Did you know? Desalinization and purification spells and constructs are among the most essential to our survival! With all running water suspect of seascourge contamination or inhabitance, landlocked water is all we can trust, and the mineral buildup over generations renders it unsuitable for straight drinking. If you’re considering a career in purification casting, you can rest assured that you’ll never be out of a job!
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Jair and Qahrvirna spent the next two weeks traveling at night and sheltering by day as they crossed the northern section of the Oriad from west to east. Qahrvirna’s tower was roughly at the center of that northern section, a couple days south of the wild hills, and a good bit further from the nearest vampire clans who may see her existence as intolerable.
Eythron’s haunts tended to be further south, but Jair made no protest as Qahrvirna led them directly toward her tower.
Even spending two or three months there while waiting for her network to come in contact with Eythron’s and pass his message along, it would be a better use of time than wandering alone in hopes of happening upon the old mageblade.
They encountered monsters of one sort or another two to three times a night, but between Qahrvirna’s prowess as a witch and Maelstrom’s sheer cutting power they survived without more than minor injuries.
Since they were still relatively close to the outer edges, apart from the venix they avoided meeting any other truly dangerous creatures. The froglike brobegs, for instance—a large and bulbous draconic cousin known for eating anyone and anything—were native to the southern swampier sections, rather than the hillier north. One of those would have really ruined their night.
By the time they reached Qahrvirna’s tower home, Jair’s imprints were starting to solidify. Being down to one arm’s worth of slots for imprints, he simplified his usual gravity and lightning setup while retaining the basic utility of Absorb and Protect.
Lift was definitely staying, the additional mobility was too integrated into his preferred fighting style. Absorb and Protect being both on the same hand would throw off some of his rhythms, but better to have them than go without.
Maelstrom’s unprecedented destructive power shifted the priority heavily away from attacks and weapon amplifiers, allowing him to fully commit to mobility and deflection. He ended up pairing Lift and Gravity’s Echo on his upper arm, Absorb on his hand and Protect on his forearm, which he paired with Qahrvirna’s standby of Unseen Shield.
After changing his loadout so drastically, the new additions would take longer to imprint, but Absorb was very close to usable.
Qahrvirna’s tower sat in the middle of a clearing divided neatly into gardens and flowerbeds for everything from the mundane essentials of feeding her non-vampiric guests to the intensely magical herbs and fungus she used so heavily in her work.
Jair always felt more at home in the garden than the tower itself, despite the cozy interior. Its atmosphere always seemed a bit too welcoming, like it wanted to consume him and never let him leave. Much like Qahrvirna herself, but where she was all sharp clarity of desire, her tower felt softer. More temptation for ongoing complacency than a promise of brief bliss, a gentle lure rather than an irresistible one.
Qahrvirna shoved the door open unceremoniously and dumped out her collection of monster parts across the table.
Her tower was an open layout on the bottom floor, divided into sections not by walls but by furniture and a change in the carpet. Directly ahead was the dining table, which doubled as Qahrvirna’s worktable. To the left was her office space and reception area, complete with ostentatious throne behind an ornate desk, crimson wall hangings with nonsense symbols worked in black forming a sinister backdrop.
To the right, in severe contrast, sat a cozy library and sitting room. Warm lamps, plush furniture, and well-stocked bookshelves that wouldn’t look out of place at the royal library.
The rear section behind the library contained a sleeping area, or at least a very large canopy bed with accompanying dresser and tables, while the section behind Qahrvirna’s study held her collection of alchemical ingredients, the more socially acceptable experimental subjects, and the obligatory oversized cauldron.
Beneath an area rug was a trapdoor down to her rarer alchemical ingredients and more extreme workshop, but since she welcomed all manner of visitors and refugees she kept most of the really messy stuff tucked away from casual perusal.
Between the alchemy section and sleeping area stood a tight spiral staircase leading up to the floor above. More bedrooms up there, Jair knew, and the floor above that rental workspaces and training areas.
He anticipated getting a lot of use out of those while waiting for word from Eythron, both the training rooms and the workshops.
While master constructists were faster and better equipped to create specific items, Jair had plenty of designs in his memory that belonged to no known maker. Many of these custom creations would be almost as time-consuming to explain as to create, so he elected to skip the part where someone else could copy his creations and do the work himself.
Qahrvirna was a better alchemist than he’d ever be, so he would outsource anything of that ilk to her. He’d dabbled in the field sufficiently to be a capable assistant if she needed a second pair of hands for anything---or, a hand and a half, currently---but alchemy wasn’t his preferred field. Too much time spent stirring or staring for his tastes. He preferred something more active.
Fortunately, there was plenty of active to be had. While Qahrvirna’s training rooms weren’t as state-of-the-art as Veshin’s, they were adequately stocked for Jair’s current needs.
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There was something comforting about the rhythm of the days at Qahrvirna’s tower. Tracing his imprints had become a significantly more complicated task now he only had one hand to work with, but he knew plenty of tricks to get around that.
Once he finished with his morning imprint tracing, he’d join Qahrvirna for a late meal. They’d discuss whatever was on her mind, which tended to be either ‘how to convince you to spend your nights down here with me’ or ‘check out this new alchemical interaction with these rare venix ashes’.
Jair fell into a semi-apprentice role, helping with any of the basic physical or magical labor that could be accomplished one-handed, and providing his consultation on matters where his knowledge overlapped with hers. For all that he’d forgotten the bulk of his lifetimes, some instincts stayed with him through it all.
The things his mind considered important enough to retain overlapped interestingly with Qahrvirna’s knowledge, making major jumps in some areas while leaving huge gaps in others. The fact that he had final results more often than the steps to reach that conclusion frustrated her to no end.
“But why does it work that way?” she’d often protest, to which Jair had no answer. The why had stopped being important a long time ago. If it didn’t directly contribute to the ultimate quest of forging an ascendant blade, the knowledge was unnecessary.
He’d been given a room on the upper floors, close to the stairs to the workshops and practice rooms for convenience. He spent most days running and stretching and practicing with Maelstrom whenever not actively helping Qahrvirna.
People came and went, usually alone, occasionally in small groups, every few days. Qahrvirna greeted them all in person, whether she was in her tower or tending her gardens, her guests/customers were her highest priority.
Though he caught the occasional looks from visitors or overheard them talking about him derisively as yet another of Qahrvirna’s toys, he paid it no mind. It didn’t matter what they thought. As long as they carried her messages to their contacts in turn, he would get what he needed eventually.
In addition to sending messages to Eythron or his connections, he sent a commission through Qahrvirna for a constructed replacement hand, though given the measurements and precision necessary on something of that ilk it would take quite a while.
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“Your mentor is hard to find these days,” Qahrvirna said, three weeks into their unlikely cohabitation. “Are you willing to consider a class change?”
“Maelstrom is restricted to mageblade, so, no. If I changed or removed my class, it would become incompatible.” He shuddered to imagine what could happen then. A bound item, part of his soul, but no longer of the same nature as the remainder of himself? That was something he hoped to never experience.
“I could find you a master reforger, I know someone in Suthyrel who’s quite skilled.”
“Hajvoth Nires? He’s good, but he wouldn’t know what he was looking at here. I barely know what I’m looking at, and I can see the full soulmap.”
Qahrvirna passed Jair a measured jug of condensed tortoise oil. “You’re familiar with his limitations?”
“I’ve consulted with him in the past.” The patterns along the jug’s handle lit up as he allowed it to connect to his manabody and draw away a thin thread of his energy. “Hajvoth is good, but he’s no Eythron. Sometimes, you need to break convention to escape the limitations of reality.” Jair waited until she had her two ingredients in hand, then poured the oil in at the exact moment as the others.
Qahrvirna watched the three liquids condense into a collection of slick orbs of various sizes, all dropping into the bucket below, sliding around one another as they settled. “I’d say convention isn’t the only thing you’ve broken.”
“Tyrla Condensate is a common enough interaction, nothing you wouldn’t have figured out eventually.”
“But why must it be three streams? Couldn’t the same reaction be obtained by pouring two of them into the third?”
“Clearly not.” Jair winked at her. “You of all people should know the value of technique.”
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As Jair’s spell imprints began to firm up into usable shape, he adjusted his daily routine to accommodate regular magic practice. The instantaneous activation he’d once enjoyed came with a lot of training mana and mind to perfect coordination, and that was something his current body didn’t possess. Especially with this new spell layout, though given the distinctive feeling of each imprint it was the least difficult adaptation to make.
In many ways, Jair was glad they wouldn’t be confronting Eythron immediately. The old madman’s standards were incredibly high. To face him without spells would be a clear route to failure.
He integrated the spells into his usual training routines, adding Lift to both himself and his targets and obstacles, amplified with various strengths of Gravity’s Echo for a vast gradient of control levels.
It wasn’t enough to let him fly, not with ambient mana levels as low as they were on the planet’s surface—though on Nuprima or someplace like Mount Sanctum, he could hover indefinitely if he didn’t need to do anything else with his mana. You couldn’t get much closer to it without a dedicated flight power. Changing direction was a matter of adjusting against the air, as Lift only functioned vertically, but it was great for scouting.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Qahrvirna asked, lying on her back on the table of weaponry and toying with a knife. “Because if so, I can think of some much more pleasant ways to go.” She grinned over at him.
“I’m practicing.”
She tapped the point of the knife against her chin, staring up at the ceiling. “I’ve had more than a few apprentices, you know. I can tell when someone’s pushing into overdraw.”
Jair glanced down at his glowing imprints as he hovered in midair. “This? This is nothing.”
“Have you ever cast a spell without consuming your entire manabody?”
“Of course.” He alternated his manabody between deep stretching—emptying it and dancing at the edge of overdraw to expand its capacity—and condensation to increase its boundary strength. Today was for stretching.
“Because if so, I haven’t seen it.”
“Your failure to pay attention is your own problem.” Jair flipped around to face her fully. “Why are you interrupting my practice, again? Do you need help with something downstairs?”
“Nothing important down there today.” She held up one hand to examine her nails, then started picking at them with her knife. “I was bored.”
“You. Bored. When we’ve just given you a whole cabinet worth of new ingredients to play with?”
She stretched, letting her hair drape over the back of the table as she twisted toward him. “I’d much rather play with you. Especially if you’re so eager to burn yourself out. I can tell already, you’d be absolutely delectable.”
“I’ll pass, thank you.”
“Every time, the same answer.” She flipped to her feet, dropping the knife onto the table as she did so. “Do you never get tired of denying me?”
Jair let himself drop to the floor, smoothly shifting from spell to stretching. “Do you ever get tired of asking?”
“I’m immortal.” She slinked forward, raising one hand in front of her as though grasping raindrops. “I have all the time in the world.”
“Not as much time as I have.”
“I do hope that’s a death threat,” Qahrvirna purred. She stepped right up close to whisper, “I knew you were cold, but you keep finding new ways to surprise me.”
Jair shrugged and continued his stretching routine without letting her presence interfere, however close she stood. “That’s more your kind of thing. I don’t usually threaten before I kill.”
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