"Very well," said Rhysel when there were no questions, and moved on. "Mind kamai covers all workings which deal with mind-to-mind interaction. It can allow for communication, and one can retrieve lost memories with it, or see what another is thinking - it also covers the ability to create various layers of protection, which we call mind-shields. Before I demonstrate how I can project a thought into someone else's minds, would anyone care to be excluded from that particular bit? It's much like if you were to talk to Keo, although it feels different to me if I talk to her through her ability as opposed to talking to, say, Talyn, with mind kamai."

No one opted out.

<Range varies with ability and practice - it's much easier to use when in physical contact with someone, for instance, and much easier when in line of sight than if there are barriers in the way. In addition to mindspeak, one can also send emotions or visual memories across it.>

"Would anyone prefer to be excluded from the memory sharing? I'll be showing you a moment from my childhood." she said aloud.

A couple of students raised their hands.

"All right," she said. She sent a brief memory of herself watching her mother put the finishing touches on a violin and tuning it, excluding the students who didn't wish to participate. "Would anyone care to relate what they saw to those who didn't wish to see?" she asked. The students who were sitting nearest to those who opted out whispered summaries.

"All of the aspects of kamai have some overlap," Rhysel said. "For instance, a mind kama can read the memories of another person as well, and, using image kamai, project that." She knelt on the floor, allowing Talyn to come over and touch her forehead, while he pointed with his other finger to an empty area of the room - the shared memory was displayed sensorily for all to see, and after it played itself out, the image faded. Rhysel stood up again.

She lets Talyn take over the demonstration, as he picked up the oblong piece of quartz, which had been lying on the table. Passing his hand over it, he put the shared memory into the crystal, offering it to any students who wished to hold it. "If you hold the crystal, it will replay the memory in your mind," Rhysel said as he held it out to the first student.

The students passed it around, and the same two who refused the projection of the memory passed over the crystal as well.

Talyn took the crystal back. Rhysel said, "Kamai, as you may have noticed, doesn't generally require specfic gestures or words to perform. We do, however, work with tools a fair bit. The mind-crystal is one of them. It's essentially a repository for mind-magic. A message can be stored, or a memory, and so on. One's consciousness can be stored in a crystal as well - if, for instance, a mind kama found someone seriously injured, she could transfer the patient's conciousness out of his body until the body could be healed of injury."

She seated herself on the floor, sending a quick reassuring message to Tekaal and Keo as Talyn took the crystal and touched it to her forehead. Rhysel slumped over unconcious; Talyn helped to ease her body to the floor. "Keo," he said, "Rhysel said you should be able to tell where her thoughts are now, in the crystal or in her head. Would you mind determining that?"

"In the crystal," reported Keo. "Just like an adapted data crystal I could store someone in."

Talyn nodded slightly, touching the crystal back to Rhysel's head again. She sat up slowly, while Talyn took over the narration for a moment. "On our world, healing is essentially just a wild kamai ability. Each of the other aspects has a function that allows the patient to be either kept alive or out of pain until a wild kama can be summoned to perform the healing, or until a mundane healer can tend to the injury or illness."

Rhysel took another moment or two to regain her sense of equilibrium before she stood again. "Any questions about mind-kamai before we proceed?"

"Can you do anything Keo can't?" asked a student.

"I don't know," Rhysel said. "We've not really tested that - unless Keo happens to know of something." She looked to Keo for a moment.

"You haven't mentioned anything I couldn't do," the dragon said. "There might be something."

Rhysel nodded. "Any other questions?"

There were none.

"Death kamai is the hardest to demonstrate in this setting. While the name is ominious, it deals equally as much with life as with death. Some of the more common uses back home are to create plagues to wipe out vermin infestations, such as insects destroying crops, or being able to tell if something is about to die nearby - if sensed early enough, the death can sometimes be prevented. The working I've chosen to demonstrate for this is one that will measure the lifespan of an individual - barring illness or injury, it will determine how long you will live. A practical use for this is that, if a person is critically ill, a death mage can determine if it's due to the patient being at the end of their lifespan, or due to something else."

She gestured for Leekath and Narax to join her up front. "As vampires generally can estimate how long they'll live, Leekath has agreed to help me demonstrate this. And, since Narax is a dragon, and will noticeably alter her lifespan if she bites him, he's agreed to allow her to do so, so I can show the difference in lifespan."

Rather than stepping over the people on either side of her, Leekath turned bat and flew down to the front of the room. Narax got up and walks down to join her.

Once Leekath was down at the front of the room, Rhysel asked, "Would you mind sharing what you estimate your lifespan to be currently?"

"At least 314 and a half years," Leekath replied promptly.

"All right," Rhysel said as she reaches out to touch Leekath's arm. She invoked the magic and displayed the girl's lifespan for the group to see: 314 years, 6 months, 17 days, one hour, fifty-three minutes. She dismissed the magic and looked to Narax.

He sat down and Leekath bit him in the neck. Once Leekath was done, Rhysel took her arm again, showing the lifespan again: 318 years, no months, 2 days, twelve hours, thirteen minutes, "Although it displays down to the minute, there is a margin of error of about 10 hours," Rhysel said.

Leekath looked contentedly full. Narax returned to his seat, and after a moment, Leekath shifted again and flew back to hers.

"I realize I've not demonstrated much of it at all, but are there any questions about death kamai?" asked Rhysel.

"What are some other things it can do?" asked Ngen.

"Stop plagues or diseases from spreading - provided they're transmitted microbially. Doesn't do anything for magic illnesses. Communicate with corpses - it's common for law enforcement to employ a death kama to find out how someone died. Keep someone alive indefinitely."

"How does that one work?" asked a student interestedly.

"You establish what's called a life-link. Essentially, no matter what happens to the target, aside from reaching the end of its natural lifespan, it won't die unless the kama does. It's about the only instance I know of in kamai where, in addition to drain, there is also pain involved - and the longer the connection is kept past the point the target would have normally died, the more painful it gets. Essentially, you're sharing your life with the target until it can be treated."

There were no more questions.

"Moving on," she said with a smile, "we come to wild kamai. This aspect largely deals with healing - which, again, is difficult to demonstrate in a controlled setting, as I'm not going to allow someone to be injured just to show how it works. It has other uses as well." Talyn hands her a block of wood, which she began to shape into a simple sculpture as if it were clay. "Shaping of wood, for instance," she said as she worked. After a few minutes, she's formed it into a rough figure of a bear, which Talyn took and allowed the students to pass around the room.

"If you wanted to," asked Korulen, "could you animate it like Kaarilel's aurum-dove?"

"It is possible, yes," she said, "I've never done so, as I prefer to work with stone. Using death kamai, one could shape bone similarly and create a golem from it as well."

Talyn picked up a small wooden horse on the table, setting it on the floor. He passed his hand over it, and it turned into a full-sized and very realistic mount, which he vaulted onto, keeping the animal under control. "Wild kamai," said Rhysel, "uses what are called affinity wood tokens - when carved into various shapes, they can become real instances of whatever they're shaped as. One has to conciously maintain the effect, however, so it can get tiring if held for too long, although if Talyn were to use this horse as a mount to travel, he could do so for several hours before needing to dismiss it and rest."

"What did you say it was called?" asked one of the students. Indeed, all of them looked a little confused by the creature.

"It's a horse," she said with a grin. "But the term I used was 'affinity wood token'. There are a few types of wood that channel kamai effectively, and a kyma are generally more attuned to one of those woods over the others - for Talyn, his affinity wood is cherry, while mine is rowan. A token is just a figurine of whatever you want it to be shaped like. I could just as easily make one of a boat, for instance - it doesn't have to be an animal."

There were no further questions. Talyn trotted the animal around the front area for a moment before dismissing it.

"Wild kamai also allows some communication with or control over animals - something else not easily demonstrable in this sort of setting, but it could be used to calm stampeding cattle, or call down birds from the trees and so on," Rhysel continued. "Any questions about wild kamai?"

There did not appear to be more.

"Elemental kamai can best be compared to your world's magery - although an elemental kama can work with all four elements with equal ease. And you don't have to get burned, buried, drowned, or pushed off a cliff to use them." She conjured up a sphere each of fire, earth, water, and smokey air as she spoke, juggling them about for a moment.

She dismissed the balls, moving over to the large stone placed on the floor. "An elemental kama can sort of sense the elements around her, and use them to that effect." She placed her hand on the stone, and it displayed a map of the classroom in detail. "The earth knows what is on it - even through other items that may be in the way. I can take what it senses and display it on stone or earth." She panned the map around, zooming in and out, pulling out at one point to show the range in full - all 25 mile's worth of radius.

Leekath stared raptly at the map, eyes wide and intense.

Talyn, who'd been glancing at Leekath a fair bit while not working, happened to notice this. <Are you all right?> he sent to her.

She nodded a little bit, not enough to be noticed by anyone not paying attention to her.

He acknowledged her nod with a slight one of his own. Rhysel meanwhile, let the map fade away, and walked up into the air as if she were climbing stairs. "I can treat the air as solid footing, or fly through it." She soared around the room twice before returning to the front. "I can also move objects or other people around in similar fashion." Several of the items which had been on the table flew to her and slowly orbited her.

Rhysel settled back to the ground, and said, "Elemental magics are also good at protection." She engulfed herself in flames for about thirty seconds. After dismissing the fire she turned her skin to stone.

Talyn picked up a block of wood and hurled it at Rhysel, who stood there calmly as it clattered off of her.

Rhysel dismissed the magic, and said, "Thus far, aside from a few workings, like the horse token which requires some advance preparation, everything we've shown falls into the subset of evocative kamai - workings that generally require little more than proper focus and manipulation of energy, and which are less draining. Primarily we've done this because I didn't want to wear out too rapidly. I'll be demonstrating ritual and proxic subsets with elemental magic only, although they do exist for the other aspects as well. Talyn will demonstrate a ritual magic from the mind-magics as well, to show how a similar working can be performed in two different aspects."

She took the silvered basin, and fills it with water, positioning it so that most of the audience could see inside. "If you can't see the water from where you're sitting, I suggest you move closer." Some people from the back rows repositioned themselves nearer.

Rhysel seated herself opposite and drew the patterns she needed on the surface of the water with her fire-writing, centering herself, and then scried through the water, allowing the image to be seen by all present. She started with the classroom, then moved the image around the school grounds and out across the countryside away from the city, to give the students a sample of what it looked like.

Once finished, she dismissed the magic, sagging slightly, while Talyn stepped forward with his mind-crystal, using it as a scrying tool. He repeated the scrying process similarly, allowing the image to be displayed above the crystal. Once he finished, he sat down in the nearest chair.

---

Home Table of Contents Dramatis Personae Setting Gallery News About Us Contact Us