many a blood red carpet my unsteady feet have trod

[heardmermaids]

Who: Sebastian and Martel
What: Meet, greet, and sharing time.
Where: Martel's abode. Yes, he has an abode.
When: Shundi
Warnings: None. Yet.

At the appointed time and place, Sebastian heads off to meet Martel. He's brought along a few things that he knows he'll need - wand, knife, and dog - and roughly thought through what he wants to say about how he'd learned that magic worked, how he lost his own, and why he thinks most of the rules in his world are a bit bunk. There's a moment where he thinks he ought to be nervous, but the edginess doesn't settle in.

Comments

[heardmermaids]

"I whole-heartedly agree," he replies with some emotion behind it. Perhaps Sebastian has had his own run-ins with living too long?

"A family was browbeaten into keeping me alive until my eleventh birthday when I was told that magic was real - it's all hidden in my world, closed off into their own little corner - and taken away to school to be taught and to start fighting." Admittedly, he's painting in broad strokes, but should Martel want further information, he need only ask. "The war was quiet for a few years, but became more, ah, active when I was about fifteen. It was mainly a guerilla affair with a group of untrained youth on the one side and established wizards on the other."

"I wouldn't say that having less to lose was an advantage, per se, but it changed how we fought. Still, years in, we were looking at either an outright failure or a, and I don't know if the term will translate, a Pyrrhic victory. We..." Others may have participated in the ideas, but it was Sebastian that made the offers and paid the price. "I made deals to get two rare objects: a needle and thread that could sew anything together and a knife that could sever just as much."

"Using the connection I had to Voldemort, I bound my magic to his and then removed them both. By this point, we'd already destroyed all the other soul fragments and as a mortal, I was able to kill him."

[apostatised]

“Clever.” It's a statement of fact, impossible to discern whether or not Martel could be said to approve - Sebastian isn't telling him this to be praised for it but because it needs to be known, so he makes his observation and moves on, absorbing what he's being told without letting himself get bogged down or preoccupied. “Tell me the practicalities. You and I know better than to settle for the blank, shrugging 'it's magic'- what did it mean for you, to lose your ability? Is it blood, physicality, or as bound to soul as the rest of your tale?”

[heardmermaids]

"Magic is an inherited trait. I don't think it can be wholly removed and the knife just severed the connection between myself and my innate magic - broke all the pathways, but couldn't actually get rid of anything." Hermione insisted in reviewing and revising the wording of the request until she got the balance just right. "I had one spell left to me and I still registered as a wizard to the point that I could walk down hidden streets, but I couldn't perform the magic needed to enter them."

"The way the wizards use magic is as a tool to make their daily lives easier - small, standard spells to heat the kettle, to sweep the floors or mend a shirt." It's only after he says it that Sebastian notices he didn't lump himself in with 'the wizards'.

[apostatised]

“The commonplace and the complex.”

A moment later, “Particularly if you're at all especially gifted, your fine control will be the first issue you face; you're changed, irreversibly, and as such the way that you channel what you do changes. You've the power of a man in the clumsy hands of a newborn child- you are, in effect, as a child with a stick. How many children know the strength of their own hands?”

It's almost wry; it sounds like he's speaking from experience.

[heardmermaids]

"Exactly." He'd been trying a few of the simple things he'd learned in school, but they don't feel right. "A few months after I came to Baedal, I went and spoke to the priestesses of Shada and, well, I've regained access to my magic but it's changed or I've changed. The methods I knew don't work properly and while I've had a few years since then, I'm still...out of alignment? Out of sorts? I'm not sure how to describe it. A few things work and work brilliantly, but I've lost the knack for most of it."

[apostatised]

Martel shakes his head, leaning back in his seat. “You're trying to go backwards,” he says, more patiently than might have been anticipated, having ever met the man. “Old tasks and new hands. That you don't do things the same way now as you did as a boy would be natural enough if you'd lived a quiet, unremarkable life performing quiet, unremarkable feats. The violence of change makes it apparent in a way you've got to account for, moving forward. So long as you think of yourself as a broken tool,” which is a presumption and a half, but in its own way reflective of the last conversation they'd had, about listening, “you'll keep yourself treading water. I'm no blacksmith and you're no artifact.”

[heardmermaids]

"And that's what it has been, treading water. When I went back, I looked for anything I could find that might have some bearing on how to adjust, but it's all so standardized." Sebastian doesn't say that it's dangerous to deviate from the Proper Wizarding Tradition, but it might carry through in his tone. Just because of who he is and what he's done, performing a different sort of magic would frighten people.

[apostatised]

The smile he gets for his trouble is thin and familiar. “How frightened men will always be of their own power.”

...right. Yes. Veering away from supervillain speeches and back into safe teaching territory, he regards Alley with an absent-minded frown, his mind elsewhere as he considers what to say next and the expression seeming habitual. He'd frowned at his father's hounds only for being present, too, resignedly tolerant.

(However piously Romiar swore that he gave Petrana a pup only because they seemed to please her so, Martel has long suspected his father found his irritation with the gift as amusing as Petrana's delight. Doubtless it suits her country knight better, now.)

“I'm not to teach you my discipline,” he says, eventually. “There's no guarantee it'd suit you. What I offer is mastery of your own- through experimentation and technique guidance. It's as much a matter of mind as it is power. Moreso, in some cases.”

[heardmermaids]

Sebastian seems almost relieved.

"Provided you've a place with good wards and shielding, that sounds like what I'd prefer. Working alone, I'd little safe opportunity to experiment, but should you ever need curses broken or household repairs, I'm not too shabby there." He knows it's possible to relearn new methods of magic, but it's not the sort of thing that really should be tried without a safety net.

[apostatised]

“My workspaces are beneath the castle itself,” he says, with a brief and eloquent flick of his fingers - his mannerisms are lordly and military at once, an odd blend of what he thinks of as old bad habits. Has he any other kind? Unlikely. “Their wards are extensive, and I'm able to adjust for my students as I need to. You'll be obliged to trust me more than I'm aware seems terribly wise--” so he's not without a sense of humour, “--but remember it's hardly in my best interests to sabotage you in my home.”

[heardmermaids]

"I haven't scaled the lofty heights of home repair by playing it overly safe." Har, har. They ought to take their act on the road.

"What else do you think you'll need to know?"