Tale as Old As Time [Finished]

[accalia]

"i doubt it. if it were simple lycanthropy he would mot be so banished from the aether as he appears to be."

another longer pause. Sidhe is uncomfortable. Not at the conversation, nor of the words of Siegfried or herself. She's uncomfortable about an idea, one that Siegfried can feel brooding inside her. dark black, dense, and almost as impenetrable as that shield that Siegfried has encountered around Echo.

"You know how dangerous time magic is, no? you've heard the stories of what it does to those who fail at it, and what those who succeed sacrifice?"

[yamikuronue]

"...Sadly, no. I don't have a lot of knowledge to work with."

[accalia]

"To work with time is dangerous. it's a fundamental force of the universe. to alter it in one place alters it everywhere. it takes an enormous amount of energy to do that. It's easier to look into the past, because all you are doing there is calling up the memory of a time gone by. it will be imperfect, but such is the price of relative safety. Similarly one can look into the future and see a projection of what might be. but it too will be imperfect, flavoured with the wants and desires of the caster. much beyond looking a couple of minutes ahead it will be mostly useless."

"but those are the lesser workings. the great workings of time require more. there is little that has the power to affect time itself... and the price of it is terrible indeed."

Sidhe pauses and shudders in revulsion of the thought that is welling out of her now.

"In the song, the unnamed one ends up killing Sylphia, an accident, but one that cannot be undone. But even knowing that the unnamed one tries to undo it. using the last of Sylphia's lifeforce and his own lifeforce, the very wellspring of his being he tries to turn back time and undo his mistake.... He fails."

[yamikuronue]

Siegfried sucks in a breath, turning this over in his mind. Suddenly I regret my jest about time magic earlier, he thinks, though he makes no effort to make the thought heard.

"And so, the curse?"

[accalia]

"The song ends at that point. and i have not found any other sources to correlate. Certainly a spell with that kind of power behind it could have had an effect like that. If the song is fact and not storytelling and we assume that Echo is this unnamed man, then yes, it could be this curse that Echo refers to."

[yamikuronue]

Siegfried lets out the breath he's been holding.

"That sounds... like something not to be messing with lightly."

[accalia]

"no, it won't be. If this is truth it's also tearing Echo up inside. He'll be bound in a loop, about twenty eight days long, at the end of which he probably resets. He'll be the most unstable the closer he gets to that reset point. and after.... he'll probably leave again, if he survives the reset..."

Sidhe speaks with great sadness there, fading into an extremely ominous tone with that last clause.

[yamikuronue]

"How can I help?" asks Siegfried, insistently.

[accalia]

"That i don't know. There's a condition for ending the curse.... several of them actually, but one of them will channel the energy in the curse into something constructive instead of just releasing it all at once... You'll need to find that condition. Your best chances will probably be exploring that island of the aether you found earlier."

"You'll want to learn how to defend yourself against what you found there last time."

[yamikuronue]

Siegfried nods. "Can you teach me in time?"

[accalia]

Sidhe reaches out and touches Siegfried with a burning tendril of thought.

"I don't have to teach you, you already know. The question is can you become proficient in it fast enough?"

And lo it is true, That thought that Sidhe had placed in siegfried contained the knowledge on how to form a sphere shield in the aether, how to make the shield softer or harder, more or less permiable, and even to make it allow certain things through easily but block other things completely. There was also the knowlege on how to bind oneself to a part of the aether so that one could not be removed from the place that they were bound to, and how to release such a binding.

[yamikuronue]

"I will do my best."

[accalia]

"you will do fine i am sure.  try it then. shield yourself and i will test your shield."

Sidhe grows a veneer of thorns and spikes, instruments of pain and maiming. she waits patiently for Siegfried to indicate he is ready before attacking.

[yamikuronue]

Siegfried, tentatively at first, brings up a shield, hardening it as he visualizes a brick wall. "Alright."

[accalia]

Sidhe strikes, lashing against the shield, tentatively at first but quickly escalating as the shield holds.