Counter Spiral Part 1
She thumped her head softly against the wall behind her as she slumped. The array, hanging in layered paper the size of bed sheets in front of her was a deep, alarming, crimson, the sign of a critical failure. Confirmation that the last 3 months of work was a dead end.
She had suspected this 3 weeks ago, known 5 days ago, but had pressed forward, hoping, somehow, to fix the instabilities which started to crop up with increasing frequency. In front of her was the last way she could think of to work around balancing the 13 elements which were critical to the function of the seal. The simple fact was that, despite what the public might think, the majority of sealing wasn’t about neat writing or intuition. No, it was logic and persistence, maths to balance what you wanted against what the universe would allow. Theoretically, anything was possible, if you could find the correct order.
NO NONo no nononoMAKEITSTOPhelpmeNOmakeitstopStopnnn
Knowing any other attempts today would be wasted, she packed up her tiny work space, locking the array in a nonconducting shelve and into the explosive proof lock box set aside for her, before flipping the ‘room in use’ switch off and leaving. Dumping her notes and ink supplies in her locker outside, she scrubbed the ink from her hands and under her nails, before picking up her bag and existing the Seal Test building.
The sun was bright and strong overhead. She rarely managed to leave before dusk, and she stood blinking and squinting until her eyes adjusted. Her too pale skin warmed. Sighing into the gentle breeze, she reached up and pulled the thick pins from her tightly held bun. Testing seals with loose hair which could come loose was asking for trouble. A single miss placed hair could contaminate an array and assume failure or, worse, provide enough chakra to kick start a test seal.
Hence the explosive proof rooms.
Slipping the pins and tie into her pocket, she ruffled the long deep red strains and let the air creases her slightly greasy scalp. She needed to wash her hair, but had put it off in the hope that today was day when she found the solution to the array, starting before dawn had creeped its fingers over the horizon.
Enough, she told herself, stop wallowing. Despite the failure, it was not useless. Now you know that balancing in a 3 triangle, bracket square wouldn’t work.
She needed to let her mind reset. Come at the problem in a new way later. And she knew just what to do. It was Thursday, and this afternoon the Legends Club was meeting.
After having a snack of store bought rice balls and simply enjoying the sunlight, she made her way to the Maths building on the south side of campus. One of the members had somehow reserved a room there every Thursday from 3pm to midnight never ending. No one who currently attended the club meetings knew how they had done this, as clubs normally had to book every week, and the assigned room was (almost) completely random, being whatever was available, after everyone, from teaching staff to administration, to cleaners, had already had their pick. They were not, after all, an officially sponsored club. The room was on the 4th floor, tucked between the stairwell and a series of offices, but was still sizeable, easily fitting the ten people who regularly showed up, and squeezed in the full club of twenty three during rare full attendance ithurtsMAKEitSTOPnopleaseplease It looked out over one of the many car parks, and like all classrooms had a large chalk board on one wall. One of the members must have got in early, as someone had drawn a large picture of a figure with gravity defining white hair and a half mask covered face. Lord Hatake, 6th Shadow of Fire. He was one of the legend’s clubs favourites, a surprisingly large amount of surviving artifacts and documents on his exploits, including a handful of photos.
“So, could you like make a seal which let you see the past?”
“Well, yes, I guess. But it would need an anchor of some kind. Blood would be best, it retains chakra the most over time, but any specific aged biological matter would work.”
“What about a headband?”
The seal hummed. In the centre, light glinted off a metal plate with a stylized leaf, blinding one to the long cloth it was attached too, deep black of old, stained, blood. Suddenly, the ink around, a spiral extending almost a meter out, almost one hundred turns, was no longer black, but shone, twinkling, as if made of star light. A glimpse in the black between,
nothing existed, everything was gone dead, not even dust remained
Then, something, turned and
l̟̘ͅo͕̺͇o̪̩̟̖̰k̯̺̻̲̲ḛ͙͖̥̮̩d͓͎̣ ̮ba̠̩̤̭̙c͈͕͈k͕̟
Someone screamed. She lurched forward, desperate to break the seal, to stop the mounting pain and terror.
her soul pulling, tearing
She woke up screaming.