Vey isn’t sure exactly why it turned out this way, but since answering her questions and hugging(as it now knows is what that action is called) her the other day, Sera hasn’t been nearly as depressed or droopy looking. Sera’s first request(which are all being written on the stone wall to the right of the fountain, at her insistence) was for Vey to sit with her when she is trying to fall asleep. Her second request was for Vey to try and get her better food. That had actually turned out rather well, since after a few days of work, Vey managed to create a [Conjure Simple Meal] spell, which does exactly what it sounds like it would do. Sera seemed incredibly happy to have the basic watery soups and steamed vegetables the spell can make, and Vey in turn managed a breakthrough in the process of turning wood into paper. Once it knew how to make plant matter from magic, it realized that when the plant matter was pressed flat, until all the water was squeezed out, it looked remarkably like very crude paper.
This concept led to its creation of the [Lesser Transmutive Crafting] spell, which it used on some saplings which were close to the dungeon’s entrance to resupply its store of paper. Sera mentioned that Vey seemed less stressed now that it had proper supplies again, and that had led to Sera’s next request, and the one Vey was confused about. She wanted more time to ‘be close’ to Vey, which apparently means sorting papers for it, or asking to be carried to her room when she’s tired, or asking for a hug after a conversation. Vey thought it understood ‘hugging’ after successfully using it to calm Sera down, but now she’s asking for them even when she isn’t sad, so what exactly are ‘hugs’ for? Also, Vey thought she didn’t like being physically touched outside of specific contexts, so why the sudden change?
Thoroughly confusing elves aside, Vey’s progress over the last two weeks has been extraordinary, with seven new spells being added to its repertoire. [Ghoul Touch], which can paralyze and sicken someone with, well, a touch. [Command Undead], which it doesn’t really need because of [Undead Lieutenant], but it felt like covering its bases would help it better understand necromancy in the future. [Conjure Simple Meal] and [Lesser Transmutive Crafting], obviously, but it had to side-track into making a [Create Water] spell in order to make the former. The last of its creations are [Quick Potion], which infuses water with the effect of another spell temporarily, effectively making a ‘temporary’ potion, and [Identify], which forcibly pulls up relevant system information of an object.
[Quick Potion] is part of a long-term plan Vey has begun trying to make a reality, which is to say, magical defenses for the dungeon. If Vey can learn how to put spell effects into water, it should be able to learn how to put them into stone, metal, or eventually, mechanical contraptions. [Quick Potion] also gave it some ideas on how to finally make that [Alarm] spell it has wanted for a long time. Vey thinks the reason it was struggling so much with that one is that it didn’t understand the link between the part of the spell that detects things, and the part of the spell that sends Vey the mental confirmation of the detection. Since Vey gets a system notification after successfully using [Quick Potion], and it knows how to set up detection fields from [Detect Magic], it should be able to work backwards to an [Alarm].
Sera has been feeling much better about herself lately. Getting confirmation from Vey that it thinks of her as more than a pet or a prisoner was the primary reason, even if being a ‘precious collectable’ was still somewhat worrying, but the advent of properly nutritious meals and more opportunities to seek creature comforts is the current cause of her more positive attitude. In the week and a half since she started getting proper food, she’s seen her body’s form fill back out a bit more, no longer looking gaunt and hungry. Actually, that probably has more to do with the amount, not the quality, of food Vey is willing to supply, which is practically infinite since Vey can comfortably cast the spell a full five times a day without dipping into its ‘emergency mana’.
Sera also finds Vey’s apparent hesitance at giving her hugs or really just touching her in general hilarious. The skeleton has no problems asking her to strip so it can check how her shoulder is healing, but the moment she is the one that wants to be touched, or carried, or be given headpats, Vey hesitates. Am I a dog? Sera wonders, giggling to herself as she flicks her messes with her ears. I suppose some humans would probably compare my ears to dog ears, so it might not be that far off…
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Sera still feels like she’s going insane down here in the stone prison, but now she’s going insane while well fed, getting attention, and feeling wanted. Which is more than she ever thinks she’d have even if she did go back to the village, if she’s being honest with herself. She is almost sixteen, which means she’s less than 4% of the way through her life as an elf. In the human dominated society of Riverta Kingdom means that ‘4%’ of an elf’s life is also the age the humans would begin seeing her as an adult, which might be a good thing, if only it didn’t also mean that her parents would most likely try and marry her off in exchange for goods for her siblings.
There’s always a new human family moving in that’s willing to ‘buy’ a wife for their eldest son using cows or clothes or farmland. That’s the sort of thing she used to worry about, before being kidnapped. She knows now that it wasn’t the age they began thinking like that, they thought like that since… What… the first time they noticed she was ‘pretty’ and ‘cute’ instead of ‘childlike’? 4% of her total lifespan was just the point that the humans decided it was legal to follow through with such things, and for the ones that didn’t follow the laws to begin with…
She shivered in place as she remembered that time, but recovered faster than she had ever before. She’d been saved from that, not by an elf, or a human, or a dwarf, half orc, half elf, or any of the other sapient races, but by an undead. One of the very creatures all of those previous races equally despise. Sera smiles to herself bitterly. Vey doesn’t seem like an undead, even though it definitely is.
Vey reminds Sera more of the stories of intelligent golems or awakened trees and plant life, and less like a shell of a former mortal foolishly trying to defy death. Liches and Death Knights may be the only two intelligent undead she’d heard of, but Vey definitely isn’t either of those. She’s begun to adjust her thinking about Vey’s morality and sense of ethics. Vey is evil, yes, but it's not evil to her, for starters. Vey seems to Sera like it has lines it won’t cross, it doesn’t like the idea of enslaving its fellows, it doesn’t like the idea of cheating at games or lying for no reason. Vey is unbelievably selfish, enough to consider Sera a piece of a collection, but it freely admits that being a part of its collection warrants the same level of protection and care it applies to its own life.
She never really paid attention to the way the clerics and teachers always talked about alignments, which is probably why hers hasn’t changed from True Neutral(undecided) both before and after coming here, but she does remember some things about it. The priests always tried to claim that ‘Good’ really just meant selflessness, doing things for others and giving things for others, without regard to oneself, and that ‘Evil’ was the opposite. ‘Evil’ is the alignment of beings that take even what they don’t need, cause suffering unnecessarily, or actively choose what is most enjoyable for them over what is right for others. Sera is beginning to doubt those definitions, as most of the ‘good’ people she has met seem more interested in maintaining the status quo, or rooting out evil on principle. Her sample size of two evil beings probably isn’t much to go on, granted, but that man had only fit one of the criteria listed for being evil, since the life he was clearly living down here was still a very humble and modest one, ignoring the rape and life sacrifice to a dark god.
Vey’s evil is different entirely, it seems more like a force of nature, and unless disturbed by distractions like Sera or outside threats like adventurers, Vey would probably be happy to get lost in its own little world of selfishness and curiosity, without ever causing any real trouble. Before hearing it from Vey’s own lips… teeth? She should probably ask Vey how it makes sounds, actually. Before hearing it from Vey that it wants to keep her alive and to itself for as long as possible, she would’ve been upset with herself, thinking she was in Vey’s way. Now, though, she wonders if maybe it would be possible for her to help Vey, guide its insatiable curiosity for magic and knowledge, maybe one day even Vey’s evil would fade into something more neutral, since it's already clearly lawful.
She chuckles at the thought of a magic skeleton from a hole in the ground standing next to a priest of the God of Judgements and claiming to be of the same alignment, which earns her one of Vey’s boney hands patting her head lightly from the seat to the right of her.