lostcarnival | [Closed]

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Who: Syrlya and Strange
When: Day 90
Where: Their trailer
What: Syrlya finishes working out a new portal spell shortly after they leave Eden

Syrlya's injuries are, thankfully, not debilitating. Shamshel left long, nasty iron-claw scars across his chest, but the wound it shallow enough that he's not restricted to rest in the medical tent. The rest of his injuries are even more superficial, so once he has the wounds cleaned and bandaged he's back to the trailer--and back to work. He's down to just his pants for the comfort, which reveals under the bandages the bone-like pattern that's discolored the leaves along his spine and ribs--and a growth of what looks like feathers, dark purple, from his tailbone. He's trying to ignore that.

The mirror's been pulled down from the bathroom again, although this time propped against a bookshelf in the trailer rather than laying on the floor among the papers. He has a short knife he's used to edge runes into the back of it, running along the side, and the glass is now clouded by the swirling, incomplete entrance of a portal. He waits for a minute, and once he assures the stability he grins.

"I've got it!" He says with more enthusiasm than he meets anything else likely, tapping the knife against the side of the mirror.

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Strange just laughs bitterly as the flames around his hands creep further up his arms. He's wearing a long sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up, but it's only a matter of time until the fire reaches his sleeves. Angrily, he jabs a finger in Syrlya's direction.

"Do you even care what I think or are you just looking for another reason to talk over me?"

Syrlya narrows his eyes. "I suppose I have cared too much about what you think if I have tried to prove myself to you. But it does not matter, because I am going to see my duties through regardless whether you respect my abilities to do so or not."

So that's a no, then. At least, Strange is interpreting this as a no. Perhaps it's best now that he's got confirmation Syrlya doesn't give a damn about him. He can start not caring about the Mesmer in return.

"Your abilities have nothing to do with the choices you've made. The fact that you're a powerful magician doesn't change the fact that you're a stubborn ass who refuses to even admit that he might have made a mistake. If you think I don't respect you, then leave. Nothing's preventing you from living with me anymore."

Says the person still standing in front of the door.

"You're standing in front of the door, Strange," he points out coolly, slowly pushing off the table. "Nor do I have to leave the trailer. You can't throw me out."

If he waltzes out it's going to be by his own decision and not because Strange told him to leave, so he stays stubbornly in place. "But I am tired of arguing with you, Strange, so fine. Think whatever you want of me."

Shit. So he is. Strange moves away from the door and, without saying a word, storms back towards the beds. He turns himself smoke to float up to the top bunk and reforms partway underneath the red cape that he wore while enthralled by Ignatius and is now currently serving as an impromptu bedspread.

He is straight up facing the wall. It's Strange's turn to try and stubbornly not look at Syrlya. As he does so, he tries to calm down his flames and hopes that the fire-resistant cloth of the cape helps temper them down a bit.

No commentary, just sulking.

Syrlya's gaze drifts sideways as Strange goes off to sulk. He doesn't comment, instead gathering some paper, his notes on the portal signet, and a pen from the shelves before he sits at the table and starts writing. Two can play the silent game.

The silent game lasts for five or so minutes before, unsurprisingly, Strange is the one to crack first. Tired of sulking, he gets his dumb wife gem therapy rock and takes it for a spin to try and calm down. The video's at an awkward angle, as the memory projection of Strange and Arabella almost perfectly hits a corner of the room. But the audio's crystal clear. The longer the audio goes on, the less the top bunk smells like a campfire or singed fabric.

Syrlya now has to deal with the audio of Strange and Arabella making conversation interspersed with a slightly ludicrous amount of kissing noises.

Syrlya for the most part ignores that. The blatant kissing gets the occasional glance, but from his angle he can't see much about Strange is doing. So he focuses mostly on his work, and trying to calculate further iterations of the portal to be more efficient after it's been tested.

Then it clicks in his mind what he's probably hearing and he does a double take to the top bunk. "Wh--are you listening to yourself kiss your wife?"

Is that what's going on up there??

The audio stops when Syrlya speaks up (and Strange accidentally knocks the gem off it's point, stopping the memory). Oh shit. He's still there, isn't he. Strange knows that any explanation is going to be mocked, since it's not like Syrlya would understand things like 'missing one's wife terribly and using her voice as a coping mechanism'.

So in a very dignified fashion, Strange simply throws his pillow at Syrlya's head.

Syrlya is smacked in the face with a pillow.

And then he grabs it and throws it right back.

And then Strange is smacked in the head with a pillow. So naturally, he throws it right back at Syrlya. But only a few seconds later, Strange is grabbing a second pillow and tossing it at Syrlya right after the first one.

The second pillow is the throw pillow that Steven gave Strange for solstice. This projectile smells faintly like lavender.

Syrlya raises his arm to deflect the pillows with a scowl.

"These are mine now!" And then he squishes them into his lap.

"Fine then!" Strange snaps back, before turning to lay back on his bunk. "I don't need them anyway!"

Except that a minute or so later of laying his head directly on the mattress, Strange decides that he does. He poofs into smoke, floats down to the floor, resolidifies, walks over to Syrlya...and then gets distracted by his notes. Strange straight up reads them over Syrlya's shoulder for a moment before he points at a particular theory about the range of the portal.

"That seems like too much effort," he rather bluntly says. "If I link a different reflection to the reflection of the portal, then it should easily go my reflection, portal's reflection, exit to you."

Syrlya is initially content to get back to his brainstorming with his hostage pillows. And the silence is enough for him to calm down enough to ignore Strange looming over his shoulder.

Until he speaks, and Syrlya sucks in a breath as he jabs his pen into the paper (and the table). He fights off the urge to tell Strange off, because this is a matter of carnival safety and not just doodling about with magic... but it's hard.

He sighs, giving Strange an irksome look over his shoulder before looking back at the paper. "The problem is if the person who needs to trigger the portal is incapacitated, isn't it? It needs to be something that other members of the carnival can use even if that isn't usually their magical expertise."

"I can make the doorway so that a non-magical person could use it. As long as I link the two reflections themselves, I can design it so anyone from the carnival could use it." And because he suspects Syrlya's going to talk over him or berate his idea, Strange continues talking before Syrlya can say anything.

"I've done it before. I linked a mirror in Faerie to one in Venice and designed a pathway solely for Arabella—she doesn't know any magic. I don't know how long I could sustain a doorway without needing to refresh the magic every so often, but using the framework of the portal should help keep it stable for longer."

It's Strange doing what he always does with magic: copy other people's work and tweak it until it fits his own needs.

"How many people can filter through your pathway?" He scratches the pen against the paper as he stares ahead thoughtfully. And then he sits up a little in sudden realization before he looks back at Strange.

"Does your travel work between the carnival and connected realms? You are familiar enough with the mirrors here, aren't you?"

If Strange could link back to the reflection by the portal... why has it not been applied for retreats until now? He feels like he's missing a piece of this.

"Before, I was only limited to one realm. But now...I don't know. My magic and my way of thinking has changed." Strange starts gesturing with his hands as he talks, touching his fingertips together like a web.

"Inside the Silver Mirror, all of Eden's reflections were connected. I want to do that myself, but on a smaller scale. Initially, I was thinking I could use that just for surveillance and communication, but if we somehow connect the web of reflections to your portal, perhaps those are the entrances and exits that we're looking for."

Strange can't help it. There's a little bit of nerdy excitement in his voice as he describes the Silver Mirror and all the ways that he can take what he learned from inside the Mirror, but make it his own.

Syrlya snorts, apparently finding some part of that funny. He doesn't elaborate, though.

"Now you're making it sound like unnecessary effort." He rests his chin on his hand. "If you can connect the reflections near you back to the carnival you can easily send people back directly. Trying to go through the reflection to the portal is redundant."

Syrlya, as always, is more concerned with the practical uses than developing magic for the sake of developing magic. This is to save people, not have fun.

Strange can't help but narrow his eyes a bit as Syrlya laughs at him. No matter. He knows his suggestion is good, so he'll continue explaining it.

"That all depends on the circumstances," Strange responds, with a frown. "Say for example, you're injured and can't leave the carnival. Then we place you in the carnival, the mirror in whatever realm we're attached to, and I connect the mirrors to the portal that way. Or, God forbid, if someone invades the carnival, then it would be mirrors to portal to outside realm. The biggest flaw of your portal is that it only has one entrance and exit. Trying to prevent that is hardly redundant."

And considering that the last day in Eden involved three different groups in three different places, spreading out the portal's reach seems like the best option in Strange's mind.

"What I mean is that if you are able to connect the reflections openly and across realms, the extra portal isn't even necessary. Because that--"

He points to the mirror. "Serves as the same stable exit point that you already have by using the mirrors themselves for travel. So if you can expand the travel and portability, then the mirrors cover exactly what we need for a quick escape."

They wouldn't even need his portal. He's not sure his magic is really more accessible for the non-magically inclined, so there's not much of an advantage to that over the mirrors. It could even be Strange's focus since he's no longer needing to fight with the militia, but he has a feeling suggesting that would result in another fit.

He's thinking about it, though.

"As I said, I don't know if I'm able to connect the reflections across realms yet," Strange admits. "I don't want to build this around something that might not happen." Before he couldn't. Now, he doesn't know. And until he finds out, it's best to plan and branch off of the thing that can work across realms.

It's obvious he doesn't actually want to admit that he can't do something, but he's powering through with it anyway. When he speaks again, it's Strange trying to force some lightness and levity in his voice, as if that'll help distract Syrlya from the fact that he admitted he can't do something.

"And besides, I don't want to do this by myself anyway. Even if both parties can be an ass, it's always best to do magic in pairs."

Syrlya rubs his face wearily as Strange forces himself to admit to his limit. He stares dully ahead, and it's a second before the next admission registers and he tilts his head back to look at Strange.

He doesn't say anything, but he looks a little more surprised than annoyed. He only looks back for a moment, though, before he puts his attention back on his notes.

"I have been working off my own portal because, aside from being familiar and easier to work with, I can place the second point anywhere. It isn't bound to an object. I don't know what my limits will be when I do not have to maintain the entrance and exit simultaneously."

So there's still a testing period that needs to be done to find the weak points before too much iteration can be done. He glances back, like he's making sure Strange is listening. "You said you could see every reflection while inside the mirror, correct? Could you create a doorway between reflections while still inside of one?"

"I couldn't do that while I was in the Silver Mirror. However, the Silver Mirror was a powerful artifact that, to the best of my knowledge, wasn't built to store actual people." Once he pieces it out, Strange will be a little proud of himself that he somehow managed to strongarm an entire fae artifact into doing what he needed.

"I've already figured out how to store living things in regular reflections. Once I piece out a way to transfer the web of reflections onto a normal mirror, I should be able to create a doorway."

He says, despite the fact that this magic hasn't even moved past the hypothetical stage. Still, if there's one thing that Strange does have it's confidence in his abilities and a lot more confidence in his ability to bullshit together a solution should the situation call for it.

Syrlya absently taps the pen a few times, mulling the possibilities over in his head. Of course, it's hypothetical until Strange works that aspect of magic out, but he's going to piece out a scenario that involves Strange actually figuring it out.

"That would mean you could not only survey the other carnival members, but directly lead them to the escape portal. We might not even need to anchor the entrance to the reflection, if it would work inside the mirror directly..."

He rubs his chin before starting to write down a couple more lines of things to test. "Any way to bring people to the portal cuts down significantly on the risk of them being picked off while looking for them again."

Strange can't help it: he gives Syrlya a wide grin as they continue to talk about the portal. This is what he likes about the man. There's very few people who Strange can talk magic with as intensely nerdy as he does with Syrlya. And yet every conversation they have that doesn't seem to be about magic ends up with the two fighting.

"I'd need to scout out the area beforehand. Ideally, the reflections would have to be a certain size and stability. Puddles or ice are good for quick travel, but I wouldn't trust them to last over a day." Still, this is another 'fight that battle when they check out the terrain' sort of situation. Eden might not have been useful with regards to mirrors, but something like Wismuth or Greysol might be.

"But no matter what, I could still link the reflections together for ease of talking or distributing information."

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