Tahir scarfed something down before heading out to the open field behind the embassy. He’d heard that the nature-conscious elves were vegetarians, or something to that effect, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Either that, or they specifically prepared meat at the embassy for visitors. Either way, the meal helped him feel refreshed as he and Meti met the others outside, who’d already gotten started.
“We’re gonna start with the very basics.” Murabi started once they settled in for their training. Hasio and Theo already practiced with something, and Murabi got Tahir and Meti to stand in front of a couple of logs, with empty glass bottles sitting on them. “Projecting your aura, and we’ll start with something you should already know how to do. One of the first things aura users learn, usually without any instruction even, is a way to project their aura outward. Can you tell me what that is?”
Tahir looked on, slightly confused as he thought about the question. He went through the basic uses of aura he was taught by the volunteering Redclouds in Balrech. Aura strengthening, which acted like a force multiplier for the user’s strength, auric healing, which improved the user’s natural healing ability, and aura shields, which protected a user from harm. “Oh! Aura shields.” For the most part, in order to protect someone the aura exists in a layer outside the user’s body. Sometimes just above the user’s skin, sometimes higher.
“Right. So I’m just gonna leave you with working on extending your aura shield for a while. If you can manipulate it to get the shapes you want, it’ll go a long way toward the other techniques where you’re releasing the aura and not having it immediately dissipate.” Murabi gestured toward the logs with the bottles. “I’ll give you a couple of pointers, but after that you’re on your own. Just stand about five feet away and try to knock the bottles off the log using nothing but your aura shields.”
Murabi gave them pointers on manipulating their aura shields, and then left them to their own devices. Tahir had a bit of experience with this, in manipulating his aura shield to coalesce at one place where he knew a larger impact was coming. He could work off of that, but as the day went on, progress felt incredibly slow. He could move aura throughout his body without any issue, moving it outside of his body, other than the full body coating of that aura shield that he was used to, felt like he was working with a muscle he’d only just discovered. Underused and undeveloped, he could only hold it for so long before he lost it and the aura went back into his body.
Each time he tried, though, he could feel himself getting a little closer. He’d have his aura shield gather at his hand, and then extend it toward the bottle. He focused on trying to hold it at a certain distance, and then extend it. The amount he could hold grew inch by inch as the hours passed.
Theo was the first one of them to knock her bottle down from the specified distance. “I’d stopped thinking about it as my aura shield after a while and just kind of used aura.” She explained when Tahir asked. “Honestly it kind of felt like casting spells with aura. It was harder for me to not have it be some kind of element instead of just pure aura.” She continued to stay with everyone and refine her control of the aura, but Tahir concentrated on his own improvement so much he couldn’t tell if she’d gotten any better at hers by the end.
Hasio followed suit soon after, managing to knock his bottle down from the same distance. “I’ve been working with aura for a long time.” He explained, when Tahir asked him about it. “About a decade, now that I think about it.” That made Tahir want to ask further. As far as he could tell, Hasio and Tahir were around the same age, so that would have meant that Hasio unlocked aura some time in his early teens. Ultimately, he decided against it. Hasio would probably talk about it when he wanted to, and Tahir wanted to focus on the training with their limited time in the night.
Theo’s tip did help both him and Meti, not thinking of it as an ‘aura shield’ but just ‘aura’ once they had gotten used to manipulating it. They could create tangible aura just from their hands instead of creating a full body aura shield and manipulating it so that it covered and extended from their hands, and their experience with magic and manipulating mana to get a desired effect helped them tremendously in this endeavor.
They both managed to knock their bottles down just after sunset, but soon after Tahir came to another breakthrough. He found that he could coalesce his aura into an orb in his hand, and even toss it. It actively drained his aura to do so, and said aura dissipated into nothingness a second after it left his hand, but it was something. After he showed it to Meti, she was able to do the same after a couple of tries.
“Murabi was correct. This wasn’t particularly intensive, but it was time consuming.” She said. “But even though I doubt I’ll be using these techniques very often, I can see the applications.” With her mana pool, Tahir knew that Meti would likely try to learn similar spells to Murabi’s techniques. Aura worked better for her as a means of protecting herself and getting out of harm’s way.
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“Still, we’re glad you stuck around with us while we learned.” Tahir thanked her. “Let’s start making preparations for the last floors. We’ll have to work out how we can practice this and learn the spell from Merenthyl at the same time.”
“What are the odds you’ll find another lich?” Hasio asked.
“Not likely. There are more floors but we haven’t really seen any undead.” Tahir answered. “There is something odd down there, though. There has to be if something’s attacking Isanthyr over it.” If the people of Isanthyr somehow confirmed there was another lich, they probably wouldn’t do anything less than sending all of the three mithral Redclouds there down and no one else except someone on their level. Anyone else would prove an easy target for soul magic, as Tahir was very familiar with.
Even if he proved the exception, he felt like he’d just get in the way in a fight like that. Isanthyr also would have probably reported if one or more Erinyes showed up to take the lich. “Whatever’s down there, we should probably be ready for something unexpected to happen. The way the attacks have been going, I have to imagine whoever’s behind it has something up their sleeve other than sending an army of minions to their deaths.”
“We’ll keep an eye out.” Meti confirmed. “For now, let’s simply make sure we’re up to taking on the floors to begin with.”
###
Much as Tahir wanted to continue working with his aura manipulation into the night, they all needed to make sure they were full on aura for the last few floors. They could expect more fights, traps, and any combination of the two before they reached the final floor. The next morning, they met at the embassy’s lounge before making their way to the ruin.
Tahir could see a similar presence from the guard to the day before, with the addition of the other Redclouds ready to intercept another attack. The barrier’s holes looked even shorter than before, so they had been actively fixing it throughout all of this. The fact that whatever was attacking the city would likely still send wave after wave of minions still unnerved Tahir. It likely still had something up its metaphorical sleeves.
Still, they were ready to finish off this set of floors, then they could get back to their other business in Isanthyr. From learning the spell to Merenthyl, to further training to Murabi, to possibly letting Tahir and Meti use the leyline crossing if the elves decided they were worthy to after all of this. Further ahead, they could deal with the issue of the unmarked leyline crossing nearby, and then much further off the far larger ruin in the Osni desert.
Tahir summoned the Winged Serpent and his earth spirit, and readied himself as everyone stepped onto the platform. At Murabi’s signal, the teleportation circle activated and brought them all to the eighth floor. Looking around, it appeared similar to what Tahir remembered from the seventh. With a dirt floor and more bright than the rest - though this room didn’t have the massive chandelier that the seventh floor did. He could see more plants and moss growing along the edges, thicker and more prominent than before.
Everyone drew their weapons and foci, and Murabi stepped off of the platform. The magic that Tahir felt activated again, powerful magic that seemed to transport creatures from elsewhere into the room in response to their intrusion. On opposite ends of the room two massive creatures appeared. They looked to be large lizards with six legs each and rough, hard scales. They honed in on the group immediately, and with a combination of growling and hissing, they charged. Murabi rushed forward to the left to intercept one, which left the one on the right for Tahir, Hasio, Meti, and Theo. Tahir moved forward to intercept the lizard, feeling the Winged Serpent shift and fly off from his shoulders after giving him a divine shield.
Tahir rushed to meet it, but dodged out of the way before it could hit him. He gave a hard swing across its side, only to see sparks flying where his blade and the heavy scales collided. He could see a score across the scales that implied his slash had some effect, but not nearly enough to physically harm the beast. As the lizard turned to face Tahir, a salvo of magical darts and firebolts from Meti and Theo respectively slammed into it as they bombarded it from afar. From Tahir’ s view, all of the fire and magic bounced off of its hide, but the way it turned to face them made it seem like it was hurt, if only barely. Before it could turn to charge it again, Tahir stepped forward and swung down on its head. His blade bounced off, but the lizard seemed to finally decide to focus on him as its sole target, starting to swipe at him as the girls prepared more spells.
As he dodged and deflected claws and teeth, he could see other showers of sparks bursting out against the lizard’s hide - what Tahir had to assume was an invisible Hasio attempting to find a weak point. While he tried to figure out the best way to go about this, he nearly fell over when a heavy tremor rocked the room. “Already?” He called out. Unless it came from somewhere else in the ruin, that had to be the impact of powerful magic. Likely Tsekani, Kazadi, or any number of elven mages fighting to defend the ruin from the outside.
The fact that the fight out there had already progressed to the point where such powerful magic had to be used unnerved Tahir. It gave him a bad feeling about what they might encounter below. Still. He steeled himself and set about focusing on the fight in front of him - and making sure this lizard didn’t bite his head off.