Broken Lands

No one had much to say after Aymini finished her story. Fortunately, they were rescued from the gloom of the tragedy that led to the founding of Fallen Kestii by the arrival of Revina and Vramt carrying an unusually large bowl of berries and sweet chilled cream. A single glance at the pair told Sophia that they were both immensely pleased with themselves.

Aymini could tell, too; she seemed to relax as they got closer. “You did it, then? Got Revina the Vocation she wanted?”

“Close enough, at least!” Revina piped up before her father could say anything. “Wafting Wind isn’t exactly Master of Winds, but it’ll do as a starting point. It’s a wind-based magic Vocation, and that’ll do. I should be able to push it in the direction I want with the first specialization.”

“It sounds like a wind-based support Vocation,” Arryn said with a smile that seemed a bit more genuine than the ones he’d given Sophia. “Don’t be afraid to go all in on that; support Vocations aren’t the ones that get the stories sung about them, but they’re the ones that have the easiest time finding a higher-Level team. Wind’s popular; you’ll be a bit too weak at first, but it won’t be too long before you can help people move around the battlefield or impede enemy movement.”

Revina nodded happily. “I have two spells, Buffet and Slice. Slice is an attack, because everyone should have something, and Buffet is a distraction spell.”

Sophia felt a spike of envy. She didn’t have any spells from the Guide yet, and while she could have a second Ability, she hadn’t actually bought it yet. Even so, she’d been through a lot more than Revina and would have the same number of Abilities. Sure, her Hallow was probably better in the long run because it had more different types of slots, which would mean that she’d be able to buy slots without the cost going up as quickly, but it still stung a bit now.

“Eat your berries before you go show them off,” Vramt told his daughter with an indulgent smile. “Now, who else wants berries and cream? I got enough that everyone can have a celebratory helping.”

The second helping of not-quite-ice-cream was just as good as the first, though Sophia was certain she wouldn’t have wanted a third without a break to get over the sweetness. Before she could forget, Sophia pulled up her Status and bought the Aura Armor Species Ability. It gave her a good excuse to eat slower, too, and she needed that with all the sweetness.

Sophia

Spells:

Unaffiliated Abilities:

Warped Human

(Empty, 1, 1)

Innate Communication (Bonus, Free)

(Feather Image)

Body: 5

Martial Abilities:

Species Abilities:

Core: 7

(Stunning Roar, 1, 1)

(Aura Armor, 1, 1)

Shield: 10/10

Spellblade Abilities:

(Imbue Blade, 1, 1)

Wisps: 11

Spheres

Spellblade (Hallow)

Level:1

Collector (Linked)

Level: 1

Revina finished the treat first. She vibrated in place like she’d had far too much sugar even though Sophia knew she’d had less than most of the others. It had to be excitement. Sophia couldn’t help but smile at her; it was nice to see someone so excited and anxious to share. It brought back the memories of her own first adult Path Ability. She’d shown it off to her parents in a scene that seemed surprisingly similar to what she saw here, though her parents had insisted that she not use Firebolt inside. It probably wouldn’t damage anything, but they didn’t see any reason to take the chance.

Revina contained herself until her father finished his berries. Sophia was pretty sure he deliberately drew it out to tease his daughter; Vramt didn’t normally eat slowly, but this time he savored every berry. When he finally set his spoon down after scraping up the last bit of sweetened cream, Revina bounced to her feet. “Can I show you now? I want to try it out!”

“Outside,” Aymini waved her hands at Revina and ushered her towards the exit. “You’re low enough Level that you probably won’t hurt anyone, but you should build good habits. Always practice outside or in a training room you’ve cleared.”

Sophia had to suppress a laugh at how close Aymini’s words were to Sophia’s memories. Some things never changed, did they?

Revina rushed outside and didn’t wait for them all to arrive. Sophia heard Revina shout “Shahi-ka!” through the open doorway twice before she made it through the door to see her wave a carved wand for what had to be the third time, call out the same phrase, then quickly slash with the wand at a bit of moss that came down low on the wall. The patch of moss peeled away from the wall, leaving a patch of stone that was slightly lighter in color and almost looked sandblasted in the small area the Slice hit, but it was the Slice itself that held Sophia’s attention. It was barely visible, a distortion in the air that looked more like seeing in moving water than air; it wasn’t obvious but it also wasn’t invisible, the way the wind usually was.

The fact that “Shahi-ka!” sounded a lot like “shika,” the Bridge word that meant slice or cut, didn’t immediately seem notable to Sophia. You could say anything as a mnemonic for a spell; using an appropriate word was pretty reasonable compared to some of the chants she’d heard. Butchered Latin and Greek were especially common on Earth.

Sophia frowned. She’d seen quite a bit of wind magic in the past, and visibility was a sign of poor control or picking up things, not of the magic itself. Wind magic should only be visible when it was strong enough, carrying something, or when some form of mana sight was used. “Is there a reason the wind slice is visible?”

“What do you mean?” Revina sounded puzzled. “This is how the ability works, I just trigger it and it slices through whatever I want it to. I can make it really small, too!” Revina searched the courtyard for a moment, until she found a pine needle. She held it up, scrunched up her face in concentration, then sliced through it. The slight distortion in the air was harder to see because it was so much smaller but it was still there. “See? A lot less obvious.”

“That’s probably a good thing to practice,” Sophia agreed. “A small, solid hit in the right place can be more impactful than a broad smash that doesn’t hit anything important. That’s not what I meant, though. Making it invisible isn’t about making it smaller. It’s about putting all of your mana to use doing what you want it to do. Give me a few minutes and I’ll see if I can show you what I mean.”

“She’s correct,” Vramt told his daughter, “But you also have to practice the big magics. They’ll wear down a shield far faster than the small ones, even small well placed ones, and the practice may enable you to gain Abilities for larger scales. That’s a few Levels off, but remember that you have to practice things for improvements to show up as Ability options.”

Sophia pulled a little mana from her mana pool, her core. It came easily, even when she attuned it to be Air. It was nowhere near her best Affinity, but for this it would be fine. She’d practiced the exact spell she wanted to use for months when she was younger, before she had her first Path. Creating spells without the specific Abilities was a great way to get a mage-type Path, so she’d created spells based on her family’s Abilities. It was just as well that she’d practiced the spell enough to almost be able to cast it in her sleep, since she once again didn’t have a way to see the spellform she was creating.

Revina nodded. She looked somber for a short moment, then grinned. “Time to try out Buffet! I think you guys need to be moving around so it can slow you down.”

“Try it on us when we’re not moving first,” Aymini suggested. “Abilities have some flexibility and they often don’t give all of the details. Buffet sounds like it might be an annoying ability even when we’re not walking.”

Revina took that as permission to use her new spell on her parents and gleefully repeated the chant “Dast Koon!” as she lifted her want in an upwards motion. Slightly visible shimmers in the air slammed sideways into Aymini and Vramt. They weren’t knocked off balance, but some of them hit well enough to stagger one or the other and made them steady themselves. When Aymini tried moving forward, the first few steps were slowed but Revina soon learned that it was better to hit when Aymini was on only one foot and didn’t yet have the other one in position to catch herself. Aymini didn’t get knocked to the ground, but she definitely moved a lot slower than normal as she tried to keep from falling.

This time, Sophia took a little more note of the words. Dast koon was also in Bridge; it meant turbulence, more or less, though “moving winds” might be a closer translation. Buffet would also work, though it wasn’t a great translation. The overlap was odd but didn’t yet seem significant; a second language shared didn’t make things all that much weirder than the first.

Revina ran out of mana fairly soon after she started splashing her parents with her new spell. Even after she was done, Sophia had to wait for her to stop cackling at Aymini to even try to get her attention.

“Revina?” Sophia called out to the young woman as she turned to head back into the building in triumph. “Can you wait a moment? I want to show you what I meant, earlier.”

Revina turned back with a puzzled look on her face. “Sure?”

Sophia walked over to another patch of moss and made sure Revina was watching. “I can only do this once without setting it up again, so please watch carefully.” She waved her hand at the moss. It was a bad habit; she didn’t actually need gestures. They were just for show, a show that she needed to remember not to use. She’d always been told not to reveal herself so easily.

A strip of moss both wider and longer than the one Revina stripped disappeared from on top of the stonework. Sophia frowned; she’d used too much mana. She’d tried to cut it down to be similar to what Revina was doing, but she must have overestimated the moss’s resilience. Not being able to see the spellform definitely didn’t help.

“How did you do that? I couldn’t see anything! And you didn’t say anything, either!” Revina sounded amazed.

Sophia shook her head. “It’s just a wind spell I learned from my aunt’s best friend; it’s very similar to your Slice, so I thought it might help to know what I mean when I say wind spells shouldn’t be visible. That’s a waste of mana; don’t harden the air, move it. Speed is your friend with the wind.”

“I was wrong about which of you would get the most offers at the Vocation Registry and have the easiest time finding a higher-Level team,” Arryn interrupted. “Everyone wants a war mage on their team if they’re tackling things a little out of their reach, and war mages are really rare.”

“What’s a war mage?” Sophia had never heard the term. Any sort of mage could fight in a war; it could be really messy, too, just like any other large-scale weapon.

“People with Spells like yours, where you can spend time to gain more flexibility or power. You can do a powerful, wide area spell if you have enough time, can’t you?” Arryn sounded confident that she could, that he was only asking for the sake of completeness.