Lasutro woke the morning after their arrival inside their room within the Risen Albyon. An admirably kept inn targeting the more well off clientele of the city, built from the wreckage of an old ship known as the Albyon, parts of which are reportedly held by the empire's academy for study. While the price for most of a week was slightly reduced she still found the cost almost painful, at least in their heart.
After making themselves presentable Lasutro walked over to the rope the individual who had helped them get situated in the inn had told them to pull in the morning when she woke, so they could fetch the healer she requested when she had arrived. At the time of the request, the sort of night manager who was helping them informed Lasutro that the cost would likely be higher due to the storm and the time of day, knowledge which pushed Lasutro to wait until the morning. Following which the night manager told them that they would arrange things so that when she pulled their room’s fanciful rope, the healer would arrive at their door shortly after.
While Lasutro waited for their healer she munched on last bits of their rations from the trip, not wanting it to go to waste and contemplating the three spells she had partially studied. By the time she finished eating and started preparing themselves to test one of the spells, several knocks came to their door in rapid succession.
Opening the door revealed a middle aged dwarven figure, a perpetual smile just visible from behind their beard, adorned in the traditional garb of a cleric of The Radiant Father. The angular symbol of the partially closed hand grasping a radiant light, marking the shoulders of the dwarf’s yellow robes. The figure spoke first as they closed the door behind them,“I hear you have wounds that desire the Father’s radiance. May I see them, child.” The strong yet gentle tone, almost compelling Lasutro to answer quickly.
With a small nod in acknowledgement, Lasutro slowly began to remove the bandages around their arms, having decided earlier that she could live with the somewhat light bruising that marked a large portion of their back. As she did so the dwarven cleric stepped closer, grasping and inspecting each arm and their respective wounds nodding their head when they did so. After a few semi awkward moments of inspection by the cleric, they pulled out one of the chairs in the room from its table, setting it in space of its own then gestured for them to sit. Following the dwarf’s instruction Lasutro sat down, wincing slightly as she brushed against the armrest and watched as the cleric produced a previously unseen pouch from underneath their robes.
From the pouch the cleric pulled a small bronze bowl, a similar but smaller leather pouch, several bundles of herbs, clean linen bandages, a vial of a thick amber liquid and a white stick Lasutro identified as chalk. In silence they began breaking bits of the herbs into the bowl, then sprinkling the fine shining dust of the smaller pouch over top before finishing it with several drops of the amber liquid. They then proceeded to trace their fingers around the rim of the bowl, after which they grasped their holy symbol and chanted a few indistinguishable words. When they finished a flame that seemed to radiate heat and light across the room as if it was a bonfire flashed into existence within the bronze bowl with a golden color.
The cleric, unfazed by the flame even more relaxed, nodded to themselves before heading over to Lasutro and drawing a ritual circle around the chair she sat a little nervously in. As they went about their task Lasutro ,despite their nervousness at what she assumed to be a complex work of magic, couldn’t help but study the lines of the circle as the cleric marked them upon the wooden floor of their room. When they finally finished the ritual circle, Lasutro was unable to hide all of their disappointment, a look clearly noticed by the cleric, but they made no comment.
It was at that moment she realized the flame in the bowl had gone out, yet the heat it had brought remained, and soon after the bowl was in the cleric’s hand once more. In their other hand they gripped the bandages Lasutro had seen previously, and as they approached they began to chant a mantra of sorts in the same language that they spoke in previously. Lasutro watched as the cleric dipped the bandages into the bowl before wrapping their right arm and repeating the action for Lasutro’s other arm, all the while maintaining the chant.
When they finished wrapping Lasutro’s arm they made their way out of the ritual circle, taking care to not to smudge any of its lines. As they did so they moved into a different verse of their mantra, their free hand clutching their holy symbol, the cleric threw the remaining contents of the bowl out onto the ritual circle with some of the ashy substance landing on Lasutro. Soon after the lines of the circle took on a warm glow, that slowly intensified with the cleric’s now accelerated chanting. When the chanting reached its apex, Lasutro began to feel a similar warmth to that she had felt from the now extinguished fire of the bronze bowl, though it not only carried that heat, but also a less tangible quality, a joy, a love of life. And just as Lasutro felt they were getting used to the feeling, it turned almost unbearable, as if the previously closed wounds had been reopened then squeezed together as they were fused back into one piece by the heat.
By the time Lasutro could bring themselves to scream the pain had stopped, replaced once more by the comforting warmth. As she shook off the dissonance of the feelings, the cleric placed their hands upon their shoulders and filled the silence created by the partial awe and shock of the ritual. “My apologies child for the pain, there are few brothers and sisters of the Father here who know the rituals to heal, fewer still that have been granted the spells capable of such tasks, especially those that are painless.”
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The cleric then turned back towards the table and quickly repacked their pouch. As the dwarf returned their items to its place beneath their robes they looked back at Lasutro, and spoke again “If you want to minimize the scarring, keep those bandages on for the next week or so and just for the next two nights if you don’t mind but otherwise you should be fine outside of some light pain, however do try to get some rest.” They paused, and their voice became tinted with a hint of their own discomfort of their words “As for the matter of the donation to the Church, it has been taken care of, so I’ll let you be. ” And with that, the cleric made their way out of the room, closing the door gently behind them.
For several minutes after they departure Lasutro was left in a daze, and when she snapped out of it a wave of exhaustion came over them despite being awake for a little over an hour. After briefly considering fighting the exhaustion for the rest of the day, Lasutro opted to accept the unavoidable lure of sleep. And so dragged themselves from the chair the cleric had gotten them to sit on, and on to the top of their bed before drifting off.
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After Lasutro got out of bed for the second time within a span of several hours, she adjusted their clothes once more, pulling their sleeves over their new bandages before she shuffled over to their bag, curious to see if the pages within their book had changed. Inside the red tome she found the same writings within the chapter she had previously, ending just as abruptly at the third spell deconstruction, as if the tome knew that Lasutro had yet to perform any of the three spells she had read.
Quickly setting aside the slight frustration she felt, Lasutro refreshed themselves on the three spells until she became certain in their ability to execute them to some degree. When she felt confidence in their ability to recall the spells, she decided to begin with the first spell she had read. It was a simple spell, capable of creating a small or even a shower of sparks, and while Lasutro had seen more powerful spells among those who couldn’t or wouldn’t tell them, she felt some gratification in performing their first spell,at least with controlled intent, even if the spell itself felt lesser then the small candle sized flames she observed long before their departure from Sutiretni.
After setting aside their tome, Lasutro began to clear a space in their room to create a casting space of sorts, making sure to roll the certainly flammable rug out of the way before they started. When she finished, she moved themselves into the center of the space she had created, then, without the intent to cast the spell, practiced the motions the book had described and illustrated before taking a deep breath. As Lasutro exhaled she focused on resummoning the feeling she had felt the previous times she had done magic,calling it for the first time with the intent to cast. When the increasingly familiar wave of energy started to rise through their body, Lasutro focused their will on summoning the desired effect of the spell before bringing their hands together to begin the motions the book had instructed. As she did, she felt a slight drain in the energy that ran through them, when,in tandem to the final motion of the spell, a series of sparks shot out in front of them, seemingly from nowhere.
The realization of their success quickly filled Lasutro with joy, only to be followed with disappointment in the amount of sparks. Despite their desire to move on to the next spell, Lasutro found themselves casting the spell once more, repeating the motions continuously hoping to achieve the shower sparks she desired, each attempt closer to their goal but also draining. When Lasutro finally felt pleased with their execution of the spell and began the same process she had performed for the first spell for the second, she was hit suddenly by the lack of energy to pull from. As the realization hit them, all of their muscles relaxed and fell to the floor with a thud.
Although Lasutro knew they had the energy to pull themselves back up, she couldn’t bring themselves to do so, instead choosing to remain on the floor and contemplate their mistake. There on the wooden floor of their room, the impossible faint aroma of the sea wafting from it and surrounding them as she felt the absence of that ethereal energy. She focused on that feeling, the energy that wasn’t there and resolved to start keeping track of it the next time she cast, before letting their mind drift as she rested on the floor.
When Lasutro finally pulled themselves from the floor, she felt she had recovered some of the ethereal energy, though the weight of the exhaustion that came over them when she collapsed onto the floor remained. Despite this, she prepared to head out into the city to fetch something to eat, hoping that the meal and light exploration of the city would help them shake their fatigue.
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While Lasutro enjoyed a rich meal from the first restaurant that had caught their eye, it did nothing to alleviate the drain on their stamina. When she headed back into the open air after she finished the early dinner, she stuck to the edges of the main streets of the city as she wandered the cool breeze giving them a second wind as she wandered back to the Risen Albyon. During their short journey, she made note of several places to visit in the following days, some out of curiosity and others that just drew their eye: Nemice’s Talismans, Maps,Tales & Ink, and Mayr’s Mystical Merchandise.
When Lasutro entered the Risen Albyon once more, she approached the most managerial of the unoccupied employees in hopes to get some answers to a few of the inquiries she had regarding their current goal of attending the Empire’s academy. Although most of their questions were given no actual answer other than a trained response of “I can look into that for you, if you like?” The question she did get an answer to was the one she was most desperate to know, that being the coming dates of the Academy’s test in the city, leaving Lasutro with a little under a month to prepare and find answers to their remaining questions. With a more complete vision of their time before the Academy’s examination, Lasutro returned to their room where she set up a schedule for themselves for the coming days. Marking visits to the few stores they noticed on their way back to the inn, hoping the clearly more magical and paper based stores to have some insight into Lasutro’s questions.
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The next day seemed to come faster than Lasutro expected, leaving them with a groggy feeling as she went about the first chunk of their plans for the day which included a quick meal from the inn and the casting of the second spell from their book.
Around noon, Lasutro left the inn and headed into the city avoiding the tempting shortcuts of the alleyways that seemed to permeate every cluster of buildings not unlike splinters of haphazardly cut firewood. After a similarly quick lunch, she found themselves entering the first store she had spotted the previous day:Nemice’s Talismans.