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Fri 8th Oct 2021 10:56

An Eyeful of Magic

by Tollán Softpaw

Tollán brings you to his room and motions for you to stand by while he finishes his preparations. The room is a mess of papers, spread over the bed, tables, and even the floor. The only clearing is some sort of arcane diagram, roughly five feet in diameter, gently glowing on the ground. As you watch, shades of red, yellow and blue slowly fade around the diagram, but Tollán pays it no mind. He pulls out Gleam, his calligraphy brush, and stands in front of the mirror. A few awkward moments pass in silence before he turns around, and you see he has drawn an identical, though smaller, diagram on his face, encircling his right eye. Suddenly, to your surprise, he reaches up and digs his tiny clawed fingers into his eye, levering and gouging until, to your horror, the eye pops out into the palm of his hand, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the diagram. It is remarkably bloodless and clean, and when Tollán sees your shocked expression, he laughs heartily and holds the eye up for you to inspect. With a closer look, you realize it is made of glass. "An accident last year" he says, pointing to the socket. "But today, I'm hoping to do something about it. I just wanted someone around in case..." he pauses for the briefest of moments, clearly searching for the right words "something weird happens? That sometimes happens to me, but " and here he fixes you firmly with a one-eyed stare "I do promise you, on my honour, no harm of any kind will come to you for doing this."
Once you are satisfied, he hands you his glass eye for safekeeping, and while you are awkwardly trying to figure out whether to hold it in your fist, or an open palm, or set it down on something soft, he stands in the centre of his floor diagram, extends his right arm, and holds his hand palm upwards, staring intently at it with great concentration. Time passes, and he shakes out his arm and readjusts once or twice without speaking. Then, all in a moment, you are snapped back to attention by what looks like a twitch of something springing from the palm of his hand. He lets out a triumphant cry, and slams his hand up to his face, palm over socket, and stays that way, breathing hard. Without taking his hand down, he stumbles backward, out of the circle, and leans back against his tiny bed. "Ooooh, ok, that went well!" he says, and slowly brings his hand down.
Swirls of red, yellow, and blue dance in the hollow where his eye once was. As you watch, they begin to slide past each other to reveal something. You watch, and wait, but the revelation never quite seems to come: but nevertheless you feel like you have learned something by watching them. You have seen inside of Tollán, heard whispers of his sway over the Minds of others, and his capacities to manipulate the minds of those at War. Tollán excitedly tells you that he can see out of both eyes at last, but when he sees the state of his "eye" in the mirror, he simply shrugs and turns back to his papers, whistling happily. "Oh right" he says, after a moment, and reaches up for his glass eye. "I'll want that back. I can probably get a couple pieces of silver for that, it's nice work!"
This is Tollán's Witchmark, which reveals his magical nature and that he uses the War and Mind spheres. He also needs to make eye contact with this eye to charm people.