Sage doesn’t skip ahead very far, and quickly backtracks to act as a crutch for Jin. The cleric is struggling to walk with both a bruised hip and rapidly reddening bandages on her left leg.
They don’t walk for long when Sage picks the conversation up.
“I’m super curious about you, but you seem all out of sorts so I won’t pester you much. If you have anything you wanna ask me about anything I can try to answer!”
“Mm…”
There certainly are a lot of questions she wants to ask, but relatively few she can put into words at the moment since “what’s up with literally everything?” isn’t likely to get a constructive answer. Jin limps forwards a few more steps. Without her ring that deals with telekinesis based spells, she can’t cast much that can aid her mobility. Not until she mentally recovers some, at least.
She was already tapped out from trying to make that demi-plane earlier today. Or… whenever it was. That hourglass was an unreasonably complicated piece of enchantment. She knew it would be difficult to make any changes, but she studied the spell structures for months, and was supposed to have her backup plan come check on her later today. That day. Ugh, fuck.
And now the only enchanted item she had left was exploded to escape from an arm wolf. What the hell… Who would make a wolf with arms??
Well, not the only item. Her tongue passes over her gold molar. Without the amplifiers she put into the barrier, she wondered if she would be paste on the ground right now, instead of limping down a sewer. A sobering thought. If nothing else, her childhood plan of getting magic implants early through self mutilation is something that saved her today.
“Well… If you can’t think of any right now, I wanna know what other miracles you’ve been blessed with! Your miracle of light is super pretty, I almost can’t stop staring at it.”
Jin can’t even remember a time when she was so fascinated by a simple light spell. She could cast something comparable at the age of six. Legally speaking she never actually cast anything ever before the age of twelve - not that any old lineage families follow that rule.
“Like I said, it’s not a miracle. It’s magic. To answer your question though, I’ve studied magic my whole life. I know a lot more than what you’ve seen. Without any of my enchantments though, there’s either too much mental strain or too much to conceptualize for me to cast more complicated spells. Even a spell book would help, no matter how archaic the practice.”
“Ohh! Yeah paladins are kinda like that! Their artifacts have to be blessed by the gods first, but yeah I remember Librarian Mirriam talking about how clerics can use any old artifact without a specific blessing! That’s super cool!”
Jin frowns and furrows her eyebrows. This girl is just going to translate whatever she says into something religious, isn’t she? Whatever, she’s not in the mood to debate anything right now. Plus this religious idiot just saved her life so… She really should be more considerate. Jin sighs, “Yeah, I guess so. Some of the easiest spells are ones where you just need some energy conversion and simple boundaries, like this.”
Jin holds out her free hand and focuses on channeling magic into a small flat circle above her palm. The spell structure for direct conversion to fire is unreasonably easy to form, in her opinion. Then all she has to do is start the conversion process and…
Small golden flames slowly bend and dance an inch above Jin’s hand and she hears Sage gasp again, like she did for the light orb.
“Woah!” The girl squeaks out, and she carefully holds fingers near, and then passes them over the flames. She grins wide and starts passing fingers through the small flame. “It’s warm! But not as warm as a normal fire! Can this even burn you?!”
“Yes,” Jin stops channeling mana into the spell to keep Sage from doing just that when she holds her index in the middle of the fire. The gold flames wink out of existence. “It’s only cooler because I’m barely feeding it enough magic to live off of. Cheap flames like this took a little while for me to figure out as a kid, but they’re nice for pseudo-candle light if you’re feeling old fashioned.” Or the new modern day; that was definitely an oil lamp Sage had with her earlier. What kind of technology level exists anymore?
Her body screams in pain with every step, but Jin’s mind is recovering with the walk. She hasn’t cast classically that much in a while, but today’s events were hardly enough to wipe her mental fortitude entirely. Thanks to her mother, she has a relatively quick recovery time. That woman made certain that the family scion wasn’t going to be some weak minded push-over. Jin scowls at the memories.
Sage suddenly looks worried, “Oh, sorry! Sorry! I could have gotten burnt, and then that would be on your conscience! I always do this, I’m sorry-”
“No that not-“ Jin sighs, “I’m not… making my expression at you. It’s… It’s just been a bad day.” Jin holds a hand to her forehead and starts massaging her temples. She has a headache starting up. Or more accurately, her headache is suddenly getting too painful to ignore.
Sage still looks worried, but nods. “Yeah…”
“Let’s start with a simple question,” Jin keeps massaging a temple while talking. “You seem like you know where you’re going. Do you have an ultimate destination in mind?”
Sage relaxes at the change of topic, “Oh sure yeah! I only came here for you and that artifact, I’m gonna go back home now and see if I can get Librarian Mirriam or Priest Herrick to write me a letter of recommendation! Ah, oh, well, I guess I can’t use the hourglass as proof of competency anymore… but I saved a cleric so surely that should make up for it..?” Her tone shifted halfway through and Jin’s pretty sure Sage is speaking more to herself than to Jin.
Sage eyes Jin sideways, “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to vouch for me..? Clerics are um, They’re usually detached from the church hierarchy and stuff, but also count as a high rank! I think; it’s something like that. Anyway you just being a cleric has surely gotta count for-“
Jin stops her, “Of course I’ll vouch for you. You’ve spent the past, what, hour? Actively saving my life, patched me up after, and now you’re acting as my personal crutch. That’s worth way more than a simple good word.”
Sage beems, squeals, and hugs Jin all at once. Jin hisses in pain as the hug brings the helpful discovery of bruised ribs. Sage quickly lets go, “Ah! Sorry!” Jin grimaces but waves the other girl off.
Stolen novel; please report.
“Speaking of saving our lives though, there’s nothing dangerous living in these sewers, right? That gate was wide open earlier, any number of creatures could have gotten in.”
“Ehh, probably not?”
Jin looks sharply at Sage, “Probably?”
“Well! I don’t know! There aren’t supposed to be arc-wolves in this city anymore, but that obviously isn’t true!” She chews on a lip in thought, “I haven’t seen any signs of like, a nest or a bone pile from prey, but I haven’t explored everywhere down here. I didn’t have a reason to worry until today!”
Jin starts massaging the bridge of her nose now, “Okay, fuck, sure, that’s fine I guess.”
The two walk on in an awkward silence for several minutes.
Eventually, Sage quietly asks the questions she’s been thinking about ever since she found the gold eyed woman a month ago, “So what happened to you? To make you… freeze like that, with the hourglass.”
Jin gives a mirthless smile, “Arrogance, I guess.” Her expression shifts to a frown. “To make a long story short… I tried to make a Demi-plane detached from the flow of time.” She glances at Sage, who stares at her with wide eyes. She continues, “The enchantment on that hourglass already had… similar capabilities. I had read a couple theory books on the topic of demi-planes that gave me a lot of viable ideas, and I had a few smaller enchantments that I could use to stabilize the structure. I thought it would be possible. Ha.”
A twisted smile sneaks onto her face, and Jin can feel the telltale rush of rage take over her tongue, “You know I spent fucking months preparing for this. And I don’t even know why! It was going to be a fun little magic project of mine, I could pop in for a few extra hours of studying sleep or whatever, and all I had to do was ask my creepiest professor for one of his enchantments. He was the one saying how possible the idea was in the first place! Fuck, but you know he didn’t actually give it to me? I wasn’t ‘good enough’ to actually try, that fucking bastard. No, I was only good enough for him to want to dangle the carrot so he could snatch it away.” Jin snarls these words out.
“So I got someone else to get me the hourglass so I could prove that smug bastard wrong. But oh, do I manage to make myself a little demi-plane? Of course not, because rather than check to see how it went my only friend in the entire fucking world leaves me to rot in some kind of hell scape of reality.” Jin is shouting now.
“I don’t know why you’re asking though, you think I’m delusional, right? These are all just fake fucking memories and I never actually did any of this, right? Magic doesn’t even exist, because everything is just sunshine and miracles to you. Fuck hard work and dedication, no, a god did it all. Fuck me, right?!” Jin breathes heavily from the rant and viciously rubs the wetness forming in her eyes. She doesn’t have enough energy to maintain her anger, and is already deflating with shame.
God fucking damnit there her stupid fucking tongue goes again. Jin bites the offending appendage and doesn’t look at Sage, who she can feel stiffen beside her. She just had to open her mouth and insult the only person she knows in this world, who also happens to be the person who just saved her life. Several times over, even. She never worried about any of this shit with Alize… Her breath catches at the memory. Stupid stupid stupid. Tears start to prickle at her eyes and she has to force her mind elsewhere to keep them down.
Both girls walk caught up in their own thoughts for several paces.
Jin wouldn’t be surprised if Sage wants nothing to do with her in the near future. She starts planning for what she’ll do in that scenario. The outlook is… not great. Not without her enchantments, or an idea of where civilization is. Or food. Mages always need a lot of food.
“I think… Everything you’re feeling, it’s real.” Sage speaks up and Jin looks at her with a start.
“I can’t claim to know what did or didn’t happen to you. The church talks about how clerics will have false memories to protect their minds from the raw majesty of the divine. I don’t know if this is maybe an exaggeration? I think it’s possible that Librarian Mirriam said they only sometimes have false memories. But I can’t believe that someone can feel as much as you seem to without the source being real.”
She takes a deep breath. A spot of heresy can’t hurt if it’s to help a blessed cleric of the gods, surely.
“In fact, I’m even willing to say that the church might be wrong. About cleric delusions, that is. Everything you say makes a kind of sense, yeah? The church tells lots of stories, lots of them just exist as metaphors and probably never actually happened. So, if you can honestly say that your memories and feelings are real, then I believe you.”
Jin slows and stares wide eyed at Sage. She looks deep into the other girl’s eyes, searching for something. Then she looks away, ashamed.
“I… You didn’t deserve any of that. I’m sorry. You’re being a hell of a lot more open minded than I would be in your shoes.”
Sage feels her cheeks heat and she twists a toe on the ground. She can’t help but smile, “Aw…”
A beat passes.
“I’m still pretty sure you’re a cleric powered by miracles from the gods, though. I have no idea what all this magic stuff you’re talking about is.”
This startles a laugh out of Jin, and Sage, never one to be left out, laughs with her.
When they start moving again Jin eyes Sage sideways. She’s grateful the girl seems keen on making Jin feel better, of course, but she isn’t quite sure how to feel about Sage’s willingness to toss aside what she used to believe just like that. Does she really change her opinions so easily, or is she just the type who will say anything to make someone happy?
The two walk on in relative silence for several minutes, but Jin can feel her mental fortitude recovering. She takes this opportunity to form and cast another spell that should quicken their journey immensely.
She makes a plane of force just large enough to sit on that moves at a set speed, and follows the orientation of the enchantments on her molar.
Most items she moves telekinetically are in relation to her tooth enchantments, in fact. Today, anyway. Normally she has rings with pre-built functions she can use, but she doesn’t have that luxury now. Defining a point in space within spell structure can be a tricky issue, but not as much if your reference point is an enchanted item. Spell structures exist pseudo-physically within any enchantment. It’s a careful bit of mana manipulation that can “sear” a spell structure into a few types of metals and other materials that promote the flow of magic. When a mage floods the enchantment with mana, the enchantment casts the spell. But the important part is that the spell structure physically exists in reality. You can identify a segment of spell structure that only exists in one particular enchantment, and use it as a reference point in space. Then you can use that reference point for any number of other spells you want to cast.
Occasionally you’ll have the odd mage who enchant their bones so they can move their bodies directly with magic. Well, typically they reinforce their bones with enchanted metal. Of course, this has drawbacks, since any mage can then use your own bones against you if you aren’t careful. The practice has become more common in peace times, and even more common once enchantment shielding was developed - though most people still took the far less extreme options, such as the classic flying carpet (but why carpets were popularized as opposed to chairs was always a mystery to Jin). This is also why she was able to telekinetically move the hourglass directly, using it as its own reference point, rather than relying on the force plane she’s using as a chair now.
Jin explains all of this to Sage. Sage clarifies that all this basically just means that the chair goes the same way her head points. Jin reluctantly agreed. Sage then asked if it’s easy to change the speed. Jin, more reluctantly this time, said yes, but that speed alone doesn’t account for blah blah more technical words that really just meant that she wouldn’t race Sage down the sewers.
Which was fine, since Sage managed to convince Jin to let her sing for the rest of the trip. Tunnels always have interesting acoustics, so in Sage’s opinion the rest of the journey passed in the blink of an eye.