EARTH / SHATTERING.

𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐒𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐄 that sits neatly upon Helene’s face as the Court Mage proposes something far more in her wheelhouse. While she never had reserves of magic as the other has, she has knowledge, connections and the will to simply do what she can in order to keep the perfect facade of Celestine afloat. Beckoning her to come to the desk, Helene opens a page from an old grimoire, taken from an old enemy, buried underneath the bones of the city she now calls home; they are dust and ash, as all are that would threaten the peace and order she had built for ages.

“Perhaps this poor dear caught wind of the Obsidienne’s notice. The psyche is so terribly fragile, and even with magic, none are impervious to the insidious will of that place.” She flips to a page outlined with incantations and equations, a spell that could help them with the problem they both face. It is… unorthodox, experimental, and for Helene, almost impossible. But with Sidonie on her side, well, they could create the making at the heart of all creation, if they could.

“And so, our condolences to the poor dear’s psyche, if we choose to deal with this course of action.” Helene taps the page with a neatly manicured hand, and slides the book over to her. A spell that theoretically can dominate the mind of another to speak truths—or to break them down entirely. A useful tool in an interrogation. “The calculations are not yet complete, nor the adjusted cipher for the incantation for magical draw. It is a good spell, though I hardly have enough magic in myself to do it without pursuing a substantive risk, but maybe the calculations would be suited to you instead. What say you, darling?”

---

Maturity tampers an indignant response of My magic is enough for my mind to remain untouched by the Obsidienne; instead, Sidonie makes note of Helene’s remark and tucks it away for her own knowledge, deciding to murmur, “A shame that she didn’t properly prepare herself before venturing out there.” But, could anyone truly prepare themselves for trips to the desolate desert--especially what with the terrify split in the Obsidienne itself? Sidonie once would have said that she was always most prepared when going; there was never a time she forgot her dozens of arcane scrolls and books--all necessary for the journey, of course--but now? Now, she’s not too sure.

Her gaze follows the hand to the spell of interest, and Sidonie’s eyes widen upon first glance. She cranes a bit over the weathered grimoire as if she needs a closer look, a soft gasp spilling from her lips as she says, “Helene.” Condolences to the poor dear’s psyche, indeed; despite the half-completed calculations and bits of tricky incantations, the Dupont woman recognizes the work as something both terrible and risky. “I...” It is a good spell, even in incompletion. Her hesitation, borne from a lack of familiarity with the altering the mind more than rending the earth, is nearly tangible. Sidonie leans away from the grimoire, standing upright once more to look Helene in her eyes.

 “Oui, of course I’ll try.” For the safety of Calandre, for the sake of knowledge, she’ll try her damndest. “But, I’ll need time. The calculations are trial and error, and even at first glance, I can see they’re complex. I wouldn’t be shocked if a handful had differences so minuscule you’d swear success depended on chance rather than thought out, researched processes.” She draws a deep breath.

Sidonie should be at the Summer Palace. By all accounts, she should be there serving as the hands of the advisory committee, alongside Helene, the mind, and Hector, the heart; she should be there, in case news breaks from Her Majesty’s chambers so the trio can efficiently act.

She should be there, but she is not. Instead, she lingers along the docks of Le Quartier Azur, hazel hues scanning the area for a certain ship and its captain.

There’s an ache in her bones, reminiscent to that of the ache she felt the night the night she awoke in a cold start; it makes her flighty, uncomfortable. So, instead of pacing around the Palace awaiting news, she decides to wait for it elsewhere. Having enchanted a wide-berthed perimeter of Her Majesty’s room before leaving, the Court Mage will be alerted to footfalls in and out of the room. Her distance limits its effectiveness; it won’t last longer than an hour, and she cannot tell who the steps belong to, but she can tell how many... Should something happen, well, she imagines a number of people would flood into the room. 

A familiar bow comes into view and, when she rounds it, she finds one Patrice Chéron--perhaps the only person in Val Faim that understands her desire to go. There are times she thinks Patrice is the one who understands her most in spite of their difference in beliefs in regards to Calandre and what is and is not acceptable. Brousseau’s death was a minor scuffle--one at which she hardly batted a lash. Her years as Advisor has thickened her skin against small squabbles, and besides, it was Patrice; if the pair agreed about everything always, their relationship wouldn’t be nearly as fulfilling.  

“Permission to board, Captain Chéron?” she asks, 

**𝐋𝐈𝐌𝐈𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒** Though divinity-kissed, Sidonie is not omnipotent; her magic, in spite of its intricacies and fantastic feats, has its limitations and can take a great deal out of her, should she not be mindful with the way she wields the earth. The bigger the amount of earth she’s manipulating, the more taxing it is (though, her experiences and natural aptitude for magic make her into a seasoned mage who rarely exhausts herself to those extents). Since the chaos of magic that seemingly spewed from her hands after leveling her town as a child, Sidonie has only exhausted herself physically with her magic during her trips to the Obsidienne, some as exhibitions for Empress Calandre to prove the prowess of her arcane advisor. So far, her life in Le Palais D'été has not required Sidonie to rely on massive outbursts of magic--thank Odeline. 

𝐈. 𝐏𝐇𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋 𝐂𝐀𝐏𝐀𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒.

THE ABILITY TO REND THE EARTH. As an earth-rending mage, Sidonie Dupont was born with the ability to manipulate the earth in whatever way she saw fit. This ability, noticed first at the tender age of four, began first as pebbles tossed by a tiny balled fist accompanied by a gleeful giggle; it blossomed into something terribly beautiful--unworldly powers culled only by Odeline’s mercies and Her bestowal of such abilities to one determined Sidonie Colette Dupont. Now, more than two decades later, Sidonie’s repertoire of skills used to manipulate the earth vary widely, and include but are not necessarily limited to: 

ROCK CUFFS. The ability to fashion handcuffs out of rocks or any other sturdy earth material.  

EARTH SINKING / QUICKSAND. The ability to immobilize others by altering the ground underfoot, effectively turning it into a difficult hole to climb from or quicksand. 

ROCK SLIDES. The ability to cause multiple rocks of different sizes to rain down on opponents. Can also be used to scale mountainsides, though she’s never done it. 

PROJECTILES. The ability to create and loose earth-based projectiles. These can be cute and harmless (like the handful of rocks she sends flying during one of her tricks at Court), or they can be terribly deadly (like the shrapnel-like bullets loosed on the undead in the Obsidienne).  

EARTH LEVITATION. The ability to cause earth-based materials to levitate, as such. 

SEISMIC SENSE. The ability to sense vibrations of the ground, creating a 360 degree “image” of anything in contact with the ground from which she’s working. It is most effective when Sidonie is focused and she’s in direct connection with the earth--no shoes, no gloves. It can be used to identify people by their footsteps.

TECTONIC PLATE SHIFTING.  The ability to cause earthquakes and create fissures. This is what she did when she leveled her town as a child. 

DUST CLOUDS. The ability to cause the ground underfoot to quickly vibrate, stirring up dust. This is used for concealment, but also protection; it’s a favorite technique of Sidonie’s for the Obsidienne, where she uses the dust and dirt particles in the air to create a shield around herself so she’s not injured by whatever may come her way. 

SCULPTING. The ability to take any earth-based substance and sculpting it to whatever she sees fit. This is a staple of all her shows at Court, as she always uses it to create a figure of Celestinean griffon, flower, etc. figurine to gift her favorite viewer at the end of her performances.  

THE ABILITY TO REND (PROCESSED) METALS AND OTHER COMPOUNDS. This is a subset of her earth-rending ability, and is how she’s able to manipulate the gardens to Her Majesty’s liking. Sidonie first recognized her prowess towards the end of her tenure as a student at the best mage school Val Faim had to offer, but it wasn’t until she became Calandre’s Advisor that she practiced relentlessly until it was perfected. The need for the ability was borne from her additional position as Court Mage; her grandiose outdoor performances were always a bit less enjoyable when the biting winds of Nadia and Diodore ruffled the clothes of her attendees. As such, Calandre--albeit, unhappily--moved Sidonie’s shows from outside to inside, drastically limiting what the mage could do. In a bid to please Calandre, she learned to manipulate metals*, too, by locating the minuscule trace amounts of earth in them and ferrokinetically altering them. It’s taken a handful of years to perfect it, but she now always keeps enough metal on her person to create three small throwing knives or one combat knife for the sole reason of having it to utilize, should the matter arise.  (* Sidonie is unable to manipulate highly processed metals with little to no traces of the earth left in them. The more processed the metal is, the more difficult it is and the more exhausted she becomes attempting to alter it.)

𝐈𝐈. 𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐒 & 𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐒.

SEISMIC SURVEILLANCE. An enchantment used to detect the footsteps of anyone approaching within the area dictated by Sidonie. It is something she came up with when she began heavily involving herself with the betrothed VIOLAINE GEROUX ( @vviolaine​ ), as she couldn’t afford for their trysts at La Cour de La Reine to be ruined by prying eyes and wandering feet. The longer it is used, the less accurate it is, and Sidonie often has to re-enchant the area of interest if she wants to keep surveillance as correct as possible.  

BOTANIST’S TOUCH(ES). An array of enchantments for different types of plants and crops to encourage the most bountiful yields and longest blooming periods. These enchantments are used for the altering of Jardins Empressian when Calandre requests, but also for CYRIL BEAUCHAMP ( @cyrilbeauchamp​ ), who uses the plants provided for her fashion creations. 

They try to leave the palace at a reasonable time most nights, get back home for dinner and a good night’s rest, but they started laying on the plaster only a few days prior and it’s been rose than they remember, finicky in ways that their familiar oil paint and charcoal is not. Too much lime, or too little. Too ambitious an area to cover in a day, or else not enough plaster for the energy they have. It’s the former today, a wide swath of wall they’d hoped to cover with the blue pigment of sky, but it’s proved more frustrating and time-consuming than Sylviane had expected, and so they linger before the wall deep into the evening, losing track in their frustration of time and their surroundings. 

Sylviane starts at the sound of a voice behind them, fumbling their palette knife. It clatters too loudly to the ground in the strange silence that stretches between them and the woman before them - moments in which they struggle to come back to reality, to say something, anything at all - but the woman forges forward as if Sylviane hadn’t been standing there like a fool, and that’s enough to drag them back fully. “It’s no trouble,” they say quickly, divesting themself of their palette and wiping their hands on their smock, more at ease with their disarray when they fully take in the casual state that Sidonie has chosen for this meeting. They take the compliment with a demure smile.  “Sylviane Amaury, though it seems you already know that.” And Sylviane, too,  knows Sidonie Dupont, despite this being their first tête-à-tête - they’ve run in the same circles for close to a decade, Dupont with a seemingly tighter leash than Sylviane’s own, arcane master that she is, though they’ve both been called to heel from the desert, so who could really say?

“I fear I’ve hit the end of my rope for today. Some tea would be the perfect balm for the - evening?” They hazard a guess at the time, realizing for the first time their own hunger and exhaustion. It takes everything in them to not dive for the cookies, which sit tantalizingly on the tray and mock their plaster and paint-heavy hands. “Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in all of it,” they say, gesturing vaguely to the wall behind them, “especially at this scale. It’s a good challenge.” They smile more broadly now, tinged with a slight self-deprecating edge. “But you didn’t come to hear me complain about plaster and paint, did you? Far be it for me to curtail your intrigue, if you have, but you don’t seem the type to sit pretty while I demonstrate exactly how complex a simple patch of sky can be.” 

---

“It’s a pleasure to formally meet you, Sylviane. We’re well into the evening, now.” They’re nearing the verge of being closer to morning than night, she’s sure. “Unfortunately, sleep eludes me, though I’m doing nothing actively to keep it at bay,” she admits with a halfhearted smile. Rest is something to be earned, and Sidonie Dupont does not quite yet deserve it--especially does not deserve it, what with Amelie now missing for close to seventy-two hours. The mage’s disappearance irks Sidonie and she can’t help but worry about to where she escaped, who came to break her out, and why it was seemingly so simple to outwit some of the Empress’ best palace guardsmen. Amelie’s absence, coupled with ever-looming reminder that it is Calandre that Sidonie is disappointing, keeps the Dupont woman awake far more easily than she’d care to admit.

And when sleep does deign to visit her, it is Sylviane’s words she hears and their landscapes she sees; it is the Obsidienne she dreams of, the rift in the world--there, and gone as quickly as it came. The artist’s stories, practically seared to memory by an ever-attentive Sidonie, accompany her own experiences of the desert so well that they’re a near perfect match--ink-black sands, blistering heat, the sky simultaneously ripping itself apart and swallowing itself whole. She, too, has seen the corpses that traipse aboveground like they’ve not really taken their last breath, and she’s been pushed to the brink of utter exhaustion in bids to keep herself from being swallowed by the shifting grounds underfoot. Sylviane’s stories, in an odd sense, feel like coming home; as such, how could she not seek them out while they work in the palace?  

She stifles the sharp pang of yearning that attempts to make itself present, choosing instead to focus on the present—on the artist in front of her, and their thoughts about the desert that she’s been itching to ask since she first heard their tale. Sidonie begins preparing the evening mix of tea for them, a soft chuckle escaping her lips. “I figured if I was already awake, I should make the best of my time—and perhaps make yours a bit more enjoyable, even if only by way of late-night snacks, tea, and company.” And while she didn’t come to sit pretty, listen, and watch Sylviane demonstrate the complexities of a patch of sky on a mural so large, she would. Sylviane Amaury, she’s quickly learned, has a knack for capturing her attention even with the most mundane of tasks. “Though, if you’re done working for the evening and don’t mind, I’d like to talk about the Obsidienne.” She hands them the still-steeping cup with a soft and almost-cautious smile curling the edges of her lips.