Novaris: Adventure in the Shattered Fang Continent

Novaris. Sax. 903. AGC.

Not surprising anyone, Sol’s Cleric once again found Jasmine as healthy as can be and without any notable force influencing her body. The cleric even mentioned that these changes could be due to her lineage, and since no one knew Jasmine’s lineage, they couldn’t really say. It could be argued that since the changes were coming in spurts, the whole thing could be tied to her growth spurts.

Having heard this logical argument, Jasmine quickly made her own conclusion that her lineage was definitely the problem and began to shut down any other mentions of probes or tests.

Even the cleric’s request to be subject to a soul-peering ritual was rejected.

Jasmine was beginning to get tired of this whole nonsense.

Neladrie was a cleric in the Temple of Sol. She had short golden hair and the refined looks of any elf, yet her beauty was further elevated by the changes rankers can gain as they progress. Additionally, her golden irises and bronze-tan skin match well with the golden robes favored by Sol’s Clergy. Finally, her sun insignia also marked her as a High Cleric, placing her firmly in B Rank.

Neladrie was the cleric who dealt with Jasmine on both occasions when the young lady visited the temple. She was actually surprised the second time around as, after not hearing anything back from the girl, she assumed the necklace had worked perfectly.

The second time around, the changes Jasmine was experiencing were quite interesting, and her curiosity had been piqued. And as someone who studied magic, specifically the healing arts, and did not simply depend on Sol’s gifts, she wanted to learn what was causing Jasmine’s condition. Sadly, the girl had accepted her theory that her lineage was the cause of these changes and had refuted any further magical probing. Annoyingly, Neladrie could only blame herself, but as a healer, she had to let her patients know all their options.

Luckily, something that she wasn’t stopped from doing was her own research. However, before she did that, she had to get permission from the Grand Cleric, as she did not want to do anything that might give her Church of Sol a bad name.

After receiving permission from the Grand Cleric with the condition of not intruding upon Jasmine herself too much, Neladrie began her search for answers.

The first thing Neladrie did was head to the Free Spirit Orphanage. She went at night, knowing that-that was when Jasmine worked at the Smiling Inn Sun.

Once at the orphanage, Neladrie spoke with Ms. Emeline again and began questioning everything related to Jasmine, which gave her lots of information about her patient's past.

First, they had assigned Jasmine’s birthday to the twenty-third day of Novem. They had simply done this because Jasmine had appeared on their porch that day. She had also looked like a freshly born child, which added to the belief of her recent birth.

Neladrie also learned that a card informed of two siblings, yet only one had been left.

Ms. Emeline also explained that the next day, they had gone for a divination. And that after a few failures, the ritual succeeded, and Emeline saw a figure leaving Jasmine in the night.

Oddly, right after explaining that, she seemed to get some head pain, and a few seconds after thinking, she spoke up again, this time changing the story a bit. She apologized, saying she remembered wrong and the ritual hadn’t failed. It had instead run out of power, and a stronger one had to be remade. Afterward, she explained the village attack and the figure holding another bundle, who was assumed to be Jasmine’s brother.

Neladrie didn't understand the reason for leaving just one child behind, but people often did irrational things, so it was not truly surprising that one kid was abandoned.

However, what Neladrie found wrong was the odd retelling of the story. Something was clearly going on, but after asking Emeline to please test herself and being rejected, Neladrie gave up. After all, she was there as a guest on her own time, not as part of the church, at least not entirely.

Still, Neladrie took the first story of Emeline to be accurate and the second as some cover-up that was going on. There was no such thing as a divination ritual fizzling just because. If a divination failed, it was because something was blocking it from seeing anything. And if something was blocking the ritual, it would have set off some alarm bells in any church or city because now there was an unknown factor about.

It would have made sense if it had been another church member or someone connected to another powerful entity like an Ancient Dragon or someone involved with a Monarch. After all, these entities had secrets to keep and power to back the members under pressure. A newborn, though, one only relatively protected by the Free Spirit Orphanage, would have garnered quite the attention. Yet, no one had heard about any of this in the last 15 or so years.

This meant somebody was hiding something, and somehow, Zefree was involved. This was an even bigger deal as the goddess was part of the Novaria Alliance, the second-strongest force on the planet.

For now, though, Neladrie would keep listening to the story.

Following the whole divination thing came years of a child who was classified as shy and reserved in nature. Which, in truth, was nothing special.

What caught Neladrie's attention was the fact that said child could read any language. She had also learned that the child had developed a way to function in the dark and had eventually gained a sort of dark vision ability. The ability to have dark vision was odd, especially for a human, but it wouldn't be too unique. She knew of Moon and Dark Elves, which could do the same, and though Jasmine was human, some of her ancestors could have passed down such powers.

Now, being able to read all languages was a bit insane. Only a handful of entities simply gained this power just by existing. That is not to say the ability was extremely rare out in the world because scholars and powerful entities, in general, could use magic or spend time learning new languages. However, having it from such an early age was only seen in those who were related to the gods. These were often the children of celestial creatures who mixed with other entities and spawned, at the very least, half-celestial offsprings.

The issue was that Jasmine didn’t seem celestial in nature. Even if she was only related to a celestial by a dozen generations, the celestial nature would still overpower many other influences and would quickly expose her. So, the fact that she hadn’t shown any other aspects until later years meant something was possibly blocking her celestial power. Something like a fey.

Neladrie still believed that there was a possibility a fey was involved, especially after hearing how the orphanage had seemingly ignored these earlier signs. After all, such petty meddling was often a sign of a fey prancing about.

The issue was, why Jasmine?

The only thing that Neladrie could conclude was that one of Jasmine’s great-great grandparents was some Celestial Demi-God that ticked off a Fey Monarch and said Monarch was just now getting back at the Demi-God. Yet, that same thing made no sense because not even a Monarch could hold enough influence outside of their Realm to mess about with clerics in their own temples. Even if they attempted such a feat, the deity of said temple would notice and deal with it incredibly fast.

So Neladrie continued listening to the story, but apart from the divination ritual and special powers, Neladrie didn’t learn anything new from Jasmine’s story. This was mainly because they had already spoken of the visual changes during their previous visits, and there wasn’t much else to add. However, Neladrie did not want to be rude and waited until Emeline finished her story before excusing herself.

After speaking with Emeline, Neladrie decided to go to the Smiling Sun Inn and talk with Jasmine’s fellow workers. Naturally, she only went during the day as she didn’t want to impose too much on Jasmine’s life.

Thankfully, her station as High Cleric of Sol stopped the inn’s owner from immediately denying her entry.

So, Neladrie quickly explained why she was there, and a conversation sparked about Jasmine's work life. The owner, a pleasant elf named Heledh, began the story by saying that she was initially going to turn down the girl. As according to Heledh, Jasmine had just been way too timid, which was something a barmaid couldn’t be. However, as a favor to Emeline, the inn owner had hired the girl with the idea of firing her the moment she felt like Jasmine wasn’t up to par.

To Heledh’s surprise, Jasmine, though timid, was a hard worker, so she let the girl stay. The thing was, that wasn’t the end of the surprises for Heledh, as the girl had grown much over the last two years. The change seemed to begin with her hair, which she noticed began to change, and clearly, so had the inn’s customers. The other change had been slow at first, but along with the change in color came a change in personality. This change grew to the point where now Jasmine was so outgoing and friendly at work that she had become this odd sort of celebrity due to her unique look. The genuine surprise had been when Jasmine leaned into the barmaid role and bought a proper black-and-white maid outfit. This had been a few months back, and she had done it so it would match her new looks. At the time, the action had baffled Heledh as Jasmine had gone from this timid girl to a local celebrity in less than two years.

Having heard Heledh’s story, Neladrie was even more baffled by Jasmine's condition because, according to Emeline, Jasmine was still very reserved and spent all her free time in her room reading. In fact, she had been much more cooped up lately as she and Rose had stopped spending so much time together.

Thinking about Rose, Neladrie couldn’t help but smack her head as she mentally berated herself for not speaking with Rose more. The girl was training under the Solari, which would let Neladrie gain easy access to her. Not to mention that Rose would no doubt want to help her friend even more.

So Neladrie quickly headed over to the order’s ground and was welcomed by the Holy Captain, who hastily called for Rose.

For her part, Rose didn’t give her much more information than she had already gathered but was instead baffled by hearing about Jasmine’s latest change at her job. Rose hadn’t been at Jasmine’s job in months. The few times they did meet, they were always at some restaurant or park in the city, so she hadn’t seen Jasmine in her new clothes. Rose was so amazed by the idea of seeing Jasmine in maid clothes that Neladrie had to convince her not to approach Jasmine so suddenly.

Neladrie explained that she believed Jasmine was at a crucial point in her life and that everything was being held together by a thread. She explained to Rose her few theories about feys and celestials along with her latest about a possible curse. She hoped it wasn’t a curse, but it could very well be.

The issue with curses was that, like Innate Magic, which had its own magical rules, curses also operated under their own rules. And a curse could be causing all the issues Jasmine was experiencing.

The problem was that there was no real way to know about the curse without doing a ritual to inspect the affected creature. However, the issue with doing a ritual was that if the curse felt like its existence was threatened, it could very well control its host and have it make some rash decisions. So, if Neladrie or Rose went and said the wrong things, it could trigger the curse to have unpredictable effects.

Neladrie also explained that the likelihood of something insane happening was very low. As from what she had gathered, Jasmine’s possible curse had so far followed certain guidelines.

So far, the curse, if it indeed was that, had only triggered in spurts. The catalyst to these spurts had been Jasmine’s birthdays. Another constraint was that it seemed only to affect people relatively close to Jasmine, which explained why everyone’s memories were acting up.

There was also the chance that Jasmine’s shyness was probably part of the curse. If Jasmine was around fewer people, she would attract less attention to herself. Less attention for Jasmine meant less attention on the curse. This particular point was a bit flimsy as it contradicted itself. Why would it change Jasmine's looks if doing so would give Jasmine more attention?

It just didn’t make sense.

However, another thing the curse could explain was the divination ritual failing. This would only happen if the curse was attached to Jasmine’s soul, as divination rituals used souls as conduits. This meant if a soul was under the influence of a curse, it could very well sabotage itself.

Neladrie continued her explanation by pointing out why she believed Jasmine was on the edge of something. The main thing was her sudden change in behavior at work. There was a good chance this change could be her true self leaking through in an attempt to fight the curse. A fight Jasmine might be winning if her sudden attitude was her real one.

Luckily, Rose seemed to understand the situation and agreed to back off for the time being.

Hearing Rose was backing off was good, as Neladrie herself was still unsure about the curse idea. This doubt was once again brought forth by the Temple of Zefree. Neladrie questioned how none of the clerics there responded to this odd event with Jasmine. There was no way someone didn’t notice unless they did, and the local Temple of Zefree had been compromised somehow.

However, the issue with such a theory went back to Zefree herself. There was no way the goddess wouldn’t step in and fix her temple. Well, unless the goddess was hiding something.

After weeks of deliberation, Neladrie decided to approach Jasmine to try to convince her to undergo a soul ritual.

Sadly, Jasmine denied her and told Neladrie that she was okay. She had accepted her life and the changes it came with. She said she was happy with her job and was fine with enjoying life as it was.

And it was true.

Jasmine seemingly returned to normal for the following months, well, outside of the changes that had already been made. Even the presence in her head was gone, and to her, everything was all going rather great.