Well, here's another one-shot for you to enjoy.
This time it's Ryoko and Miriel's C-Support and something that was sparked by trying to figure out how to continue the Siege of Ravenshear chapter.
I've written this in Miriel's POV mostly for the challenge, because I have some trouble with fancy speech and big words, having learned English from reading fanfics.
Let me know if you liked it in a review, please!
. ~ ° ~ .
Dragon's Claw
~ Family Life ~
For Science!
Ryoko / Miriel C-Support
(Timeline: sometime between chapters 15 and 20)
(Warnings: extremely long words, explosions, slight craziness, experimenting and theorizing. And Ryoko swears once.)
. ~ ° ~ .
Miriel was attempting to bring her latest theory to life.
She carefully measured the magic required to enchant the current prototype— she glanced at her neatly written notes to confirm that it was indeed the twenty-ninth.
She allowed herself a small smile when she noticed that this attempt had yielded greater results than the previous ones already— having lasted halfway through the process rather than merely a quarter of the way through.
It was moments later that the prototype, like all its predecessors, spontaneously exploded.
She adjusted her glasses, grateful for her hastily raised shield, and sighed in slight disappointment.
It was just another postulation that brought the erroneous result.
It didn't bother Miriel.
She was a scientist as well as a magician. Failure was nothing more than another step towards the right solution.
"What are you doing, Miriel?" Ryoko's voice questioned from the doorway, "Trying to make some new spell?"
It was instants after the inquiry had been spoken that the young Dragon— or was it more correct to say 'Dragoness'? —came into the room.
"I am attempting to construct a communications device." Miriel replied, "I believe that there might be a more efficient way to exchange information over long distances than awaiting a courier or a messenger bird, one that cannot be easily intercepted."
She was slightly disappointed in seeing Ryoko's confused and slightly blank look, but it was something that she had resigned herself to.
Very few people actually possessed the intellect to follow her more theoretical speech.
"Why an amulet?" Ryoko inquired, "Why not a mirror or bound books that share content?"
Miriel fully admitted to blinking in surprise before recovering her wits.
"I postulated that the most efficient way of sharing information was speech, and decided that an enchanted mirror would be too easily breakable for this."
"Are you using inscribed runes then?" the Dragon questioned, "Those are so inefficient. It's better to sketch a few arrays and try with one-time tracing instead. It tends to limit violent explosions."
"Are you certain of this?" Miriel inquired.
Traced runes were most often drawn with special inks which, depending on the mixture, could have differing effects, among which was a cheap compound that rendered the runic scheme able to be used exclusively one single time before it was simply erased.
"That's how I haven't destroyed anything outside desks yet." Ryoko replied, "It just keeps down the big ones, though. I've exploded shit plenty of times."
"Oh." Miriel said, at loss for words.
It was somewhat surreal to be able to hold a conversation with someone who was, at times, more uncouth than that uncouth buffoon Vaike.
It appeared, though, that that sort of language was more reserved towards unfavored situations, mornings and when suffering from inebriation, which was more than anyone could ever hope from the blond fool.
"You should focus on something else." Ryoko said, interrupting her pondering, "Passing along speech is really…" she frowned, thinking, "not worth it. Hard."
"Impractical." Miriel offered belatedly.
"Yeah." The Dragon nodded, "Im-prac-ti-cal. Try pulsing magic first. Then thought-speech. If it works, go for actual speech."
"Your words are so hard…" she muttered to herself, pouting.
The red-haired magician debated replying for a moment, but decided that it would be discourteous.
"Do you have any theories to propose on that?" she inquired.
Ryoko was silent for a couple of seconds.
"Have you tried using the master/slave system?" she suggested, "Having just one sending would be better at first."
Miriel's eyes widened slightly at the implications, and she hastily wrote the possibilities on a spare piece of parchment.
"Then I could begin increasing the communication capabilities of the receivers once that works." She concluded.
"Exactly." Ryoko confirmed.
She took another piece of loose parchment and quickly wrote down two runic matrices, though the second one appeared to be a piece of some other spell or chain.
"These are two communication arrays I know." The blue-haired woman explained, "The first one is in spell runes— a rare Dragon skill called 'Link' that takes forever and a day to learn and lets me link to other Dragons with active Sky-Eyes. You'll need to remove that and rank it down, but meh."
She then pointed to the second array, "These are old sealing runes. It's what allows for energy transfer between me and the actual Seal, as far as I can tell. It's probably for sending commands."
Miriel stared, feeling slightly overwhelmed.
"Well, gotta go! Bye!"
With that, Ryoko was gone.
She smiled to herself.
This would greatly increase her chances of success! And those arrays! If she converted everything to basic traced runes she could easily sketch and test a structure for the communications enchantments!
She quickly got to work.