Vey flexes his soul tendrils out around him, feeling for as much control over them as he can. [Telekinetic Tentacle] perhaps spoiled him a bit with regards to controlling tentacles with just his mind. It wasn’t a literal tentacle after all, just telekinesis. [Soul Tendrils]’s titular tentacles very much are literal. Sera said she controls them by thinking of them like extra arms that are just terrible at being arms, but that didn’t work for Vey.
He thinks it probably would have if he had any concept of fleshy limbs, but alas. His newfound interest in exploring what [Soul Tendrils] can do is purely academic. Vey has no hopes of turning it into a combat skill or using it for anything other than its listed purposes. What he does hope is that by getting into better touch with all of his skills and statuses he can either better determine which evolution path is the objective best or he can resolve to just pick whichever one Sera wants.
[Flesh Guise] will easily be the most difficult to test. In this winter, flesh has been hard to come by. No group of adventurers or soldiers have tried to invade what Vey is beginning to think of as ‘the domain’ rather than ‘the dungeon’. Outside of the occasional deer one the archer trio shoot for sport, the number of corpses on offer (not counting his fellow walking ones) is zero. Turning all available bodies into undead did have some downsides, after all.
Vey also did some reading up on all other monsters his little library had information on. It wasn’t much, but knowing about some of the more common monsters helped clue him in on what ‘successful’ monsters have in common. The small monsters were all described as either agile or fast. The big ones all seemed to be ‘impervious to arrows’, something Vey highly doubts. The book on slimes was interesting. If any slimes ever make their way to Vey and Sera’s domain, Vey hopes he can capture it. They sound fun. Just as he finishes that thought, a new idea emerges. Flexing his [Soul Tendrils] into a specific shape, he stands up on the hilltop and casts his spell.
“[Greater Evocation: Icenet]!” The tendrils he’d shaped into a makeshift net don’t themselves freeze, but using them to determine the shape of a net made of ice was a resounding success. Of course, the net shatters when it hits the rock beneath the spot it had been created. The idea had come from a passage he’d read about domesticated slimes using their pseudopods to mimic the hand gestures of their master, and his testing of his new concept isn’t done yet. “[Greater Evocation: Lightning Bolt]!”
The crack of the bolt he fires off is less painful outdoors like this, but more interesting is that the bolt does follow the path he’d tried to guide it along with tendrils, but only it got a couple feet away, at which point it went straight on as normal. As predicted, while interesting, [Soul Tendrils] doesn’t have much practical combat utility if this is the limit.
[Greater Evocation] itself is quite possible his crowning magical achievement. It stung a little that his status doesn’t think so, but condensing every bit of evocation spell knowledge into one spell is easily the best idea he’d ever had. He’s well aware that he’s probably not the first person to do it, though.
Just as he’s about to ready his arm for another test spell, a mental ding rings in his mind, and Vey spins on his heels to the direction it came from. A Skrat in the old village. Soon after, multiple more Skrats ping him, and the smartest of them passes along only a single coherent thought. Many.
“[Greater Evocation: Whispering Wind]! Sera, there’s something happening at the old village. Get up here, bring some support, we need to check what it is.” Vey waits for the conjured wind to blow down the cave entrance before examining his bond to the Skrats again. “[Clairvoyance].”
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Wiping the last drops of water on her shoulder off to the floor, Sera contemplates a few equally useless things while staring at the door. Naked as she is, and with the fountain and her room being excluded from undead patrol routes, she wonders if she couldn’t get away with lazing around a bit. No one but Vey would come looking for her if she decided to just spend the rest of the day back here, sleeping or touching herself or doing whatever else she can think of. Actually, she can’t think of much to do back here besides those two things if she doesn’t count training or reading.
But everyone knows training and reading don’t count as being lazy as far as mortals are concerned. Is she still mortal? Debatable, she thinks, because she’s already an elf who won’t die of natural degradation to begin with. Being undead prevents most diseases and such, and who knows what else it might be doing for her. Really, it’s probably more practical to say she won’t die unless she’s killed, but that’s still leaving a lot of room for error.
In the end, she supposes that as long as she can live alongside Vey until she’s… 500? Yeah, at 500, she’d be a successful grandma. That’s still effectively a full 500 years away, too.
Sera terminates her musings at the same time as she finishes fixing her boots. Her slacking off- bathing complete, she begins at the top of her list of things to do. A walk up to the surface in store for her first task, to check on the undead. A check-up on the status of the refugees and the work being done by her command. After those, she should probably check on Vey. That’s probably a good idea, since he’s been practicing magic all alone now for… since the two woke up.
He’s been doing that a lot. Sera does still wonder if she’s being a bit of a bad partner for only seeing him a few hours a day, but she can’t really help it! Vey’s focus on his own magic and studies at all times mean he’s usually in the lab or up on the hilltop practicing, and Sera’s main tasks of managing the undead and mortals keep her occupied in different locations. She misses Vey too, but she’s sure that he’s probably missing her more.
Just as her thoughts reach a crescendo and she’s thinking of sprinting up the cave towards her pactmate, a booming voice brought on magical wind makes her consider doing that exact same thing for an entirely different reason.
“Sera, there’s something happening at the old village-”
“You two, come with me!” Sera shouts at two skeletons patrolling past her, before sprinting off towards the cave without bothering to listen to the rest of the message.
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“By the gods…” Captain Nils, a man with twice Kole’s experience, is shaking atop his horse as he speaks. Not good. “What… What the hell happened here?”
“Sir, I can’t sense what you can. Please enlighten me so I can warn the troops.” Kole looks around at the abandoned village. Were it not for the lack of smoke from chimneys, he might not have assumed the place abandoned.
“This place feels… wrong… I can’t explain it. Tell the men to be on alert. Marcus!” Captain Nils points to the sorcerer they’d hired to clear the snow. Marcus. Noted. “Do you have any magic for detecting foes?”
Kole turns his horse around and begins wildly speculating. A fledgling paladin like the captain is so uneasy… That’s circumstantial. This village, it was the last known point of contact for the regiment that never made it to the front. No sign of them either, not above the snow at least. Last point of contact had the village also being lived in still, if diminished.
“Listen up men! The Captain says to be on alert! He’s pretty sure something’s going on here, it could be the enemy, it could just be a wandering monster, either way, stick to together, report anything you find or notice!” Kole idly wonders if he should play the potential danger up or down, and ultimately decides to err on the side of morale. “Well, there’s nothing here that’s worse than the front we’re headed for, and all of you are better than that! Just stay focused!”
His announcement given, he leaves the column to their idle chatter as the officers relay orders down the line as he turns to attend the Captain’s side once more. Kole does regret giving up the adventuring life for the soldiering one, but a situation like this is starting to get his blood pumping again, which is good, because it’s fucking freezing.
The Captain’s posture hasn’t changed, nor has his expression. Not good. Kole does note that this is the longest the Captain’s ‘paladin tingles’ have gone on for, assuming they’re still going. What could be setting him off?
“Captain, any idea what this could be?”
“They’re in the snow… There’s something in the snow… Something dead… Lieutenant Kole, do you know of any monsters that hide in snow?”