Part One: Under the Ground
Candance Sedai, Mistress of Novices, Written by Jeremy
Posted on Wed, Sep 8, 2010 14:43 pm
Candance and Corbin stood together as novices began to gather, talking quietly between themselves until they were interrupted by each new arrival introducing himself or herself to Asha’man Corbin, and greeting Candance Sedai with the respect due to an Aes Sedai from a novice. The Mistress of Novices was pleased to note that of the novices that had arrived so far, none of them were sitting down on the dirt piles they had gathered around. Instead they had broken down into small clusters of boys and girls, milling around and chattering excitedly.
The novices were always excited when they were at a channelling lesson; being able to use the One Power was something that they always enjoyed and always wanted more of. If it had been up to them instead of Candance to set their schedules and lessons, the Mistress of Novices was confident that they would fill their time with considerably more channelling lessons, and considerably less time spent in chores and study.
Most of the novices had arrived on time, if not early, which Candance was pleased to see, although not overly surprised. No novice would dare to arrive late to a lesson that was taught by the Mistress of Novices herself! Well maybe some novices would dare; some faces that Candance knew should be here were not here yet. But they would not wait for them: Candance detested not keeping to her schedule, and she refused to be thrown from it because some had dallied over their morning meal for too long.
“Right,” she said calmly, drawing everyone’s attention to her instantly so that all eyes were on her, “I think we’ll begin. Those that aren’t here yet will just have to catch up on what they’ve missed.”
Candance noticed that some of the novices had become drawn to the chests she had placed on the soil and were milling around them, trying to determine what they were there for. She offered them a smile, thinking that they would enjoy the tasks she would have them doing today in the lesson.
“Come and gather over here,” Candance said loudly, dragging the small clusters of novices together into one large group that gathered around herself and Asha’man Corbin, looking at them expectedly. “Wonderful. Well, welcome to you all to this lesson, both Asha’man Corbin and I have some very interesting things to teach you today related to Earth.”
Suddenly the ground beneath them began to rumble and shake, the novices shouting and screaming in alarm as some were knocked off their feet, their arms flailing wildly about as they reached to try and grab onto someone to stabilise themselves. At the centre of it all, Candance and Corbin stood upright and unruffled as the earth around them continued to tilt and shake, until almost all the novices were on their bottoms. At least she had pulled them all over to the grass, so they wouldn’t have to worry about dirt stains on their whites. Well, at least not yet.
“As Asha’man Corbin has kindly demonstrated, Earth can be a powerful element that can have quite severe, direct effects.” Upon realising that it had been the Asha’man that had threw them so easily to their feet, some of the novices blushed as they pulled themselves up. One of the girls even brushed her robes indignantly, flashing the Asha’man a dark, furious glare.
“As well as being powerful and obvious, Earth can also work with subtle mechanisms. Today we’ll be teaching you a bit of both; you won’t be able to do anything as severe as Asha’man Corbin has for some time yet, but the basic principles that we teach you today will serve as a foundation for your learning with this element, so that one day you may be able to do what Asha’man Corbin has and more, if your strengths lie in that direction. Now…watch the chests.”
Candance pointed out the ornate treasure chests that she had lined up in a straight row to the novices so that they were all watching them as she embraced saidar, allowing the One Power to flood in. She looked across to Corbin and he gave a nod to signal that he was ready, and was holding saidin.
Candance took threads of Earth and Spirit and wrapped them around the chests in an intricate weaving of a cage to cover them. It was a complicated weave that would ensure that the chests would not be damaged in what they were about to do, and would also serve the novices to help them for this part of the lesson. The Aes Sedai and the Asha’man worked quickly together, each of them working on half of the chests until they were all done. Some of the novices were looking hard at the chests, but Candance knew that the weave would be too intricate for any of them to follow yet. Once they were done, Candance took thicker threads of Earth and pushed them into the ground, suddenly ripping them up so that soil erupted from the ground in a small explosion that was mirrored to its right by Asha’man Corbin.
Both of them continued to throw random threads of Earth at the large patch of soil, in no order but so the area was in a constant turmoil of churning and exploding soil. The threads ripped the soil up, pushed it down, and swept it from one side to another until finally it finished a few minutes later. It took several moments for all the dirt in the air to settle, and two of the novices who had been standing too close to the show had to brush the dirt from their hair.
“We don’t expect you to be able to do anything so dramatic yet,” Candance said, pulling their attention back to her, “but you may notice now that the chests are gone.”
What she said was true; where once had stood the chests was now an empty field of messy piles of earth. The entire field was turmoil now: mounds of Earth rose up in peaks and fissures ran deep into the ground, dirt trickling into it.
“The chests have now been buried; some of them will be quite deep I imagine. This is going to be your task for the first part of the lesson: to retrieve them. Watch again, carefully this time because this is the weave you’ll be using to find the chests.”
It was a much simpler weave this time, a thin thread of Earth that Candance wove through the soil, sweeping it back and forth, up and down as she looked for a chest, Asha’man Corbin doing the same. She quickly found one; as her thread passed through one of the cages that she and Corbin had wrapped around the chest she could feel a tingle pass through her, alerting her to its presence.
“The weaves that Asha’man Corbin and I placed around the chests will let you know when you brush your thread of Earth against a chest,” she explained, “and once you’ve found a chest you’ll need to pull it out of the soil. Watch carefully again.”
Two threads of Earth were required for this weave. The first was longer and thin, and the second thicker thread was wound around the first thread from top to bottom, circling around it diagonally. This was the weave that Candance pushed into the ground, and the dirt was pushed out of the way, pushing itself up and out as if the weave was drilling into it. She aimed it at the chest and when she felt the tell-tale shiver that ran through her, she hooked the bottom of the weave around the thread, tying it back onto itself so the chest was picked up in the loop. With a tug, she pulled the thread and the chest clear from the ground so that it was sitting on top of the soil.
“You need to push the thread into the ground and when you find your chest again, which once again our weave will allow you to feel, you’ll need to wrap your weave around the chest like so–” she showed the female novices what she had done, this time with the chest out of the ground so they could see “–and pull it out to you.” The chest slid across the ground to stop at her feet. Now that it was out of the ground she could have done the same with a simple thread of Air.
“The second weave is a bit more complicated than we would normally show you, so if you can’t do it just call one of us over and we’ll help you with it. Each of you has a chest buried under there that you’ll need to find. The ground is large enough that you can all try at the same time, but don’t fight over the chests!”
OOC: Yay, Part One! =) So have your novice have a go and if they fail that’s okay, Candance or Corbin can pull the chest out for you. At least 500 words this time, please, since you have two weaves to write about. Part Two will be up on the 15th! Oh, and if your novice tries to open the chest, he/she will find that it’s locked! ;)
In reply to Channelling Lesson: Earth[show]/[hide]
Deftly spinning threads of Air while her hands remained folded at her sides, Candance pulled the chests up from the cart that they had been piled into and moved them, one at a time, so that they were sitting on the ground behind her, lined up in a straight line, equidistant from each other. Many years ago Candance Melhir had realised that she was a precise woman, who liked things kept in a neat and orderly fashion, and now she took pride in living up to her own expectations. It was best to be organised, she felt, and she liked that order to be represented in all aspects of her life.
That done, Candance looked out around the area, checking that everything else was as she wanted it. She was in the Corner Garden of the White Tower grounds, one that was currently being remodelled and landscaped, and the labourers were working hard at it. To the Mistress of Novices, the opportunity had been too good a one to pass up, and she had requested that the labourers let her know when they reached this stage so that she could use it to teach a lesson to the novices. They had agreed, and liked the idea of a day off from their work, which Candance had personally suggested to Melina Sedai for their help.
The garden certainly did not look as it once had when Candance had been a novice; the trees which had grown so large that they were a threat to the structure of the White Tower if they came down in the latest storm were now removed, leaving a large depression in the soil where their root systems had once been. All of the turf had been torn up, and all of the flowers from the flowerbeds had been pulled out. What was left was a large empty field of soil, a brilliant contrast to the surrounding gardens that seemed to be exploding with green. Candance already knew from her own testing that the soil here ran deep, as deep as they would need.
Yes, she had been fortunate with the timing of the landscaping of this garden; it would serve her purposes well.
Looking up at the sun, Candance realised that her students would be arriving soon, which made her wonder where her male counterpart was.
“Where is he?” she mused out loud.
As if summoned by her words, Asha’man Colbin shouted out his greeting to her as he turned a corner into her view from the Training Grounds. Had she not known the man’s tendency to get caught practicing with the blades with the Warders, she would have wondered why he was coming from that direction, but she didn’t need to see the welts on his bare chest to know what he’d been doing.
Drawing up closer to her as he pulled his black coat back on, doing up his buttons quickly, Colbin flashed her a friendly smile and ruffled his dark hair happily. His dark Cairhienin colouring was almost at a contrast to her own greying hair, and his small, petite face would have looked decidedly odd if it had her bold, prominent Saldaean nose or upturned, green eyes.
“Good morning, Candance Sedai,” he said happily, offering her another smile. He was one of the more polite Asha’man currently residing in the White Tower, who seemed genuinely interested in learning more about the ways of the White Tower in contrast to the ways he had been trained in at the Black Tower, as well as the ways of the Warder. She had often thought that his smile was infectious, and he seemed to flash it around to whoever caught his eye. Asha’man Corbin was a genuinely friendly man.
“Good morning,” she replied amicably, “you have been in the Training Grounds?”
“I have! These Warders of yours fight with a fierceness not many in the Black Tower could rival, they’ve certainly been able to teach me a thing or two. I haven’t felt such the keen sting of bruises when I shift in my sleep since I as an un-pinned soldier years ago, still trying to work out how to heat up my meals and washing water!”
As if to prove his point he stretched, reaching his arms up towards the sky, and winced noticeably, flashing her a sheepish smile after he’d returned back to his normal stance. Despite his friendly nature, the man possessed a certain grace of danger, his body held loose as if he was constantly ready for anything. It was something all the Asha’man seemed to have: an air of danger that followed them around no matter how they smiled.
“I’m glad that they’re keeping you on your toes.”
“Yes, you could say that they are definitely doing that!”
“The novices will be here soon,” Candance said, and, once again, as if summoned by her words, the first splash of white against the green gardens appeared, followed by several others. Candance and Corbin stood together and watched as the cluster – a group of giggling girls who had also come from the same direction as Corbin drew closer. As they drew closer, they were able to see that one of the girls was blushing a furious crimson and was the source of the other girls’ giggles and Candance felt her face steel – what had the girls been doing in the Training Grounds?
Upon realising that they were being watched both by the Asha’man and the Mistress of Novices, both of who were watching them quietly, with emotionless faces, the girls quietened (barely managing to stifle their giggles) and scurried up to them quickly, dropping into curtseys once they stood in front of them. They remained down in the curtseys slightly longer than they normally would have, and Candance left it unsaid that they were trying to stifle their giggles once again.
“Good morning, girls,” Candance said smoothly once they had pulled themselves up, “I trust you came straight from your morning meal to this lesson–” she did not need their blushes to tell her otherwise “–kindly introduce yourselves for the sake of Asha’man Corbin. You’re the first ones here, so we’ll begin shortly.”
OOC: Welcome to Novice Earth! =D Post at least 400 words as an introduction and have your novice introduce themselves to Asha’man Corbin. If you have any questions, please email me. =) We’ll continue with this lesson on the 8th.
–Jeremy
