For the rest of the afternoon Merenthyl had Tahir helping her clean, move things in her home, shift some of the vines around, and generally get as much use from him as she could. Tahir didn’t particularly mind - a bit of magic and liberal use of aura made the work more tedious than anything else, and he had the opportunity to continue to talk to the elf about her experiences with spirit magic. He learned that she used her capacity as a spirit mage to deal with issues with spirits that occur in Isanthyr. A far cry from Tahir, who used them to help him as a Redcloud.
She also told him about ways he could make contracts with spirits without using the rituals. Mainly finding planar crossings or going over into other planes of existence, which he already knew of and wouldn’t be attempting in any reasonable amount of time with his current amount of power. The second, was simply finding spirits that found themselves on the material. According to Merenthyl, the nomadic peoples that traveled east of Isanthyr had spirit mages that specialized in communing with local spirits, and they weren’t hostile to outsiders and travelers for the most part. The location she gave put their wandering area around where the unmarked leyline crossing that Tahir had a map of, but he held off on asking if she knew about said crossing.
Between all of the incredibly useful information she gave, she told stories of her life. How it took her decades to reach the point Tahir had to avoid anything going wrong - though from what he knew that wasn’t uncommon for elves learning anything. She spoke of her mentor, meeting spirits whose power Tahir could only imagine, and coming into contact with other spirit mages. She spoke of those who grew arrogant about their bonds, and whose spirits possessed them or otherwise permanently marked them in different ways, and with those she gave a warning.
“Be very careful about your spirits. Do not be afraid to break a bond if you think they wish you harm. Possession, or the most intense of the scarring they can leave on your soul, those two things require divine intervention, or the work of a similar force to reverse. In other words, not something you could ever count on receiving.” A harrowing warning that Tahir would certainly take to heart.
She let him go as the sun set, in order to make sure Tahir didn’t get lost on the way. He would be back in the coming days to learn the soul sight spell from her, however. He walked out with a spring in his step, and grinned as he made his way to the railing of the nearest walkway, called forth his air spirit with aura, and let himself fall. Surprising every passerby on the way down, he gently fell what had to be hundreds of feet from the middle layers of the city to the ground floor. Until he added a significant amount of mana to his pool, and got someone to teach him, this would be the closest he could get to flying for a while.
Returning to the embassy for the night, he met up with Meti, Theo, and Hasio. This would be the last time they talked before they started delving through the ruin proper. Meti and Theo talked about their experience at the highest layers - where they could find many alchemists and smiths. Supposedly most of them worked up there so that the various smells and smoke from their workshops didn’t rise up through the entire city. Hasio had some more interesting information to share.
“I spent a little time listening around the ruin and the tears in their barrier.” He said. “Turns out whenever they cleared the first floor, something tried to come through. Pretty aggressively in fact.”
“Something tried to break into the city?” Tahir asked. They hadn’t told the Redclouds about that - at least not the ones clearing the ruin. With that in mind, though, it did explain why they wanted to clear the ruin in rapid succession in a matter of days. “Any idea what?”
“Nothing yet, but when I get the time I’ll keep listening. I’m interested in knowing if its just, I dunno, elven pride or something that kept them from telling, or if it’s really something worth hiding. Either way, if either of you happen to be in sight of the ruin or the barrier tomorrow, keep a look out for me. If you see guards scrambling it probably means something’s trying to get at the ruin from outside the city.”
With the promise that they’d keep an eye on things, the group split up for the night. Tahir took some time to write down much of the information he learned from Merenthyl, and slept in the soft bed provided by the embassy.
The next day, with Hasio and Theo joining Tsekani’s team for the first few floors of the ruin, Tahir brought Meti along to Merenthyl’s, to the elven woman’s confusion when she opened the door to find two people there instead of one. “You’ve brought a friend, I see.”
“Yes. Merenthyl this is Metilia, Metilia this is Merenthyl. Metilia’s a mage and one of my traveling companions. If it was possible, I hoped you could teach soul sight to both of us.” Tahir explained.
Meti gave a light bow. “Nice to meet you. Besides my general interest in learning a new spell, I’m hoping learning it will be able to curb some of Tahir’s reckless tendencies, especially when it comes to his spirit magic.”
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Tahir felt his face growing red, but saw a smile on Merenthyl’s before she spoke. “Ah, a handler. I would feel better knowing that there’s someone to wrangle you. Do come in, I’m very interested in hearing about these reckless tendencies.” Something about her tone told Tahir he made a mistake, but he held back a sigh and entered the elven mage’s home once more.
Sitting through Metilia giving many of the same events from her perspective felt a little embarrassing. Especially when she and Merenthyl would make a point to emphasize the recklessness of some of his actions, like rushing over to Neveroth with the Traveler to teleport her out of the Epic magic that held her in place, or blocking Ester’s glaive by using half of his aura pool and the earth spirits weight increase to only block a single strike.
He couldn’t have been happier when they switched the conversation to some questions that Meti had about the seed that Tahir and Hasio got from the glade, though he suspected both of them would hold this conversation over him for a while. Meti wouldn’t soon forget having all of her concerns about Tahir’s use of spirit magic confirmed by a vastly more experienced spirit mage. Still, thoughts of the conversation faded in his mind after the conversation ended and the teaching began. Learning a spell from someone else’s spellbook was one thing - having to translate the arcane writings into words, motions, and the movement of mana usually took a long time to do safely, but having someone teach you the spell made the process go much faster. If all went well, they would both be able to cast the spell in a matter of days.
A teacher could tell the basics of a spell rapidly, and skip through the process of ‘feeling it out’ that one would have to normally go through. For the first couple of hours, they spent learning about the spell and beginning the guided practice. In the middle of their practice, Merenthyl paused, and looked up without warning. “Something’s wrong.” She murmured, looking to the vines along her walls, which shifted in odd motions.
Tahir and Metilia looked to Merenthyl and she looked around the room, and finally focused her attention back to them. “This spirit has roots throughout the city, and can use them to tell when certain things have gone awry. It just told me that something is happening near the ruin that emerged.
“The barrier!” Tahir said immediately, he and Metilia stood from the couch. “Should we go see?”
Merenthyl looked between the two of them before sighing. “I would have to pause our teaching to go investigate. “I won’t recommend that you go yourselves, but I certainly won’t stop you. Don’t wait for me, either, I have to prepare a few things.” She left the room, with more urgency than Tahir had seen from her up to this point. Tahir and Meti shared a look, before reaching for their storage bags to pull out their weapons and other equipment.
Leaving the house, they cut toward the closest walkway that gave them a view of the ruin and the barrier, and Tahir didn’t like what he saw. With the distance, it was hard to make out, but he thought he saw things moving through the barrier, and after a few seconds of watching, he could see bursts of light and faintly hear the sounds of combat. “We need to get down there.” Tahir said, and Meti started looking to find a route that would get them down with any degree of speed.
While protecting innocent people from whatever was happening down there found a place at the back of Tahir’s mind, his major concern was with what Hasio told him the previous night. If whatever was coming through the barrier was after the ruin, then if they got through, they’d probably come through to where Theo and Hasio were while they were in the middle of clearing their floors.
A combination of his growing impatience and knowledge of something that worked the night before had him summoning both the Winged Serpent and his air spirit using aura and mana. “Meti, do you trust me?” He asked.
Meti’s head snapped to him and she gave him a concerned look. “I feel like I should say no when you ask out of the blue like that but-” She stopped when Tahir abruptly grabbed her and pulled her into a princess carry, and stepped onto the railing. “Wait, hold on, I’m not sure this is the best way dow-” Without giving her too much time to argue, Tahir stepped off the railing. Meti held on for dear life, maybe unintentionally using some aura with how tightly she squeezed, and Tahir heard what had to be the girliest shriek he’d heard from her up to this point.
With the air spirit active, Tahir found his weight reduced and had the ability to gently float down through the air. With testing, he found that the weight reduction really only affected his body, but he could use mana to adjust for his equipment and anything he happened to be carrying. With Meti, it took him about as much mana as one of his basic spells to adjust, but after a couple of seconds of freefall, they had a gentle descent and landing for the last couple of hundred feet to the ground floor of the city.
Once they landed, Tahir let Meti down, and grinned. “See? Nothing to worry abou-” She cut him off by grabbing his skull with both of her hands.
“If we weren’t in a crisis right now I would throttle you.” She huffed, giving the sides of his head a squeeze before releasing him. Getting back on track, they started to jog toward the ruin and the barrier with the Winged Serpent flying overhead. Without the need to fall any further, Tahir switched the air spirit out for the earth spirit just before they reached the towering spire of dark metal, with people running past them to get as far away from the area as possible. Guards stationed in front of the ruin fired off with longbows from afar, but otherwise held their position, and looked at Meti and Tahir’s approach with mixed reactions.
A very short distance away from the ruin, they could see city guards fighting with several creatures, but most distinct to Tahir were creatures similar to the wooden men that they fought when they freed the unicorn.