Vey steps into the cavern at the top of the tunnel, and eyes the pile of abandoned supplies, plus three corpses, with suspicion. That sort of wastefulness is the type of thing Vey, as a creature born of Necromancy and as such the antithesis of wastefulness, is deeply annoyed by on instinct. The pile of much more organized supplies near another tunnel ramping upwards is fairly intriguing though, and Vey is almost tempted to call the skeletons up to come take them back, but hesitates for a moment. What would Sera think if all the skeletons started moving up here to help me, without even acknowledging her? Vey decides he doesn’t like the answer, nor the impossibility of taking all this stuff back in a timely manner.
He walks over to the pile with the corpses, and runs his hand along one of them. They’re all female, so Vey considers that this is probably what fate Sera would’ve also met all that time ago, if Vey hadn’t ceased the moment. This somewhat unsettling conclusion comes as he drags his claws over the bruises on the corpse's chest and back, and the bite marks and lacerations pretty much everywhere. At least this close to the pile, he sort of sees the logic behind why this particular pile is the ‘waste’ pile as aside from the actual waste, nothing still fresh here would be so for very much longer, and freshness is probably the only metric by which raw meat is typically useful. Vey however, does actually have a use for it.
He pings the command bond to five of the skeletons to come to him, ready to carry stuff back down, but have the sixth go and look for Sera first. A complicated order like that marks the first time in a while Vey has really thought about it, but compared to when he first gained the ability to command his fellows, they seem more or less fully capable of fulfilling even complex commands. He re-reads Undead Leadership, and supposes that without him noticing, his own increasing mental capabilities have reflected on his subordinates’ ability to follow instruction. Vey stops reminiscing, and drags the corpse he was inspecting off of the pile, then the next, until he has left all three in a sort of heap next to the pile of stuff the bandits hadn’t wanted, rather than on top of it.
Vey’s not sure how Sera would react to seeing corpses that clearly had been violated in the same way she had been once, but he’ll just have to accept that he needs to be here when she sees them either way. In that regard, having her walk with one of the unminded undead is a great plan, since now Vey knows where she is, and can plan accordingly. There are some things he can do to soften the blow, as it were. He moves over to the pile of ‘good’ supplies(in the bandits’ eyes), and starts sorting through it. A couple crates of preserved food, some of it Vey doesn’t recognize, meaning Sera will probably be happy for the variety. He sets those out in plain view, so that she will find them quickly if she searches.
The rest of the pile he looks through with considerably less of an ulterior motive. A bunch of tools, which would be very useful in some way, even if he can’t think of one now. He notes that the pickaxes and shovels are missing, because they are all down by the entrance to the dungeon, which is very convenient, actually. A bunch of spare clothes, a few spare weapons, some coins, none of these things are overly useful, but they’re probably not a bad idea to take. What is very nice though, is a bunch of proper bedding for Sera. Vey almost wants to hide it to give to her as a ‘present’ somehow, but relents. He sets all of it out in an obvious spot as well, as an afterthought.
Vey checks the command bond, and sees that Sera has decided to walk with all of the skeletons, and that the group won’t be reaching the cavern up here for a good hour at the least, and he looks up the other tunnel when he spots the faint light hitting some of the rocks near there. He sees an opening to the sky up the tunnel, and considers exactly how long of a walk that would be, then decides not to go up just yet, and to keep sorting instead.
--
Sera’s skin crawls at the sight of the corpses in the cavern, illuminated only by a [Permanent Light] Vey had put on the end of a stick for her to use as a torch. As much as the memories the familiar looking bruises, cuts, and bites dredge up unpleasant memories and a maelstrom of emotions, they also completely solidify her justification for killing that bandit yesterday. She shakes her head quickly, and refocuses on the organized piles of… junk? Loot? Supplies? Supplies that Vey is sorting through, and handing to the skeletons.
“Vey, is this the bandits’ stuff?” Sera asks, as she opens a crate, taking in the complete lack of separation in how dozens of different preserved meats and root vegetables have just been thrown in. The sight of potatoes is something pleasant at the very least.
“Yes, I would assume so. The tunnel on this side leads to the surface, so I think they were using this as a hideout.” Vey’s voice is echoed off the cavern’s circular construction, and Sera wonders how anyone would be able to think clearly over the sounds of... She looks over her shoulder at the corpses, and terminates her line of thinking immediately. She shivers and looks back at the more useful things laid out around Vey, like the couple blankets and few pillows she will be claiming for herself the moment she can.
“Ok, why’d you call me up here then?” She asks while walking over to the entrance Vey mentioned, and checking that yes, the clear blue sky is visible from the cavern if one leans far enough. "You look like you already know what either of us want and wouldn't want."
“I didn’t want to leave you down there alone while all the skeletons came up here. I want to check out the surface from there.” Vey points to the sky, and then looks back at her. “Would you mind staying down here while the skeletons work? For safety's sake?”
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Sera just nods, and sits down on the ground next to the surface tunnel, as far away from the corpses as possible. She cracks her neck, and starts trying to just mentally work through the spell stuff she had been looking through in Vey’s lab.
“I’ll be back in an hour at most.” Vey leans over and pats her head, and she turns and smiles up at him in return.
“If you have to fight, please run to me the moment you can.” Sera grabs his femur and makes sure he’s locked eyes with her before she continues. “Alert me with the skeletons, I’ll… I’ll just pick a class and try to help if you need it.”
“I won’t be in enough danger for that, I promise.” Vey scratches behind her left ear, which feels quite nice to her, and she lets him go off to the surface without further incident.
Sera looks up at the ceiling the moment Vey’s footsteps can no longer be heard. She spots the last of the six skeletons start taking down the crates and barrels through the long tunnel to the dungeon, and begins to realize just how massive an undertaking Vey’s project here is. It took nearly an hour and a half to walk up here, without carrying anything cumbersome, bringing all of the stuff down is going to take at least six or seven trips, and that’s assuming each skeleton can actually lift everything. She sort of resigns herself to the fact that both of them are probably spending the day up here by leaning back and thinking about life for a bit.
Vey’s probably going to have to fight the villagers… However many are left after the bandits, at least. I think one of those girls was Magrite, so at the very least, since his daughter is gone, the village chief will want to send someone after the bandits. Sera sighs and closes her eyes. The idea of Vey having to kill the villagers isn’t scary or conflicting for her anymore, at least as long as she maintains her calm.
For her, right now, she actually feels a little excited about the idea of getting into another fight. With the storm of emotions from yesterday washing away, she recognizes that at least a little, she wants to try being in a fight for her life like that again. All of the practicing she’d done with her sword, all of her instincts working on overdrive, and that rush when she successfully defended herself twice… She wants it again. It doesn't hurt that at least until she'd looked back down at him, that cut she delivered to that bandit felt perfect. Sera doesn’t feel like she’d want to go out and intentionally pick fights to the death with people, like Vey did with the caravan he ambushed, but she does think she wouldn’t mind just going with him if he does something like that again.
The realization that the next opportunity to chase that high would likely have her pitted against people that she was raised among, that she might even know or be related to, she’s less excited about it, but not fully discouraged. If anything, as long as they don’t want to hurt her and Vey, she’d not fight, but outside of people like her parents, there’s really no one she feels like she was ever close enough to that she couldn’t fight or kill them in a situation like yesterday.
She won’t be doing anything if she doesn’t get a class, though, and Spellblade is definitely the one that feels like the one she wants. Vey said once that making his first spell is what allowed him to become a wizard, since he already met the stat requirements, and he met the stat requirements because of how much work he was putting into making his first spell. Sera thinks she should do something similar, but she doesn’t have nearly as much of an academically focused mind as Vey, she knows that just endlessly writing and theorizing won't do anything for her if she doesn't tie it to something that can keep her focus.
She has a pretty good idea of how Vey’s [Mage Armor] spell works, since it’s just using solidified mana as armor, and armor is something she can understand pretty easily. She doesn’t have any MP, but that’s not the point right now. She figures the numbers and scrawlings in Vey’s note and spellbook on [Mage Armor] are probably what defines how thick the armor is when he casts it and that sort of thing, but how exactly she’d calculate that is completely beyond her.
What is not beyond her is the feeling behind it. She knows what steel feels like, what leather and iron feel like, and how thick an iron plate would need to be to serve as armor. So, maybe she should work backwards from what she wants to make or do with a spell, to eventually reach how to actually do it? Sera finds the concept somewhat funny, since she’s pretty sure Vey does it the exact opposite way, but that dichotomy might end up benefiting both of them in the long run, so she decides to stick with it for now.
She rifles through the crates, barrels, and piles around her for something to write with, and something to write on. She knows she doesn’t need a proper spellbook like Vey, but just a place to hold her thoughts if they drift too far or she gets distracted will be nice. Eventually she finds an abandoned notebook a quarter full of… sketches? She can’t actually tell if they’re meant to be sketches or just very big letters, but they look an awful lot like nothing, so she decides to just steal the notebook for herself. She also finds a bit of charcoal by what was probably their fire-pit, and takes that as her writing utensil.
She starts at the simplest point she can think of, the dimensions of her own body, and is oddly glad for Vey’s stupid full body inspections for the very first time, because she remembers every measurement. That done, she marks each part of her body that a proper set of armor would want to cover, and how thickly or restrictively that it would cover it, and with what materials, etc. She tries to wrap her head around the logistics of using mana, something she doesn’t have, to make the armor plates, or something, but stops when she realizes that that’s not even how Vey does it either.
Sera stretches, then lays down the notebook and charcoal on either side of her, and sighs loudly. Vey’s mage armor is like a set of plates used to deflect things, but is that really the only way to do it? Wouldn’t something like chainmail also work, perhaps even a little bit better in some circumstances? She closes her eyes, and tries to imagine what that would even look like, but just finds herself thinking about the idea of wearing literal chains as your only piece of armor or clothing is all she can focus on instead. Actually… that idea is kinda hot... I wonder what I'd- She slaps herself as she correctly identifies a 'distraction', in more ways than one. This idiocy is why you need the notebook, Sera!
--
[Mage Armor]
Tier 1
Evocation(Force)
V, S
Target: Self
Duration: 1 hour per caster level
2 MP Base/2 MP + Additional for Increased Effect
Creates a set of armor made of solidified mana, more commonly referred to as force. The armor’s effectiveness is proportional to the mana spent, and the caster can control what parts of the body it covers, how much protection it offers, etc. by spending additional mana.