Oh Oh It's Magic [Musebox]

Adjusting to the magical department proves, for Sabriel, to be almost as difficult as adjusting to the giant ship in the sky with the handheld radio things. The new forms of magic she's been introduced to are not Charter or Free Magic, or anything even resembling them. She has no ability to tell if they're things that she can master or just forms of magic she is innately incapable of. And yet, she has to work with them.

She stands before some of the magical artifacts - at least those make conceptual sense to her, as they are objects that have, at some point, been charmed (usually) and strokes her chin. She doesn't speak to many when they pass, preferring instead to mull, but she does wave a hand slightly in greeting when Morgan enters.

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"Cover your ears and defend my body if I take myself by accident!"

Well, those are words of encouragement.

"Try not to do that!" Morgan shouted back at her, helpfully. In the middle of one motion, he drew his sword with one (melodramatic) hiss of what actually wasn't steel; its dull-gold metal shimmered dimly as he seamlessly integrated it into his kata.

Sabriel takes a strong stance and pulls one of the larger bells in her bandolier out, holding it with both hands almost as if the handle were the hilt of a sword. She narrows her eyes and tries to recall the proper way to use Saraneth-

-but the winds pick back up again, and the precise motions needed to ring it correctly are lost as Sabriel is thrown back. The gonging noise echoes through the air, and within a moment she, the spirit and Morgan all find themselves facedown in shallow, cool running water.

The first gate of river of death.

Wonderful. They'd just -- as Morgan understood it -- fallen directly into the Dark Umbra. He rolled to his back, then dove to seize and pin the spirit bodily before it could reach.

A riptide in the water rips the spirit out of Morgan's grasp. Sabriel shouts and tries to get to her feet, identifying which section of the river they're in. The Third, the one with the wave.

"Run!" she hisses, gesturing frantically downstream.

Double wonderful. Morgan didn't question her for a second -- he kicked away from the ground, twisting in midair to hit the ground running. If she was at all slow in rising, she could expect to find herself tugged to her feet without any real pause in his momentum.

She is, slightly, mostly because her chainmail tunic is incredibly heavy on her skinny body. She sloshes through the water at best pace, ringing one of her bells to try and open the fourth gate. It's ahead of them - fifty yards - twenty - and the water behind them at even less-

She shoves Morgan ahead of her through the gate. He'll land is waist-deep water.

"I seem to have lost control of this situation," Morgan said to himself as he planted a hand on the surface of the water, balanced his chi, then hopped lightly onto it as if it were a solid surface. He waited for Sabriel -- expecting her to order him to keep running, and intent on scooping her up to do so if she did.

She makes it through the gate, but barely. The water stops just behind her as if striking an invisible barrier.

"I don't know where the spirit went." She looks as if she's trying to keep it together, but like she really needs a moment to decompress before moving forward.

"Well, if you know where we are and anything about this place, you're still one up on me," Morgan said, deliberately cheerful in the hope of helping her relax a little. This environment was unsettling and their arrival in it strange, but he felt nothing more than a twinge or two of fear.

He touched her shoulder gently, providing a point of contact for her to focus on.

She appreciates the hand, really. Someone treating her like a human, weaknesses and all, rather than a savior. She smiles a bit, although that's lost soon in the mist and grimness of their location.

"We're in the fourth precinct of the river of death. This is one of the safer precincts. The third, obviously, is treacherous, and if we go forward, the fifth moreso. I don't know where the spirit went, but we could take our chances and hope the wave took it past the final gate."

Or they could go be certain.

"Sounds like a great place for a summer home," he said, rolling his eyes. "Are we -- I mean, how much danger are we in from being here?"

No question in his mind that hoping was foolish, but if sticking around risked having their spirits severed from their bodies or something like that, then the choice was clear.

Edited 2012-12-26 04:51 (UTC)

"Here? The fourth precinct isn't very dangerous if you don't step into sinkholes. Keep your wits about you." She smirks a bit, then stares with stoic determination down the river. "But down there we face permanent death, and...I don't know what's beyond it. But I have to make sure whatever we encountered is trapped."

"Oh good. I would've been displeased if this was dissolving my soul or something. I'm using that."

Duty. That put a different spin on it. He could understand that, and it did put a different spin on things.

"Well," he said, looking down at his feet -- which were still poised on the surface of the water. "Should I come down, or would you like to come up?"

She stares into the water, but it's too dark to tell distance. "I'll come up, if it's no great burden on you."

"It isn't, but your dignity is gonna take a hit to do this the fast way," Morgan said. But then again, after everything they've been through, she didn't have a ton left, and neither did he, did they?

He knelt down, slid an arm around her waist gently but firmly, then lifted with the strength of his legs. Once she was out of the water, he put his free hand on the small of her back, let out one breath as he projected his chi to mesh with hers, then made a twisting gesture to pull her energies into harmony. Aside from the general feeling of vitality that brought, it also served to put her on the surface of the water just as neatly when he released her.

She does flush a bit - it's certainly a bit immodest to be touched on her lower back, even for practical reasons, and her mind wanders to Touchstone for a moment. But it's worthwhile for the rush of energy and feeling of weightlessness as she stands atop the water. "Thank you."

She still doesn't rush across the surface. Even if the spirit wasn't taken past the last gate, the wave should have washed it far enough to bring them time, and you never know what hides in this precinct's waters. The dead may reach up and grab their ankles if they aren't careful. "Watch your feet."

She had less-modest pressure points he could have used. And more-modest ones, but that was the best one for the situation.

He twitched his head aside, flicking his hair out of the way as he reached back to grip the hilt of his sword. "You know, this horrible death land actually kind of sucks."

"That's why I have excessive amounts of wealth bestowed on me for navigating it on a semi-regular basis." They get to the next gate, hidden behind a waterfall. "Careful here. There are monsters beyond this point."

Morgan considered her statement for a moment.

"Congratulations," he said. "I always thought that just inheriting money was secretly shameful, but now I've found a way to earn it that makes me glad I did instead of getting it this way."

He was mostly teasing, but his respect for her had definitely increased a few notches, and it hadn't been low to begin with.

She smiles and brushes her sopping hair behind her ear. "Well, I inherited a good deal of it too. A whole castle, honestly..."

She blushes a bit.

"Oh, was there a title to go with it, or are you just an independent landowner? Because if I have to call you 'Duchess' I will not be able to stop giggling."

Don't think for a second that he wasn't taking their situation seriously, now. He just saw no need not to banter while they advanced towards what they surely both believed was another confrontation.

"Abhorsen. But it doesn't seem to be a title that translates well. It was my father's title before mine, and presumably my grandfather's before that."

There she goes, killing good banter with totally factual seriousness.

"Besides, if you call me 'Princess' or 'Duchess' or anything like that, I'll drown you in the third precinct."

"That is kind of implied by 'inherited'," Morgan said, undeterred, though anyone who thought he was being too casual about this situation had failed to notice the slight tension of his muscles, and the way his movements kept his loose and ready to respond to a threat from any direction -- including below. "And why the third precinct? Is there a rule that people who annoy the Abhorsen get drowned there, or just personal preference?"

"There are large enough waves to cover up my wrongdoing," she says. She gives him a wink to show she's not serious. "Ready?"

Without waiting for him, she goes through the waterfall of the gate.

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