Ita Illu 2

[19:53] "Let's see... I showed ya an illusion or two, and I showed ya how to sense mana. I think ya grasped those basics, but... I ain't sure if ya ever put your mind into tryin' to manipulate it." Arlo paces about the top of the hill, cupping his chin in his hand as he thinks. "Ya know by now that everythin' in the whole world is made up of mana, but livin' things usually have a mana signature. Somethin' you can feel."

Their whole 'fighting in the dark' exercise already pounded that concept well into the ground, or so Arlo figured. "The key to illusion is foolin' your victim. Sure, that's obvious. But it's the how of it that matters a hell of a lot, too. Your approach could range from scramblin' their brains with somethin' serious or changin' tiny details here and there to the point that it distracts 'em for a while."

Whether or not Ita knew it, that illusory effect was already being demonstrated. Ciaran's hair was now just a shade or two darker. She could see that the grass was now swaying opposite to the feeling that the wind's chill gave her. The water and the sky were both just a bit redder than it should look based on the sun's position in the sky.

"With that in mind, try somethin' on me. Hone in on my signature, and see if ya can't change up my mana just a bit... or a lot. I'll leave it to your discretion."
(Arlo Waters)
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[19:55] Ciarán kneeled down, splattering a hand by the flat earth. He had never witnessed tutorship, in any form, aspect, or under any kind of pretext. What transpired before him was inedited!

A pair of pink peers lazily wander between Ita and Arlo- illusion, was it?

"I ain't have enough psyche to compute what's goin' to happen... brain-scramblers. Whew."
(Ciarán)
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[19:56] Chuck strokes his chin as he walks up toward the people who seemed to be having a lesson of sorts in the middle of the field.

He'd wonder a bit what was going on at first, it almost looked like someone was getting mugged but he soon saw that this was not the case.

"Hmm interesting a lesson on illusion? May I sit in? Names Chuck" he introduces.
(Chuck)
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[20:02] "Mhm. I remember that."

Probably because it came with a little bit of frustration and bullying, but hey. The lesson stuck. That's what matters.

"Right...Right. It's in the details."

Just like any other subterfuge or carefully crafted deception. Ita wasn't aware at first. Pretty oblivious actually, especially when a relative stranger walks in. She squints in his direction.

"Huh? Oh. That's uh. That's up to Low,I-"

Hold on. Something's fish. Ita squints so hard that her eyes are damn near closed and she scans about again. There's some fuckery afoot. Is it in the trees? The sunlight? Or maybe it's that the sky seems sinister, more sinister than usual.

Probably that last one. Ita turns her squinty-eyed 'fury' onto Arlo. She hones in on his mana signature, pours all her focus into an attempt. A simple one, but one that will be obvious to detect if it works.

She imagines a massive- not medium, not large, but massive- duck appearing just over Arlo's head, hovering ominously. The budding magi attempts to force the image into his combined senses.
(Ita)
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[20:08] "Huh? I wasn't expectin' this. Uh, sure. I can't really catch ya up on what we just went over, but I can talk from here." He waved Chuck over, before continuig to pace about as normal. "I've said it before, but to make strong illusions means ya gotta have a strong imagination. To be good at protectin' yourself from illusions, ya gotta have a strong will. The best illusionists, then, better have both."

Placing his arms behind his back, the urchin continues to pace about as if a very active minister giving a sermon to his flock. He's about to open his mouth and continue when he sees a shadow overhead - one that obviously wasn't there before. However, instead of allowing for a more obvious display that the illusion caught him off guard, Arlo simply stands still.

He turns his head towards Ciarán, then to Chuck, then to Ita. If this is how she was going to play it, he was going to lean into it. "One way or another, someone givin' you an illusion gives ya insight into their mindsight. How they think - what they think is distractin'." Without losing his gaze on Ita, he snaps his fingers.

The illusion then becomes apparent to all three of them, instead of just the girl. There was indeed a massive duck hovering just overhead, hanging over Arlo. It was also now on fire. Blazing with the heat of at least an eighth of a sun, it began to start descending upon them, all while Arlo continued to speak.

"There's always a detail or two that folks will catch that make 'em realize that somethin' is off. But if ya scare the hell out of 'em, that shock is worth a lot in a pinch. A good illusionist knows to hold onto their illusions, no matter what's distractin' 'em." A wordless cue, directed at Ita.

Would she fold, or would she keep her duck afloat?
(Arlo Waters)
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[20:15] Was that a freaking flaming duck?

Things were happening too soon too quick for chucks liking, he panics forgetting he himself is a fire mage as the duck begins to descend upon his slowly.

He could feel the heat prying on his body, his mind forced him to imagine his skin peeling and the pain felt oh so real, though it most certainly wasn't it was just an illusion, but Chuck had just started in this tutorial there was no way he could have known what to do in this situation, he starts swiping up his weapon trying to wave the duck away, the terrifying burning creature, he of course was not successful.

"Make it stop!" he cries as he looks toward the other male who see if they could help.
(Chuck)
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[20:17] Ciarán says, "Calm th'Hel down, lad..."
[20:17] Chuck asks, "Its a ducka flaming duck wh'-..?"
[20:18] Arlo dives right into it, taking to teaching like- like a duck to water? Badum-tss. He plays it off very well. It's actually pretty impressive, but flattery isn't the point of today's lesson. It's grasping the basics of this magic based in trickery.

In hindsight, she should've gone the more subtle route and not with her very first and most outrageous thought. Sure, it'd distract the laymen, but anyone worth their salt would know it was fake. It'd only buy a momentary distraction when there were no doubt more elegant and effective solutions to the same problem.

In what becomes a battle of wits and imaginations, Arlo sets her illusory duck aflame. With another illusion. Man, this stuff can get weird really, really quick. She flinches and recoils from the heat. The heat that, a part of her mind registers, is not real. So long as she can keep herself grounded firmly in that she can even the playing field.

The duck wobbles and teeters in mid air, honking once in a booming baritone fitting a water fowl so large. It remains and hopefully, hopefully she can get the intensity of the flames to die down as the avian flaps its wings.
(Ita)
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[20:24] Within a shared illusory mindspace, Arlo found himself just at home. It was odd how much fun he derived from combatting imagination versus imagination, but he wasn't about to question it. Instead, he once again placed his hands at his back, now standing straight as he looks above at the duck now flapping its wings to bat away the flame.

Instead of just combatting it, he takes the ball and runs with it. "There's a lot ya can say about intensifyin' the sensations someone gets with illusion magic. It's somethin' else to fool someone into thinkin' that somethin' is way more intense than it appears." To whit, the flapping of the flaming waterfowl's wings do indeed cause the fire to quench and die away.

It also swings its wings with such force that the weather around the four of them changes. Fast. The wind picks up to such a degree that it calls forth a monsoon. Red sun is blotted out by dark gray clouds, which scatter droplets of rain so fierce and fast that one could swear the water was coming in sideways. Even despite the loud cracks and thooms of thunder, the rushing howl of the wind, and the echoing honk of the duck, Arlo's voice remains steady, loud, and measured.

"It looks like you're touchin' on somethin' I really like about this magic. It lets ya go as wild as ya like, without reservation. Do a lot or a little - as long as it gets the job done and you're havin' fun, that's all that matters."

The phantasmal winds blow and buffet the hem of Arlo's overcoat every which way, and the ponytail in his hair brushes about wildly. "A strong mind and a strong will oughta be able to know where the body really is, no matter what its eyes are seein'."

Another rush of oppressively powerful wind. It threatens to knock the four of them off their feet, to be sent tumbling away. But does it move Ita?
(Arlo Waters)
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[20:32] Chuck wasn't sure he could take much more of this, winds gusting in form seemingly out of no where, ducks that donned flames hotter than the sun.

Just what had he gotten himself into he screeches an audible "no no no!" as the winds pick up, how could allthis be an illusion? Surely not, he reaches for something to grab hold of closing his eyes, possibly the worst thing he could have done, now he was trapped hearing the illusionists wind noises and had no way to tell he was actually in the exact same spot. In his own mind he was already way up in the top of the tornado that had formed.

Illusion was a powerful thing indeed.
(Chuck)
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[20:33] She continues to realize more and more that she'd have been better served starting out small. Small and not duck-based. Now they're going to be the main event of her nightmares, she's sure of it. In the middle of a veritable mind storm stands Arlo, cool as a cucumber.

It's clear she's going to need a lot more nerve and steel in her spine in order to truly master the magic at hand, something of which she's typically in woefully short supply.

"It's not real it's not real it's not real..." Ita mutters to herself in repetitive mantra. It must do a little something for her at the very least, because the imaginary gale doesn't buffet her around like debris in a hurricane.

Her arms pinwheel to help her keep balance and, to combat the illusory threat in her minds eye, she imagines grass growing up and over her feet to keep herself firmly rooted. She comes close to toppling once or twice, but stands her ground.

She pushes it a little further, to extend the illusion to include Arlo, the instructor. Grass starts to creep up every so carefully over his sandals, vines growing up and attempting to entwine up his calves. Flora as sneaky as she was on any given day.

He was right. So long as it got the job done, it could be whatever her mind wanted, and so long as the shared image could be forced on another party. Otherwise she'd only be fooling herself. Not that that wouldn't come in handy too, in some cases.
(Ita)
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[20:41] The storm continues to rage and howl, thrashing about to the point that trees around them were now getting uprooted and hurled about. Arlo stands totally still, placing his fingers up to his lips in thought. With a snap of his fingers, the tornado that appears to be hurling Chuck about slowly dissipates into a gentler squall. The resultant wind coalesceses to the point that it serves as a 'cushion' to help the boy descend slowly.

He didn't want people actually thinking they were in lethal danger, after all. ...Even despite the illusory monsoon, which now appaered to be absorbing Osrona in its wake.

It doesn't appear that Arlo was going to start pacing, and that was just as well. There were now vines - however artificial - wrapped clean around his legs, halting his movement outright. "Oi, oi... You're learnin' faster than I thought. Takin' a person's illusion and rearrangin' it..."

One final test. Arlosnaps his fingers, and everything just goes black. A stark void save for the four of them. No longer was the wind present, nor the rain. ...That giant hovering duck, however, definitely, definitely was still there. Soon, however, it vanished into the pitch black nothing... and so did they, slowly, one by one.

Until there was nil.

In this mindscape of sensory deprivation, Arlo's voice calls. "We're nowhere. We got no legs, we got no arms, we got no eyes, no ears, no nothin'. We're nothin'."

"Take us somewhere and make us somethin'."
(Arlo Waters)
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[20:46] * You have been awarded 1 Roleplay Points! *
[20:49] Chuck nearly faints.

Slowly one at a time, his hair, his limbs his body,all began fading, disappearing. His mind couldn't fathom such an illusion as he looked down not even to see his feet, not even to see anything at all, indeed all that wasvpresent was his voice.

"Wha, am am I dead" his panic scale was shooting ever upwards he felt helpless in a situation that really wasn't as bad as it seemed in a literal sense.

All he could do was wait and pray for the rollercoaster to be over, if he could even pray in this state As the two illusionist seemed to bend reality into their own imagination.
(Chuck)
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[20:54] The scenery changes, and boy does it shift quickly. One minute it's a monsoon, like all Hel has broken loose the world's about to be flooded. There's the calm, comforting, soothing void of Nothing. And...and the duck. That god damned duck, floating there ominously, imperiously, like some harbinger of ill tidings.

What is up with that duck? Even it's gone eventually too with everything else.

Take them somewhere and make them something. He makes it sound like such a simple matter. Having all her senses cut off and extraneous input to her brain severed sure does help her focus though.

One by one, little green dots appear in the void. Those dots grow until they become something bigger. Each one eventually grows into...

A cushion. A plush, velvety pillow, filled with a substance that must be soft and rich beyond comprehension. And each of them?

They're not themselves anymore. Instead they're plump, fuzzy house-cats.
(Ita)
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[20:59] {Item} You picked up Feather..
[21:00] From wherever regular Arlo was standing, he was pretty pleased with his pupil's progress. She was already learning pretty fast about the virtues of how one manipulates mana, and has taken to it so naturally that she's already crafting mindscapes. Primitive ones, perhaps, but still notable as such.

Things come into being within the void of their Illusion-addled minds. It takes a while for the illusionist to register what exactly she was doing, but that becomes far more apparent when the lad looks down and sees paws on the cushion. "Oh. This is the way you're takin' it." Arlo's totally regular human voice just comes out of a scruffy-looking tabby cat, examining his own paws.

"Nyeah. I could see it." It's a decidedly nonplussed reaction. For some reason, he wasn't even remotely surprised by this choice. What did surprise him was how soft the cushion was underneath them. This, obviously, was tantamount to one of Ita's deepest aspirations. Staring up at his paw, Nyarlo briefly considers something, before nodding his head.

"Alright. I think ya did great. Now--" He attempts to snap his fingers. However, paws are not meant to ambulate in this way. There was also no way a meow was going to come out of him. Fussing about to find a means to make noise within the void, he runs himself ragged until eventually just giving up.

So, just like that, they stopped being cats after a while of just chilling out. Once again do they stand upon the grassy hill overlooking Esshar, with the exception of Arlo, who was not even there.
(Arlo Waters)
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[21:05] Ciarán had been just taken for a whole acid trip. Flaming ducks, pits of darkness, physical reintegration into actual housecats...

And yet, not even ONCE he dared ask what the fuck?. Instead, the rogue made himself into an integral part of the entire endeavor, accompanying the adventuring trio much like a stupefied and benumbed but thoroughly devoted part of the scenario.

When the magical phantasm ends (with Arlo's purposeful exception), the thug falls face flat onto the dirt, having momentarily lost his sense of space and direction.

"fffuuockkh."

was that meant to be a curse?
(Ciarán)
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[21:11] Ciarán is taking it exceptionally well. Chuck too, especially for a random passerby. Ita, though a slender notch-eared striped cat now, looks beyond pleased with her achievement, perhaps even more so than she might let on as an actual human. A little smug too, but that also just might be how cats look. Fuzzy bastards.

And the cushions? The cushions are definitely, without question, a very selfish envisioning. If she's going to imagine something to exist in, she might as well imagine it on her terms, damnit. They sort of float through a void, all on cushions, until -pop-

It's all gone. Ita's at some point stopped standing and is laying on the ground, staring at the sky. She's not sure when it happened but chalks it up to some manner of mana charged mind fuckery. That's the best explanation she has, technically speaking.

"Thanks. But this illusion stuff gets really wei-,"

She sits up, turns her head around. Ita counts one, two people.

"...Wait. Where'd Low go?"

As if any of them hadn't just been on the same wild trip she'd been on.
(Ita)
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[21:16] Chuck just gave up at this point, its like his body just physically 'wtsdfsgergergedgr'd.

His eyes would dim as he started fading out of consciousness feeling a faint coming on and fizz started building up in his mouth when suddenly everything was back to normal.. not back to how it was, he still needed a change of pants but they were at the very least back in the field again.

Chuck shudders holding himself and rocking forwards and backwards visibly scarred by what had just occurred, what's worse he most likely should have been in class right now as a cadet.
(Chuck)
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[21:20] "There's even the matter of layerin' your illusions, which can get even wilder," the gigantic form of Arlo standing from the horizon stated. "This ain't anythin' to do with your lesson, but I figured it'd just be kinda fun. Heh." The supermassively scaled up urchin looks upward and blots the sun with his finger, rendering darkness upon the three of them once more.

And as soon as that finger is moved again, there stands regular Arlo, standing before them as normal. There's a pretty broad smile on his face. "Ya did good, Itty. For how green ya are at usin' the magic, I'm surprised ya managed to work with that much... y'know, vivid-ness."

Were they still in an illusion? Reading Arlo's mana signature probably suggested no, they weren't. But who knows? Who knows where we are right now? Where you are right now?

Maybe you're in an illusion that you can't snap out of.

"Now, maybe one more lesson or some independent study and ya should be able to start throwin' illusion spells out left and right."
(Arlo Waters)
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[21:24] Ita's fine with just sitting there for a minute, regaining her bearings and coming back to reality-

Sike, you thought. Nope. Still an illusion, and that's where Arlo was. She falls back, flailing and once more onto lush green grass. It's not pillow soft, but it'll do to not brain herself on the ground as she reels.

But hey, the surprise and near heart attack comes with some praise, to which she responds with a weary thumbs up. All that mana work for the uninitiated is exhausting.

"Cool, cool can...can I just...lay here a sec?"

She desperately hopes there's not a third layer to the illusions as she glances over into Chuck's direction.

"...Er. You okay?"
(Ita)
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