TEST DRIVE 005

[phantasmods]

Hello and welcome to the fifth test drive for Phantasmal Rift!

Test drive threads are assumed to be game canon for accepted characters unless otherwise noted, so don't feel like you'll have to introduce yourself a second time to everyone you meet! As an added bonus, participation in the test drive comes with the chance to earn up to two items of loot for your trouble! Characters who are accepted can earn one item for having a top level, and one for tagging out to someone else's top level! Your SWEET LOOT will be included with your acceptance notice.

Additionally, characters currently in game can earn themselves a piece of bonus loot for the dungeon by tagging people's top-levels on the test drive! Existing characters get their bonus loot along with the rest of their loot at the conclusion of the dungeon.

This time, the Test Drive takes place in Incendia - a less-ruined-than-expected city that has been abandoned for over a century, due to the magical effects of the Fissure (unstable reality region) that have made it impossible to live in. What effects are these, you ask?

Well...

BY DAY

By day, the city is lovely, if oddly empty. The sun shines down, and magical lights along the sidewalk - the equivalent of power lines - flow energy throughout the city. It's possible to think that the little sparks you sometimes see at the corner of your vision are related. After all, there's a great deal of magic in the air...

But in spite of this, the city lies abandoned, for no immediately apparent reason. You might have found yourself in a wide-open shipping yard, where large metal containers levitate about, moving without any help or oversight from human hands. Be careful; these containers changing positions make it easy to get lost for quite a long time, since few of them have much in the way of identifying traits over than color. Didn't you already pass that arrangement of two red ones on top of a blue one before...?

Or perhaps you're in the massive park in the center of town, with its blatantly magical fountain (a half-dome of water just hanging in the air) and the tents of an abandoned festival. Two stages and a long line of street food booths stand empty - surely no one will mind if you use them for something, right?

Or perhaps you're just suddenly on the streets, among stalled-out taxis and cars that go nowhere and lack the familiar smell of gasoline. There's apartments and shops all around, with little gardens spilling out over balconies... Maybe if you go knock on some doors, you'll find people.

Wherever it is you are, surely there's got to be someone around who can tell you what's going on, right...?

BY DUSK

As night falls, rather than dropping the way you might expect, the temperature begins to rise. And then the sparks in the edges of your vision are very much more than simply at the edges of your vision. They catch first on the plants, the papers stuck to the now-lit magical streetlights, the trash cans... And then, increasingly so, on the buildings proper, the shops, the skyscrapers, the cars in the street.

Within half an hour, an inferno is starting to build, and it's clear that there's not going to be anywhere above ground safe from it. But fortunately, there's safety beneath the level of the streets - if you can make your way fast enough to an underground station.

BY NIGHT

In the remains of these subway tunnels, lit mostly by the dim glow of magical energy lines, you're at least safe from the inferno above. Unlike the aboveground parts of the city, however, the tunnels are in an obvious state of disrepair, with broken concrete, rot, and mildew. The stations might have once been clean, but they quite transparently are not now, and the tunnels themselves are as bad or worse.

Thankfully, no trains run anymore, so you're not at risk of being run down on the broken tracks. There's also not any full-on collapses blocking the way, and the tunnels seem well-enough made that there's probably not risk of a cave-in.

Less pleasantly, you aren't the only thing taking shelter in the tunnels from the firestorm above. And the magic of that flame has touched the feral dogs that rove the tunnels, turning them into barking, howling creatures of as much flame as flesh themselves. And then there's the occasional patch of mold, mildew, and slime in the darkest parts of the tunnels, where even the magical circuits have gone out, that moves to douse any light that comes near it...

Comments

[founderinglight]

It's actually more that I have an identical twin, and Ardyn has made quite a few enemies.

[He indicates his shirt, which still says NOT ARDYN, WE'RE TWINS. That didn't stop happening.]

[ax_iom]

... Seriously? The evil twin excuse?

[founderinglight]

It's not an excuse when your brother is possessed by a horrifying magical plague.

[Beat.]

He's better now, before you ask.

[ax_iom]

...

[She pinches the bridge of her nose.]

I need to get drunk.

[founderinglight]

I can't say that isn't a completely fair reaction to everything my life has been up to this point.

[ax_iom]

[She snorts.]

I don't think my life will lose to yours in how messed up it's been, but that doesn't make me want a drink less.

[founderinglight]

[He shrugs.]

I don't think of it as a contest. If one man burns his hand and another gets shot in the shoulder, the fact that the shot man is hurting doesn't make the burned man not in pain. Horrible life circumstances are much the same, to me.

[ax_iom]

A good way to be.

[She is normally the same way... Just, she's had a very, very bad day.

That's points in his favor, at least.]

... What was that warping you did?

[founderinglight]

It's a part of my family's magic, and the kind I'm frankly best at. Tiring, but very much second nature.

[ax_iom]

You can do more than one kind?

[She's. Filing that away for later in case she does have to fight him.]

[founderinglight]

[And for the same reason, he's not telling her everything he can do.]

Most of our abilities have to do with the manipulation of matter by the medium of light in similar ways.

[Tucking his bottle of juice between his knees, he reaches into his Armiger and, in a sparkle of blue, pulls out...

An ear of roasted corn?]

The Armiger is the most handy to have on a day-to-day basis.

[ax_iom]

The... Armiger? Is that... a kind of magic, then?

[Lily's smart. But she's also... Well, uneducated. She never went to school much. So she got lost at 'manipulation of matter by medium of light'.]

[founderinglight]

Yes, it's a magical storage space.

[He tosses the corn over in his hand, and then it just... vanishes back into nothing and sparkles.]

Effectively, anyway, the precise mechanism is more complicated.

[ax_iom]

I wouldn't understand it anyway.

Is that how you warp? You... store yourself, or something?

[founderinglight]

Not really, no. Warping relies in a thrown object, and visualizing oneself at the endpoint of the throw.

[Which is something he doesn't really mind telling, but probably enough to be alarming in her considerations of his combat potential, since he was throwing things very far and very accurately to get between lamp posts.]

[ax_iom]

... That sounds...

[No, that's not what she thinks. In fact, her mind is going other places- She thinks that ability could likely be made stronger.

But she's not going to tell him that.]

Inconvenient.

[founderinglight]

[He's a Lucis Caelum. He really doesn't need to be stronger.]

It's a bit of a quirk, I admit. But it's always served me well enough, as you can see.

[ax_iom]

Do you ever get hit by what you were throwing?

[founderinglight]

I don't.

[He sounds... suddenly amused, fond, and exasperated all at once.]

And a month ago I would have told you such a thing isn't possible, but my partner seems to constantly push the boundaries of such.

['Partner' is pretty clearly used in the romantic sense, there. Thanks, translation-by-intent!]

[ax_iom]

[Partner, huh.

She's still a magical girl, and at heart, she's all about love. So if this guy is having romance... Surely, anyone who feels real love can't be all that bad?

That one word has done more to change her mind about him than anything else.]

Oh... Is it a magic you can teach to someone else, then? Why wouldn't it be possible?

[She's full of questions, it seems, but at least she's gone from 'interrogate this guy about his powers in case she has to fight him later' to 'genuine curiosity and the desire to learn'.]

[founderinglight]

The way most people with the ability visualize a warp is...

[He makes a vague hand gesture, trying to find the words.]

You don't entirely visualize the item ever leaving your hand. It's not simply that I throw a spoon and appear at the end - I move with the spoon in the first place.

And it is less teaching than sharing - the bond of magic involved is permanent and draws off my strength as much as the recipient's.

[ax_iom]

Power sharing with a loved one, got it.

[She nods, thinking...]

Does it work with any thrown object?

[founderinglight]

Hypothetically. I've not found anything I can throw that doesn't work, though I don't think anyone's yet managed with projectile weaponry more advanced than a crossbow.

[ax_iom]

So there's probably an element of speed... If a bullet's gone before you can visualize it, it won't work, or something...

[She at least shifts position to sit more comfortably, tapping her chin as she thinks.]

-- Sorry, I'm being rude. You've probably already tested all the limits and permutations of this power already, anyway.

[founderinglight]

It's probably more the matter of it being rather hard to imagine holding a bullet at the point of impact. Arrows or crossbow bolts are a different matter in that regard.

[He doesn't seem to think it rude, and just shrugs at her apology.]