teach his older brother, when school’s out, the brother takes the obligation himself.
“Kristoph,” says the little brother, one day, when school is out.
Kristoph, the student in question, is reading a book. The book is so old the title has faded away, and many pages are cracked and glued together. Curiously enough, the book’s edges are blackened, and both words and pictures have been redacted out of it; notes on the text have been added by the book’s previous owners and pages have been torn out. The book’s binding is black as night and is knit together by some thick, silver thread, strong as wire but soft as silk, and cold as ice to the touch. Kristoph handles it delicately, as if it will explode at the slightest provocation. He radiates with protective magics to those who can sense it, carries with him protective trinkets, places protective wards around both the book and himself.
“What are you reading?” asks the little brother, and he moves forward to touch the book.
“Don’t touch it!” He slaps the reaching hand, and hand in question snaps back. “It could hurt you, Klavier. I don’t want to see you injured.”
Klavier is holding his fingers, where little blue specks of what might be frost are visible on the tips of his fingers. Kristoph reaches forward, and delicately inspects the frosted fingers, muttering something in heavy, harsh words.
“You’ll be okay,” he says, “Just don’t run around reading anymore grimoires.”
Klavier promptly sticks his magiced hand into his mouth and disappears off.
Kristoph returns to the book and turns the page. There’s huge spread, across the exact center of the book, of a ritual circle. Notes are written in more than one handwriting, as if this book has had multiple owners. Kristoph, even, has added his minute, elegant German to the mix.
He is seventeen years old and has spent the better part of two years interpreting this book; he knows that people hundreds of years older than him have tried it and ended in horrific results: losing their magic or their minds, having their memories or the memories of their friends disappeared into the either, woken up with their limbs in the wrong place or no limbs at all. Even worse, this tome has summoned demons, the sort that feast on you slowly, while you’re still alive.
But he knows he can do it. He knows, in that earthshatteringly confident way he’s always known, that this ritual will work for him.
This ritual cannot be overlaid with other rituals to help it succeed. It cannot be done during the day, and it can not be done with good intentions. It is the sort of thing you are banned from magic forever for doing, and it is the sort of thing everyone feels you do. Kristoph knows this will be the last spell he ever casts, but he also knows that this ritual is one of the strongest, most illegal rituals ever, because it is domination magic.
The one thing the mage teachers don’t want you to know is you can control people with it. You can control non-mages without them even thinking about it. And in most domination cases, it can only be dispelled by those who have the magical bloodlines and, well, there’s normally only about five or ten people like that in the world.
This ritual steals a soul.
It’s the kind of magic that can get you executed, if anyone ever finds out.
Luckily, no one ever does. Or maybe no one ever’s succeeded, really. It’s hard to say.
Kristoph prepares the ritual circle on the top of their tenement building and draws on all the wretched, squalid life energy under it. They live in a tenement complex, and everyone is so miserable and sick and hungry and angry that the chalk lines of the circle nearly burn through the roof, they’re so powerful. He almost tries to restrain the energy of it, then decides against it. Trying to control magic like this even more than he already is is such a terrible idea.
After he nearly burns holes in the ceiling with the magic, he finds the ritual ready. He could use it to control multiple people less, or one person, as much as he could possible do so.
He takes one of Klavier’s belts up to the roof and places it on the circle. The metal melts almost instantly, traveling through the blackened lines made by the dark magic. He can’t help but smile at his success, so far. After all, he hasn’t actually cast any spells yet.
A few weeks later, it’s a new moon, and Kristoph stares at the finished circle. He’d like to wait another cycle, only he is seriously concerned the metal will melt a hole the ceiling and crash into someone’s apartment. For now, this is what he has, this intricate latticework of latin phrases and words burnt into steel. Some of the letters are still burning hot, and there’s molten metal running through the little ditches that refuses to harden.
To Kristoph’s touch, the metal is cool. He is in tune with this circle. He can cast this ritual.
He sold his graduation tickets, because if this goes right, they will expel him and ban him from magic, and if this goes wrong, he will no longer have all his body and brains set on quite right.
His voice sounds very incredibly strange to him, like some enormous, magical beast is speaking. The words are coming out of his mouth, but even as he says them, they feel rawr and serrated, dragging across his mouth like he’s spitting spears. The sky seems to darken, and the words, once they’ve left his mouth, hover in the air like unexploded bombs, before settling down into the circle.
Kristoph finds sweat pouring down his face, drenching his shirt, plastering his hair to his neck. The incantation for this one is long, twenty minutes of words that can’t be even slightly mispronounced. And the words are heavy, each one like lifting a two-ton bomb over a narrow, rickety wooden bridge. The words sap the energy from his legs (he nearly falls into his own circle), and from his arms (they burn as he performs the proper gestures), and even assault his mind, making him feel tired and old and forgetful and giving him the greatest migraine he’s ever had.
But he is better than this, because he always has been.
When he completes the incantations, there’s a sudden, inhumane silence, like the earth has stopped turning.
And then.
And then is assaulted by magic, rushing out of the circle to bite at his arms and legs and face and clothes. The magic simply shreds all the clothing not protected from it, leaving him with only his jacket and pants (he didn’t even think to ward his underclothes). It buffets his body like he’s standing naked in the most violent sandstorm ever to hit the world. He cries out as his skin is ground off, until he is nothing but marrow and the barest sinews, and then he falls, shattering the circle.
There’s a flash of agony so deep Kristoph can’t explain where it hurts, but his insides - his soul, his essence, what have you - suddenly feels like it’s being filleted. On the bright side, he seem to have his skin back. On the dark side, his entire body feels hollow.
There’s a scream from down in the building, and Kristoph gathers up the shards painful lucidity realize he’s finally melted a hole through the roof, and whoever lives in the top floor is screaming. There’ another scream he does recognize, only it’s much closer, and much more familiar. it sounds like it’s on the roof with him. He looks around, and sees no one, and the screaming is coming closer, and--
The back of his right palm has been replaced by a mirror. It’s been melded seamlessly into his skin, like it’s been there his entire life. In there, Klavier is weeping, raging against the back of his hand, kicking and screaming. His younger brother has always been a great master of the temper tantrum, and this is the best one Kristoph has ever seen. Klavier’s face is wracked with anguish, and he scratches at himself feebly, tearing off his jacket and jewelry. There’s blood on his face, streaming down his neck, coming from under his fingernails. His eyes are bleeding. His hair falls in ragged clumps as he pulls as it. His chest heaves as he pants for breath.
He turns away, nearly fainting at the sight, and, as the elevator is out of order (taking out part of a roof can do that, he supposes), hauls himself down ten flights of steps.
Klavier’s body is lying across the living room floor. His knuckles are badly bruised, and the haphazard spread of his limbs suggests he got here by accident. Yet, by the disturbed items - things in the floor, his brother’s anguished expression, Kristoph can only assume that he had some sort of violent, magic-related seizure. Perhaps, he thinks, from having his soul painfully wrenched from his body.
The space where Klavier’s eyes should be is dead black.
He spares a glance down at the mirror at his hand, where the active, bloody Klavier is throwing himself with renewed ferocity at his prison walls.
Kristoph kisses the mirror in his hand, then both eyes.
Klavier’s body gasps, spasms, sucks in air and starts coughing like it forgot how to breathe. For a couple moments, there’s a primal sort of terror in his eyes, like he’s just woken up from a nightmare, and his pinprick pupils dart around in panic. He sits up, then staggers to his feet, nearly falling over on his brother.
“Kristoph?” he asks, “What happened?”
Kristoph takes a step back and lets his brother gets his feet under him, then pushes his glasses up his nose, “I don’t know,” he says.
He looks down to where the mirror holding his brother was on his hand, and sees that it’s been replaced with a twisted looking scar. In the right light, it looks like some sort of demented smile.
“Bad magic,” Kristoph says. Even so, a thrill of excitement escapes him, because Klavier appears to be up and walking, and his head is on straight, and he has all his fingers. There’s only one thing left to try.
“Klavier, practice your piano lessons,” he says, knowing Klavier hates piano.
He feels his new scar twitch when Klavier smiles, nods, and heads down to their rickety piano.
*
The thing about ritual magic was, it never went quite the way you wanted it to. There was always that problem - always that little thing, even if it was just the smallest technical error - that went wrong. In many cases, the part of the ritual that went awry was not its main purpose; generally rituals were done to solve at least two or three problems, and normally only worked for half (if that) of the problems in question. And as such, rituals were normally heavily layered with useless requests, hoping those were the ones that malfunctioned, and not the big ones the owner so desired.
And as such, ritual magic was not taught in school. The mage-schools got barely any budget as it was, and wasting the money and time on magic that so frequently didn’t go right was simply not worth it. Not to mention that a ritual could do almost anything, if it went right; you could have someone drop dead for no reason at all, if that’s what your ritual desire was. You could have a pile of bills just appear, from the sky, and land on your head. Magery needed to be limited, the teachers knew, and giving angry teenagers the possibility of summoning up a fae or turning into a vampire was just a terrible idea.
Most mage-students wouldn’t even ever use the magic beyond for the simplest chores; everyone knew there was really no job in magery beside being an academic. Extended mage studies just lead one to becoming a teacher, a studier of magic for magic’s sake, or, in most cases, some combination of both. Magic could be fickle and angry, and it was not a good idea to start using it for the big things in life, unless you were very sure of yourself.
There were four classes, each filled with twenty students each, who came from all over the world. One of these students was a slight child, blonde, with glasses and a chill look in his eyes. He was an adamant perfectionist, a loner, and generally downright brilliant. He was German in origin, though he spoke very little of his home, besides that he had a younger brother.
Now, generally, teachers tended to find that each group of eighty possessed five or six kids who were truly gifted, and often one or two of them who should, under no circumstances, be allowed to practice magery. On the other end, there were always one or two children who would go on to summon up a non-profit organization overnight, the sort of people who would spend their magic and their lifeforce creating food for starving children. Magic was not endless, and it certainly was not free: under almost all circumstances, casting a spell was killing just a little bit of yourself off.
Which brings us back to rituals. Ritual magic tended to be more dangerous, more powerful, pulling from the world itself, and, instead of sapping magic from the caster, sapped just a fragment from every person in the world. It was said that every mage could feel a ritual work. There’s only so much you can do with your own life energy, but the magic of everyone in the world?
So, this blonde boy, who possesses two sharp blue eyes and narrow, elegant fingers, is one of those gifted children. The jury’s still out on what he intends to do with his magic, but he’s certainly got the talent for it, even if he doesn’t seem exuberant and extroverted enough to match the life-strength he’d need.
He goes home because the school can’t keep him over the summer, home to his crappy little apartment. He used to have a manor, and a great family, but his father turned into a drunk and his mother went crazy, and now it’s just him and his little brother, trying to pull something together. The brother’s smart but lazy, more interested in pulling girls’ hair than he is reading books. The mage-school looks after the boy so they can teach his older brother, when school’s out, the brother takes the obligation himself.
“Kristoph,” says the little brother, one day, when school is out.
Kristoph, the student in question, is reading a book. The book is so old the title has faded away, and many pages are cracked and glued together. Curiously enough, the book’s edges are blackened, and both words and pictures have been redacted out of it; notes on the text have been added by the book’s previous owners and pages have been torn out. The book’s binding is black as night and is knit together by some thick, silver thread, strong as wire but soft as silk, and cold as ice to the touch. Kristoph handles it delicately, as if it will explode at the slightest provocation. He radiates with protective magics to those who can sense it, carries with him protective trinkets, places protective wards around both the book and himself.
“What are you reading?” asks the little brother, and he moves forward to touch the book.
“Don’t touch it!” He slaps the reaching hand, and hand in question snaps back. “It could hurt you, Klavier. I don’t want to see you injured.”
Klavier is holding his fingers, where little blue specks of what might be frost are visible on the tips of his fingers. Kristoph reaches forward, and delicately inspects the frosted fingers, muttering something in heavy, harsh words.
“You’ll be okay,” he says, “Just don’t run around reading anymore grimoires.”
Klavier promptly sticks his magiced hand into his mouth and disappears off.
Kristoph returns to the book and turns the page. There’s huge spread, across the exact center of the book, of a ritual circle. Notes are written in more than one handwriting, as if this book has had multiple owners. Kristoph, even, has added his minute, elegant German to the mix.
He is seventeen years old and has spent the better part of two years interpreting this book; he knows that people hundreds of years older than him have tried it and ended in horrific results: losing their magic or their minds, having their memories or the memories of their friends disappeared into the either, woken up with their limbs in the wrong place or no limbs at all. Even worse, this tome has summoned demons, the sort that feast on you slowly, while you’re still alive.
But he knows he can do it. He knows, in that earthshatteringly confident way he’s always known, that this ritual will work for him.
This ritual cannot be overlaid with other rituals to help it succeed. It cannot be done during the day, and it can not be done with good intentions. It is the sort of thing you are banned from magic forever for doing, and it is the sort of thing everyone feels you do. Kristoph knows this will be the last spell he ever casts, but he also knows that this ritual is one of the strongest, most illegal rituals ever, because it is domination magic.
The one thing the mage teachers don’t want you to know is you can control people with it. You can control non-mages without them even thinking about it. And in most domination cases, it can only be dispelled by those who have the magical bloodlines and, well, there’s normally only about five or ten people like that in the world.
This ritual steals a soul.
It’s the kind of magic that can get you executed, if anyone ever finds out.
Luckily, no one ever does. Or maybe no one ever’s succeeded, really. It’s hard to say.
Kristoph prepares the ritual circle on the top of their tenement building and draws on all the wretched, squalid life energy under it. They live in a tenement complex, and everyone is so miserable and sick and hungry and angry that the chalk lines of the circle nearly burn through the roof, they’re so powerful. He almost tries to restrain the energy of it, then decides against it. Trying to control magic like this even more than he already is is such a terrible idea.
After he nearly burns holes in the ceiling with the magic, he finds the ritual ready. He could use it to control multiple people less, or one person, as much as he could possible do so.
He takes one of Klavier’s belts up to the roof and places it on the circle. The metal melts almost instantly, traveling through the blackened lines made by the dark magic. He can’t help but smile at his success, so far. After all, he hasn’t actually cast any spells yet.
A few weeks later, it’s a new moon, and Kristoph stares at the finished circle. He’d like to wait another cycle, only he is seriously concerned the metal will melt a hole the ceiling and crash into someone’s apartment. For now, this is what he has, this intricate latticework of latin phrases and words burnt into steel. Some of the letters are still burning hot, and there’s molten metal running through the little ditches that refuses to harden.
To Kristoph’s touch, the metal is cool. He is in tune with this circle. He can cast this ritual.
He sold his graduation tickets, because if this goes right, they will expel him and ban him from magic, and if this goes wrong, he will no longer have all his body and brains set on quite right.
His voice sounds very incredibly strange to him, like some enormous, magical beast is speaking. The words are coming out of his mouth, but even as he says them, they feel rawr and serrated, dragging across his mouth like he’s spitting spears. The sky seems to darken, and the words, once they’ve left his mouth, hover in the air like unexploded bombs, before settling down into the circle.
Kristoph finds sweat pouring down his face, drenching his shirt, plastering his hair to his neck. The incantation for this one is long, twenty minutes of words that can’t be even slightly mispronounced. And the words are heavy, each one like lifting a two-ton bomb over a narrow, rickety wooden bridge. The words sap the energy from his legs (he nearly falls into his own circle), and from his arms (they burn as he performs the proper gestures), and even assault his mind, making him feel tired and old and forgetful and giving him the greatest migraine he’s ever had.
But he is better than this, because he always has been.
When he completes the incantations, there’s a sudden, inhumane silence, like the earth has stopped turning.
And then.
And then is assaulted by magic, rushing out of the circle to bite at his arms and legs and face and clothes. The magic simply shreds all the clothing not protected from it, leaving him with only his jacket and pants (he didn’t even think to ward his underclothes). It buffets his body like he’s standing naked in the most violent sandstorm ever to hit the world. He cries out as his skin is ground off, until he is nothing but marrow and the barest sinews, and then he falls, shattering the circle.
There’s a flash of agony so deep Kristoph can’t explain where it hurts, but his insides - his soul, his essence, what have you - suddenly feels like it’s being filleted. On the bright side, he seem to have his skin back. On the dark side, his entire body feels hollow.
There’s a scream from down in the building, and Kristoph gathers up the shards painful lucidity realize he’s finally melted a hole through the roof, and whoever lives in the top floor is screaming. There’ another scream he does recognize, only it’s much closer, and much more familiar. it sounds like it’s on the roof with him. He looks around, and sees no one, and the screaming is coming closer, and--
The back of his right palm has been replaced by a mirror. It’s been melded seamlessly into his skin, like it’s been there his entire life. In there, Klavier is weeping, raging against the back of his hand, kicking and screaming. His younger brother has always been a great master of the temper tantrum, and this is the best one Kristoph has ever seen. Klavier’s face is wracked with anguish, and he scratches at himself feebly, tearing off his jacket and jewelry. There’s blood on his face, streaming down his neck, coming from under his fingernails. His eyes are bleeding. His hair falls in ragged clumps as he pulls as it. His chest heaves as he pants for breath.
He turns away, nearly fainting at the sight, and, as the elevator is out of order (taking out part of a roof can do that, he supposes), hauls himself down ten flights of steps.
Klavier’s body is lying across the living room floor. His knuckles are badly bruised, and the haphazard spread of his limbs suggests he got here by accident. Yet, by the disturbed items - things in the floor, his brother’s anguished expression, Kristoph can only assume that he had some sort of violent, magic-related seizure. Perhaps, he thinks, from having his soul painfully wrenched from his body.
The space where Klavier’s eyes should be is dead black.
He spares a glance down at the mirror at his hand, where the active, bloody Klavier is throwing himself with renewed ferocity at his prison walls.
Kristoph kisses the mirror in his hand, then both eyes.
Klavier’s body gasps, spasms, sucks in air and starts coughing like it forgot how to breathe. For a couple moments, there’s a primal sort of terror in his eyes, like he’s just woken up from a nightmare, and his pinprick pupils dart around in panic. He sits up, then staggers to his feet, nearly falling over on his brother.
“Kristoph?” he asks, “What happened?”
Kristoph takes a step back and lets his brother gets his feet under him, then pushes his glasses up his nose, “I don’t know,” he says.
He looks down to where the mirror holding his brother was on his hand, and sees that it’s been replaced with a twisted looking scar. In the right light, it looks like some sort of demented smile.
“Bad magic,” Kristoph says. Even so, a thrill of excitement escapes him, because Klavier appears to be up and walking, and his head is on straight, and he has all his fingers. There’s only one thing left to try.
“Klavier, practice your piano lessons,” he says, knowing Klavier hates piano.
He feels his new scar twitch when Klavier smiles, nods, and heads down to their rickety piano.
*
