Over Analysing It

Nano 09 – Nov 8 – 2065 words, 17 342 total

09 Nov 2009 34 Comments

by Nikkiin writing Tags: nanowrimo 2009

(Another day, another 2k!  Apparently I decided that I really wanted to talk about food today… also, I’m getting bored with this palace-y bullshit.  I wanna write about them slaughtering giant rats in the sewer!  (Yes, I’ve added RPGs onto my list of things I’m parodying.))

“Ahh!  No!  I don’t want to be seen in public like this!” Carson yelped, arms flailing.

“Too bad,” Rainier said, “If the rest of us have to be in ridiculous outfits, so do you.”

“But you have paaaants!”

–

Rainier, Katryn and Carson were, in fact, the last to arrive.  Whilst Carson and Katryn were both convinced that they had the absolute worst costumes out of everyone (and they hadn’t even seen anyone else’s other than Rainier’s yet), Rainier insisted that they had got off lightly.  It turns out that leather pants, or at least his leather pants, weren’t all that comfortable.

Even after seeing the others in their group, Katryn and Carson still were in agreement – they had the worst costumes ever.  For one, Cassandra had pants.  Loose pants, even, and a loose, flowing shirt and soft shoes.  Lillian, while she was wearing a skirt as well, at least had pants underneath her dress/robes.  She also had a cloak thrown over her shoulders in a rather haphazard manner.

“Okay, seriously?” Katryn asked, “What the hell is up with my clothing?”

“They’re wonderful, Katryn,” Peohr said.  “Completely fitting for a sorcerer of your standing.”

“You can see my underwear!” Katryn exclaimed.

“Yes,” Peohr said, “Completely fitting.”

“Guh!  And there are no pockets in this thing!  I’m so not going to wander around carrying a staff, a textbook, a pencil and a calculator!  I can barely carry all of that!” Katryn waved her arms angrily.

“It’s true,” Carson said, “She cannot.”  He held up the textbook.  “And I’d rather not be a pack mule.”

“I’ll see about getting you a messenger bag, Katryn,” Viandir said consolingly.  “You’re all going to need bags anyway so that you can carry a change of clothing and rations.”

“Oh joys.  Do we have to bathe in rivers?” Cassandra groaned.

“Maybe sometimes,” Viandir said, “But as long as you make it to a village every night you should be fine.  Everyone will give you free room and board since you are The Heroes.”

“Sweet!” Carson said, “Free food!  I’m so in!”

“Men,” Katryn said, “Always thinking with their stomachs.  On that note, what’s for breakfast?”

“I have asked the kitchen to deliver food shortly to this room,” Viandir said, “In fact, they should be here at any moment.”

Everyone paused and looked at the door.  No one came in and it did not sound like anyone was coming.  Rainier looked out of the room curiously.

“There is nobody in sight,” He said sadly.  He was rather hungry as well, possibly because they forgot to eat supper the night before.

“Awww,” Carson said, “I’m so hungry.”

And then food, and a table with eleven chairs, appeared in the room.

“I was not expecting that,” Carson said.  Katryn made a beeline for the table and was rapidly filling a plate full of bacon (or, at least, something that looked like bacon), eggs, fruit and hash browns.

“What?” She asked everyone between mouthfuls, “I’m bloody well hungry – I haven’t ate since two in the afternoon yesterday.”

“And you said that men think with their stomachs,” Carson rolled his eyes as he loaded a ridiculous quantity of food onto his plate as well.

Katryn couldn’t reply – there was far too much food stuffed her in mouth.  The others all sat down and began filling their plates as well.  Lillian preferred the fruit and yogurt dishes, Rainier was eating a disgustingly large amount of bacon and Cassandra had a plate full of eggs of every kind.  Sunnyside up, over easy, scrambled, poached, hardboiled, soft boiled… you name, you it, she had it.

“Cassandra,” Lillian said, disproving, “You shouldn’t eat that many eggs.”

“I’m a growin’ girl, mom.  I need the protein.” Cassandra protested, shovelling the sunny side up egg into her mouth.  Lillian ignored her and pushed some of the eggs off of Cassandra’s plate and replaced them with strawberries.  “Not cool, mom!”

“Neither is talking with your mouth full,” Lillian riposted.

Katryn snickered through a mouthful of food.

“I do hope you all found your rooms to your liking and had a good night’s sleep,” Viandir said.

“Yes, they were quite lovely rooms,” Lillian said.  “Even if some of us did not remember to lock their doors.”

“Oh!” Katryn said through a mouthful of food.  She quickly swallowed, choked a bit and down a glass of water.  “By the way, i may or o may not have blown a door off of its hinges.”

“May or may not?” Carson asked, “You totally did!  And you nearly smushed me!”

“I was practicing the force push spell,” Katryn said haughtily.

“You’ve got a force push spell?” Carson asked excitedly, “That is so cool!”

“Huh?” Katryn asked, “It’s just using force to push things.”

“Use the Force, Katryn!  Use the Force!” Carson said melodramatically.  Katryn frowned as the other people from Earth laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Katryn asked.

“…Star Wars?” Carson said between giggles.

“Oh.  Never saw those movies,” Katryn shrugged.

“Don’t watch the prequel movies,” Carson said sagely, “But you should really watch the original trilogy.  They’re classics.”

“Is that… so?” Katryn said doubtfully.

“They have Harrison Ford,” Lillian put in, “That’s reason enough to watch for me.”

“As in Indiana Jones Harrison Ford?” Katryn asked rhetorically, “I suppose I could watch it for him…”

“Oh god, you are not watching the original trilogy just to ogle one of the actors!” Carson groaned.

“No other reason to, really,” Katryn shrugged, “Sci-fi is lame.”

“I can’t believe that you are saying that!” Carson said, “I can’t believe that you don’t like science fiction!  Science fiction is awesome!”

“Nah,” Cassandra said, “Sci-fi is great, but fantasy totally kicks its ass.”

“Dude,” Carson said, “Sci-fi has spaceships. Spaceships that blow things up.”

“Like the Death Star?  That’s a pretty lame spaceship,” Cassandra said, “It took, what, one well placed torpedo to blow up the entire ship?”

“Nah, more like the Borg Cubes,” Carson said excitedly, “Those things are as scary as shit.”

“I have no clue what any of you are talking about,” Katryn said dully.

“Oh c’mon!  Is there nothing from sci-fi you know about?  Not even ‘we are the Borg.  Prepare to be assimilated.  Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own’?” Carson asked.

“Nope, doesn’t sound familiar,” Katryn shrugged.

“…Over nine thousand?” Carson asked desperately.

“The internet meme?  Why are you saying that,” Katryn asked.

“Well,” Carson sighed, “At least you recognised that it is an internet meme.  I suppose it could have been worse.”

“Are you going to sit here and quiz me all day about shows I have not seen?” Katryn asked.

“Yes!  There has to be some science fiction that you have seen!  Nobody can go throughout all of their lives without watching any sci-fi!” Carson said adamantly.

“Sorry – I prefer crime procedurals,” Katryn shrugged.

“Have you seen Castle?” Carson asked.

“Yeah, of course,” Katryn replied.

“The episode where Castle was dressed as a space cowboy?  A reference to Firefly,” Carson said.  “There, you have seen sci-fi.”

“Not really because that was news to me,” Katryn shrugged.  “Besides, the show itself is not sci-fi.”

“But it was sci-fi!  In the show!” Carson said desperately.

“Nah,” Cassandra said, “I’m with Katryn.  A sci-fi reference does not mean that Katryn has seen science fiction.”

“I am making you watch Firefly,” Carson said, “It has Nathan Fillion.”

“That’s… lovely,” Katryn said, quite glad that they were in a world without tv.

“I am,” Carson said as he shovelled the last of his food into his mouth.  Katryn piled more fruit onto her plate and began to devour the cantaloupe.

–

“No!” Poehr said, “You have to learn the theory before you can apply the magic to the actual world!”

“But I can apply the damned magic!  I blew Carson’s door off!” Katryn yelled back.

“Did you mean to blow the door off?” Peohr asked, annoyingly calm.

“Um, no.  I meant to knock, actually,” Katryn admitted.

“You need to learn control and you need to figure out how much force is actually necessary to do things,” Poehr explained, “You may be excellent at calculations and can determine a force to a precise amount, but you have no practical experience in casting magic.  You need to learn to judge how much force is necessary before you can start casting.”

Katryn snorted and looked put out, “I’m going to be using this magic to blow up bad guys,” She said, “I don’t think accidentally blowing them up more than necessary is a bad thing.”

“Yes,” Poehr said, “It is.  Your staff only has so much energy – it can only do so much in a day.”

“And, what, it recharges over night or something?” Katryn snorted.

“No, it just recharges whenever you don’t use it.  The staff draws its power from the mana all around us.” Poehr gestured widely.

“Oookay, I was following all of this magic stuff up until you said that,” Katryn said, “There must be a real place that the power comes from, not just ‘mana’.”

“Perhaps you have a different word for it,” Peohr said, “But we call it mana.”

On the other side of the room, Carson was in a much happier place.  Jerin was teaching him about a fascinating aspect of the Reann culture – summoning monsters and demons.  And apparently just plain animals but, well, that was nowhere near as cool as summoning demons.  Now Carson just needed to find an excuse to get Jerin to show him a summoning… or better yet teach him how to summon.

Cassandra was also pretty happy – she had spent last night practicing lute playing until the wee hours of the morning so, despite the fact that she was half asleep, Eilyn was impressed with her dedication and rapid assimilation of new techniques.  It wasn’t long until Eilyn got annoyed with the noise and the other occupants of the room and quickly ushered Cassandra off into her personal sanctum.  Viandir was quick to reassure Lillian that that was a good thing – Eilyn rarely brings students into her personal workspace.

Lillian was, once again, impressing her teacher with her swift understanding of the human body.  HealerName was certain that, by tomorrow, she could get Lillian started on simple healings.  Hopefully Lillian would be Justas quick of a learner for the practical application as she was for the theoretical.

Rainier and Weorn had long since left the room.  As Rainier was adept at using his advantage of size and muscle mass to overwhelm Weorn, they had left for the guard’s practice area so that Rainier could attempt to fend off multiple opponents – something that was likely to happen during their quest.

At that, Rainier wasn’t doing as well – he was frequently overwhelmed by sheer numbers and his lack of skill at swordsmanship was showing.  Nonetheless, Weorn was cautiously optimistic that, with the right spells, Rainier would learn how to defend his team long enough for Katryn to take them down.

Silvanus?  He was still locked in his room in the servant’s quarters.  None of the occupants of the palace were too fond of the arrogant thief.  He was, however, finally released when they broke for a quick lunch and a demonstration of demon summoning that, for Carson, quickly lead into a lesson on how to summon animals.  Carson was delighted (as with the Reann’s.  Any edge that the Heroes could get and all that).

Cassandra, however, was thrown out into the wild without a teacher because Eilyn was struck by inspiration and became impossible to deal with.  Bored shitless, she finally managed to convince (or, rather, annoy her mother into submission) Lillian to let her explore the city with Silvanus.

In the city, Silvanus rather delightedly gave Cassandra the penny tour – all of his favourite haunts were revealed and he began teaching her, at Cassandra’s urging, his particular trade.  Silvanus was an excellent pickpocket and a decent enough teacher, but Cassandra wasn’t willing to attempt to steal from anyone.  At least, not yet.

Back at the palace, Katryn had finally agreed to power down her spells and was actually learning to judge the amount of force necessary for the basic force push spell.  After she mastered that one, Poehr assured her, the rest would come much easier – the difficulty lied in the calculations and the judgment of a necessary level of force (or whatever) came easier with time.

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