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Phoenix was glad that the following day was one of their rare ones off as she practically locked herself in her room, begging the others for some alone time. The past few days of socializing and awkward encounters had left her completely drained, and she needed to recharge with some quiet reading and crafting hyper-focus.
She had used her Tome of Scroll Scribing to learn how to craft some of them herself after receiving it as a quest reward for retrieving Paul to take care of the Corrupted Golataur that had almost killed Uriel. She had even gone to Mother’s Cupboard to get some of the higher quality supplies required for the process when she was trying to get over her frustration with Paul making them sit out of the assault on Tulimeir from the army of Soul Reapers.
But then the battle actually happened. Her crafting projects were put on hold as her life got flipped upside down by the temporary loss of her mentor and the birth of the World Tree along with the Siege of Tulimeir itself and the reconstruction afterward… Needless to say, she’d been busy.
Now, however, she had room to breathe again and a legitimate excuse to keep her out of the public. So, she focused on her newest project of making scrolls that could help effectively replicate her presence on the battlefield.
Not every ability was compatible for turning into a scroll, requiring specific parameters and preparation along with the prepaid resource costs. Non-targeted Spell type abilities were the most common, followed by self-targeting Boons and a few very niche Utility abilities. Out of her own abilities, Phoenix only had five she could effectively turn into a scroll for anyone else to trigger by tearing and paying the Cost that she prescribed themselves.
She didn’t think her [Night Blade] was exceptionally useful for others since most people were already armed before looking to supplement with scrolls, so she forewent that one.
Her heal, [Dawn Rises], could be used with one of the preset activation costs. This effectively gave her four different versions of varying strength, but the strongest version would be the one most worth creating a scroll version of.
[Lunar Dream] was the third that she could do, but the downside to this was that she could only put in a specific manifestation of the effect based on her scribed intent. This made it versatile yet limiting since one of the biggest benefits was that she could adapt to the situation as it unfolded. The more generic use she could think of for others to leverage was instant ritual diagrams or the equivalent of a flash grenade of chaotic starlight birds.
Fourth was [Transversing the Stars] in a very limited capacity. She could set the parameters of the origin portal being opened where the scroll was activated with the destination portal preset from her own aural imprint of the area.
This meant she could potentially make some portals that would take them home and help her cut down on the need for waiting five minutes between sending half her party. Considering how many times they had needed to emergency-evacuate, this was a very tempting option.
The last ability —and most impactful in her opinion— was her [Supernova]. It would still be a risk to use since it would extract the cost again when torn, but it would allow other people to pay that cost and even let her get around the extremely long cooldown period by casting her own and then using a scroll after replenishing her resources. She wouldn’t be able to chain cast these or any of the other scrolls she made, unfortunately, since, much like potions, they would cause a severe recoil effect if used too quickly in succession.
Too many potions drunk, one right after the other, would cause Mana Poisoning, similar to eating a Mana Bit of a higher Caste. Tearing too many scrolls taxed a person’s Mana Channels, causing them to be effectively silenced from casting any ability or activating another scroll. The toll of this damage depended on a few factors, the first being that it was lessened if the spell was one of your own, and the second was if the spell shared an attunement type, further lessening the disruption.
The memories of the swarms of monsters overtaking the battlefield also pushed her to focus on this latter ability. How many lives could have been saved if other Adventurers had these scrolls to take out the monsters with? If she had thought to provide these sooner, would others like Simmon still be here?
That alone motivated her to focus on this project for the day at least, keeping the ability on cooldown as she inscribed them into the magical stasis of the scrolls. It almost took her the whole six-hour cooldown just to prepare the scroll to accept the spell, so it was a busy day. Steady yet productive work would help calm her on a different level from the physically exhausting sparring sessions.
She dipped her Arcane-attuned Arcanist’s Quill into the small inkwell she had purchased for about a dozen Sapphire Mana Bits. The quill she had gotten for just one of the Emerald Bits she had gotten from her fight with the Renseres Priestess.
Despite her trying to be as careful as possible while using the Fire magic imbued ink, the first scroll she had tried inscribing had burst into flames when she pressed a bit too hard against the special vellum. The Light-attuned parchment had been extremely hard for her to find even before the city was partially destroyed. When she had finally stumbled upon some, she had needed to part with one of her Ruby Mana Bits for the entire stack of it they had.
To her added annoyance, she needed to use her Prism Brush to replace the section of her hair that had burnt up from the minor conflagration before restarting the time-consuming endeavor. The amount of time and money she was pouring into the item made her wonder if perhaps this wasn’t the most efficient use of either. However, it seemed silly to have the capability to make scrolls and not use it.
That was not the only time she had to repair her hair that day. Out of the thirty sheets of vellum she had managed to obtain, twenty-eight had become nothing more than very pretty ash, while almost half of her Fire ink was used up in the partially finished attempts.
Phoenix grinned after the second successful Scroll of Supernova was finished but didn’t manage to make a third before running out of the parchment. She decided to drop one off as a donation to the AOA building before their next shift on the wall. For once, she was happy with the feeling of finally being able to contribute some of her own skills to the reconstruction and resupplying efforts.
For the other scroll… well, she was pretty sure Rayna would love to be able to try the ability for herself.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
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Rayna was happily munching on the sandwich she had bought while sitting on the bench among the rooftop garden of the Wayland Estate with her current date. It was one of the few quiet places in the city she had access to that could provide a decent romantic atmosphere for the pretty dryad chatting beside her.
“So then they let me cast my [Evergreen Sentinel] on top of the freaking building! I could see the whole city from that high up!” Mohala exclaimed, recounting her time during the Siege of Tulimeir, “I’m just glad it didn’t attract that big fiery bird thing.”
“Me too,” Rayna murmured, not liking the idea of what might have happened if that giant aval had crashed into the Teras Estate instead.
“I think Tinsel was a bit jealous when I mentioned earlier how cool it would be to get one of those birds as a summon,” the dryad added with a laugh, and the silvery little bird on her shoulder twittered its annoyance.
“Speaking of jealousy, though,” Mohala continued, sliding an impossibly soft hand down the bard’s arm before entwining their fingers, “Polissa was curious about exactly what kind of relationship Dazien had with Phoenix, and I promised I’d try to scout out the situation for her before she attempted her crazy idea.”
Rayna almost choked on her sandwich from laughter, “They are literally siblings now, Mo.”
“Psh, adopted siblings. Some people don’t care about that kind of thing, especially when it’s obviously done for status.”
“No, just no. And I mean this in the nicest way possible, but Polissa doesn’t have a candle’s chance in the abyss.”
“Oh?” The dryad got a mischievous look as she asked in an innocent tone, “Is Phoenix more into the rugged lone Paladin-types?”
“Why would you even suggest that?!” she replied in mild horror.
“Well, not interested in Po or Daze makes one wonder if there was an alternate reason she joined House Wayland, you know?”
“Gods no. Paul being way too much of a dad aside, I don’t think Phoenix does romance. Like at all.”
“Oh,” Mohala replied, wilting slightly as she added, “Poor Po.”
“Poor Phoenix was my thought at first,” Rayna tried to explain, “Like, I thought it might have just been her being naive? She didn’t get out much back on her home world. But then Saiya confirmed that she wasn’t feeling, like, even flutters of attraction from seeing a hot girl —or guy, I guess— and then it just made me a bit sad for her.”
“I mean, if she’s happy and fine without that, then it’s whatever, yeah? Not like it should really matter to anyone aside from those who would be interested, but then it’s kinda the same situation if a guy tried to get with you, right?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” she murmured, taking another one-handed bite of her sandwich, thinking a bit more while she chewed, before swallowing and adding, “I guess it just seems lonely to me.”
Mohala laughed, “It’s not like she’s ever alone, really. That’s the greatest thing about Familiars. Plus, she has you and the rest of your party. A pretty brother with his shadow. Those two are a thing, right?”
Rayna shifted slightly, “I mean, I think it’s obvious, especially lately with Uriel relaxing more around everyone, but I don’t think they really want that getting spread around, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk about that with others.”
The dryad grinned, “This might be a gossip session, but I won’t spread anything you don’t want. I owe your party a lot; the least I can do is keep their secrets.”
Despite the perfect opening for what Rayna had been waiting to talk about arriving, she hesitated. She had told Dazien earlier about her courting Mohala officially now, both out of professional courtesy and because she was just super excited about it and wanted everyone to know, but she hadn’t exactly made it clear to him about the future.
She had made assumptions and now that Mohala had pointed out the fact that their group had quite a few secrets attached to them, she wasn’t sure she could properly ask now.
Ah, screw it, I’ll ask forgiveness later.
“Mo, once the blood moon finishes, my party is planning to do some traveling outside the tundra…”
“What? Why?” the summoner asked in confusion, “With the magic levels rising, I’m sure you can stay and progress here for a long time.”
“We’re still only Sapphire. We’ll need a dedicated escort to get AOA missions once it hits Emerald for real.”
“Please. You guys have the freaking Saint of the Sacred City in your party; Emeralds will be begging to help.”
“Are people really calling the World Tree that?” Rayna asked, distracted by the title.
The dryad gave her a flat look, “It’s an alien tree that cleanses Corruption, created and lived at by the Saint of the Celestial Pantheon. Be glad it didn’t get a much longer and elaborate name.”
“I actually hope Pati somehow vetoes that and gives it a better name. Maybe something one-word that actually sounds like a name instead of a placeholder.”
“You’re tangenting,” Mohala pointed out.
“Is that even a word?”
The dryad gave that little laugh that made her stomach do a flip, “It is now. So explain why you all are running off after the blood moon.”
“Well… I mean, it’s kind of another secret, but we have this quest that we need to go on.”
“Quest? Like from the gods?”
“Yep. I don’t think I can give details right now, but… well,” Rayna swallowed before saying in a rush, “I wanted to know if you wanted to come with us.”
“Go with?” Mohala asked in surprise.
The bard nodded fervently, “Yeah, we— Well, it might take a long time for us to finish it, and I’m not sure when we’d be getting back. I… well, I don’t want to be away from you for that long so I just thought, you know, maybe you could come with us? Join our party and help us?”
To her disappointment, the dryad frowned and said, “I don’t know…” then quickly added, “It’s not that I don’t want to go with you or help out! There’s just a lot for me to do here, too. Even though our party is a bit… in shambles at the moment, I don’t want to just abandon Polissa. She’s just started getting back to being more of her old self. Losing Simmon really shook their whole family, plus the guilt she feels for Tanner, and I don’t want her to suddenly lose me too, you know?”
“I guess I can understand that,” she replied, ears drooping no matter how much she wished they wouldn’t.
After a couple of minutes of quiet eating, as they thought over things, Mohala spoke up with an idea, “Hey, do you think Phoenix might just be heartbound?”
Rayna was thrown off by the shift in conversation and confused about the term. “Heartbound?”
“That might just be a term from my own culture,” the dryad explained, “It refers to someone whose heart needs to slowly be opened through a deep and meaningful bond before they can feel attracted to someone.”
“I mean, maybe? Why do you ask, though?”
“Well, if we can get Po and Phoenix to become closer and form that emotional bond… Then perhaps she can come on this quest too?”
Rayna grinned, “That’s brilliant. That’ll keep us together and help both of them not be lonely, too. It’s killing two birds with one stone!”
The summoner whipped her head around to level narrowed blue eyes at her, causing her to tense at whatever mistake she had obviously just made, “Okay, first, that is offensive,” the dryad said as Tinsel gave an indignant twitter for emphasis, “Second,” Mohala broke into a smile that helped relax even her bones, “Where are we going to have them oh-so-coincidentally run into each other first?”
Rayna laughed, and they began hatching their plot of combining the remaining Chaos Summoners with King’s Dream.