Closed Training at Dawn

[Sjal]

Winter 89, 124

The sun shined annoying up above as Sjal laid under a tree. She was resting after a hard initiation, though she felt that she was already ready to start experimenting with her newfound power. Off to her right sat a small gourd. It was filled with minerals that her teacher had given her. There was nothing special about them, but the idea was that she could use them to get some practice in no matter where she was. She imagined that one day she would be able to carry around a large amount of special minerals and use them to devastating effect. For now, she would settle for what she had.

She had put a lot of effort into training and fighting as of late. Her legs were strong enough to let her walk for hours at a time, even if doing so made her want to cry. A breeze woke her from her rested state. She'd been nearly about to fall asleep as she was waiting for her teacher to arrive. The woman was late and it didn't look like she'd be coming along any time soon. She stared up at the clouds up overhead then got to her feet and looked around. Nope, no sign of her.

She'd waited a day, hadn't she? She ought to be able to do something… right? She was an ascended exodii – she could use virtually limitless amounts of aether at low levels. She walked over to the small gourd and tied it to her waist. She fiddled with the straps so that it fit a little better then she put her hands together. It was a special way of doing canting that she had only ever seen people in Jian attempt – hand signs. Or sign weaving, however one wanted to call it.

The whole concept of using hands for metaphorical expression was odd to her. She was used to waving her hands around, but the people here had a specific way of doing things. It was like certain techniques had an exact series of steps that one took. Perhaps using them in the same way every time you used a certain move was a way of conditioning your body to do the technique more correctly.

She followed along to a scroll that she pulled out of her bag and rolled open. Supposedly one could learn a lot from simply copying down what was written in scrolls. She'd gotten this one from a library and was surprised it was in such good condition. The scroll detailed the process of lifting a stone from the ground and pushing it like a weapon. It also hard parts in it about shaping stone into a shuriken or a knife.

Useful.


All casts at Novice level and are Free

 

[Raya]

Raya walked to the tree that they were due to train at. Not only Sjal ought to be trained but she needed to learn too. She had few reserves to work with because she had used so much magic the previous day. Even if she couldn't practice much, she could watch to get ideas.

She came to Sjal who was reading a scroll. Raya said "hi, glad to see you survived" while skimming the scroll from over her shoulder. It made almost no sense even though the words were understandable. They were the first words Raya had read since being reborn.

"You're trying to learn how to manipulate the earth. That must be hard." She sat down. She was still tired. A black tendril came out of her hand which she used to scratch a spot on her back she couldn't reach.

"I wonder where Ankora is. I haven't seen her since breakfast."

 

[Sjal]

Sjal smiled when she saw a familiar figure approach. It would be nice to have company.

"Yes, I'm also glad that I survived," she admitted, "and yes, I'm going to try… but who knows if I'll succeed. I take it you also want to train? Feel free to use your powers as you see fit… so long as they don't interrupt my own studies. As for Ankora… I haven't seen her either. I was waiting but I decided to just get started on my own."

She wondered what someone like her would even want to work on. If she could create tendrils like that, then there was no telling what else she could do. Could she disperse her body and possess people? How did one train that sort of thing?

Leraning how to move rocks seemed with a doubt to be a lot easier than learning how to teleport or make portals or do all that other stuff. This was supposed to be one of the easier things that a beginner could do, but the scroll said that advanced mages should be able to produce and control many at once.

By the time she was done reading the scroll, it was late in the morning. It was winter but the sun kept the temperature bearable. Now it was time to go through the handseals again and practice them in depth. After fumbling along for a good half hour she decided that she was ready to try it out. She put her hand on a rock on the ground and extended her aether to it. She did her best to move it, and to her surprise it actually did move.

She started forming the handseals and she could see that the stone started to change shape as well. It was then that she saw the genius of the handseals – each one was tied to an intent. When she performed one seal she knew that she was supposed to lift the rock. Another seal told her that she was supposed to be shaping it. The steps were right there in her head. She kept performing the seals to shape the stone, noticing that each time she did a cycle through them that the stone became flatter and more pointy. It was almost like a star now.

A hand reached out and grabbed the rock as she simultaneously released her metaphorical grip on it. She turned it over to inspect it and found that it had actually gotten a little too flat. She put pressure on the edges and it simply snapped in half.

"Damn," she said to herself. She furrowed her brow then tried to shape another stone. Her self assigned goal for the day was to get at least one functioning shuriken. One that actually looked right and could be thrown without breaking into pieces. This time around she found that it was a lot more firm as she was sure to keep it thick, plus it was sharper too as she had figured out the trick to pressing the tip of an edge to be pointy.

She tossed it and it didn't shatter when it hit the ground, to her relief. It had some cracks on it though so there was room for improvement. She'd made a good start and she would do better. She supposed the most important part was working on the proper shape. The scroll had a drawing of what a shuriken looked like, but it wasn't that great of an artistic representation. It took her a couple tries but she was able to get it into a much better looking shape compared to before. She made a handful of shuriken but some of them lacked pointy ends. It was somehow easier to make new ones from scratch than to try fixing one of her screw ups. Most of them at least looked like shurikens. Though she could tell that she was getting mentally tired of looking at the same shape over and over again.


All casts at Novice level and are Free

 

[Raya]

"I am very new to this world. I wish I knew what I should train. So far I have discovered abilities seemingly at random. Like how I came to be here in the first place. Even this black tendril of mine, I do not truly know how it works. It is like an extension of my body. It is effortless for me to use as far as I can tell."

Watching Sjal work on manipulating a small stone was not very amusing or entertaining or fun. That was how training was. Boring slow progress.

Raya did not try to use magic reserves. She practiced extending and retracting her tendril. She knew there must be more she could do with it by instinct but she resisted.

"If she does not come soon I may go find her. She may have forgotten that we were here or we could be in the wrong place."

 

[Sjal]

"Hmm, I don't know what to say," Sjal said with a frown to her companion. "I believe your power is called apparation. It's what lets you shift to a less visible state, I think."

She tried to think back to her teachings. All kids learned this sort of thing where she was from. A well rounded education about the arcane was important for preparing future warriors and potential mages to be as useful as possible. She also knew that someone like herself ought to even be able to apparate, but she wasn't about to try doing that quite yet. It wasn't that she thought she would fail, but she feared succeeding and not being able to turn herself back to her normal state.

"And you certainly could go find her, if you're getting impatient," she added.

But with practice came perfection. As she kept at it, she began to perfect bit by bit. She could now get most every rock to shape into a shuriken shape with all the correct parts. She had memorized the seals and she had managed to make them sharp enough to make her hesitate to test their edge against her skin. She now thought she could try adding some flair.

She held out a hand and focused on one of the shuriken and slowly moved it through the air, imagining that she was using it to stab someone in the back. Controlling it was harder than she thought it would be, and she couldn't exactly 'toss' it like she imagined. It was a constant, steady movement. When she tried to fling it, all it did was make her lose her grip on it.

Realizing she was sweating, Sjal turned and took a gulp of water. She was tired, getting hungry, and she really ought to have slept. She had been going at it for a while now. Still, she didn't think she ought to leave this spot. If she left then Ankora would probably think that she had been late, instead of the other way around. "I'll give her another hour," she told herself. "After that, I'll teleport to get some food and hopefully make it back in time…"

Walking back to the tree were she had left her stuff, she picked up the next scroll she had gotten and read it over. "This one's supposed to have something to do with crumbling rock," she said with a cocked brow. The idea of making a rock crumble was something that she liked. She quickly settled down and began to work on reading the lengthy document. More specifically, she looked for the seals again. That was perhaps her favorite part about being an elemental mage in Jian.

She found them towards the center and nodded while she read them over. They were pretty simple which was good because that implied that it wouldn't require that many steps. That also implied that it would be a quick technique to perform. She began to practice them in her head first to memorize them and then she performed them physically. It would not take her long to move to other parts of the scroll.


All casts at Novice level and are Free

 

[Raya]

"Apparation ~~it sounds familiar." Lots of things sounded familiar but without useful meaning behind the memories. She associated the word with ghosts and she kind of felt like what she thought a ghost must feel like. Attached to this world but deserving to be dead and gone.

Raya left to find their teacher while Sjal practiced. She found Raya taking a nap in her house.

"You did not want to come train us?" Raya asked when poking her with a tendril.

"I must have dozed off. Sjal has not killed herself yet has she?" The teacher asked.

"No she is doing well. I also practiced using my tendrils." Raya said.

Ankora yawned and then closed her eyes again. "Keep at it. I had a long night. Maybe tomorrow~~"

Raya did not know what to say so she said nothing. She went back to Sjal.

"She was sleeping and told us to keep practicing."

 

[Sjal]

"Sleeping?" Sjal asked incredulously, "go figure. I suppose she might be tired from her other duties. We're hardly her only students. Maybe she is throwing us into deep waters so we can work out the basics on our own."

"I'll probably wrap up within a few hours," Sjal continued, "I'm used to training long hours. If you're getting tired you ought to go get some rest."

She smiled then looked back at the scroll. First thing was first, she needed a good stone in a good shape. After she mastered the technique she ought to be able to crumble most any normal stone, but for now it seemed like it was best to only work with those that were good and round. She began to practice making a ball of rock. The scroll told her that the perfect size for a beginner was supposed to be fist sized. This made her stop and think about what she was doing. A ball the size of her hand was kind of large, no? She let out a little laugh. she was kind of dreading spending hours working on a new shape.

As she worked, she noticed some birds land and start pecking at the ground. "Shoo," she said, "you're distracting me." Moving the small floating ball into her hand, she guessed that she had it as good as she was gonna get it.

Controlling the stone so that the ball would float back to were it was, she began to practice the hand seals. Soon, when she was sure it was going to work, she would redo the hand seals and released a little bit of her aether. At first nothing happened. she looked over the scroll, still having the ball hang in the air, then looked back up at the ball and shrugged. Doing it again, she released more aether and was surprised as the rock cracked a little, sending little bits of rock flying everywhere.

The unexpected development made her blink. She had been lucky and was able to throw up her arms in front of her face before any of the shards hit her. Looking at her arm, she noticed that the rock had torn into her sleeves. Looking around, she saw that she had also hit part of her gourd. After she made sure she was alright, she stood up and began berating herself. How could she be so stupid?

Now that she knew what to expect, and that she was a little bit more prepared, she slipped off her winter coat and threw it to the side. With her adrenaline dying down, she realized that she hadn't been in that much danger. She'd been startled, that's all.

She held out her hand and brought the ball back over to her so she could inspect it a little more. The fracture was fairly large and she didn't think she would be capable of mending it. "Ah well, onto the next," she muttered as she tossed it aside. She commanded another small rock to come over to her. She worked on rounding it out and morphing it to be as even as she could get it. She tried compressing it, but found that it wasn't possible to make the rock smaller. The physics behind that baffled her. Why couldn't she make a rock smaller? No matter how much aether she put into the technique, it still would not shrink.

Compressing the rock did nothing but cause cracks to form. Those she was able to mend. Finally, she got it to the shape that she wanted it. She then hovered it in front of her and when she did the handseals this time she expected the rock to shatter again. When nothing happen, she looked up and saw that the ball was still just floating there. What did she not do? She thought she'd done everything the same.

She lowered the sphere and thought about it but nothing came to mind. Finally she lifted it back into the air to try again. Same thing - nothing happened. She was getting a little angry and put a lot more force into it. Sure enough, the rock crumbled into several chunks without sending shards flying everywhere.

"There we go!"


All casts at Novice level and are Free

 

[Raya]

Even though rest was a good idea, Raya did not leave. She felt an attachment to Sjal that she couldn't figure out. She felt a motherly feeling. She did not get this feeling around any of the beings she encountered in Avernus. She did not get that feeling around the other people on Antarok. There was something strange about the girl. Being around her made her happy.

Raya's attachment made her sit and watch even after hours of Sjal's training. When Raya got very bored she slept and when she woke Sjal was still at it.

"You are able to use so much magic. More than I, and I thought I was naturally gifted. I envy your talent." She said. "Practice a little more then let us go get some nutrition. A growing girl like yourself needs to fill your belly. Even I know that the body has needs from time to time."

 

[Sjal]

Sjal raised an eyebrow at her onlooker's insistence to stay and watch. She wasn't going to force them to leave, and the company did feel nice to have… so she shrugged and got on with her training.

"Yes, we'll get some food in a bit. I can get us to a nice eatery quickly… just give me a few…" She couldn't deny that she needed a break, but she knew that she would slow down her progress considerably if she kept taking those. She needed to stay focused and vigilant.

Now that she had done it it, she sat down to think through why she'd failed before. She'd thought that it would be easy to 'gently' crumble a rock but it took a lot more effort. Looking back at the other stones strewn across the ground, she figured she needed to work on speed. She wanted to be able to crumble rocks in a pinch so that she could use them as little makeshift weapons. She could only manipulate so much rock at a time, so breaking off chunks of rocks from larger ones seemed like a very practical skill to build up.

She imagined that an opponent was rushing her just as she was trying to finish off another enemy. She threw her hand out to the side to grab hold of a larger rock. She focused on it and then performed handseals… sure enough a crack started to form to split it in half. She then took the manageable piece of rock and threw it at the imaginary attacker. It hadn't been a quick process. If she'd been in a real fight, she probably would have died or would have had to teleport off to the side to avoid being stabbed.

Training reminded her of what it'd been like when she'd first learned how to blink. She was a natural at teleporting, but she hadn't done very well in the early stages. It'd taken a few weeks before she'd felt comfortable blinking to new positions in a fight and even then she only did so in a controlled environment. It looked like she might be stuck experimenting for a long time before she could show off her new abilities on the battlefield.

She imagined a new opponent coming at her. She imagined their speed to be more realistic than last time. As they charged, Sjal dodged the attack. She was still busy trying to command a piece of stone to break off when the opponent had reached her. She let out a laugh of joy as she kept dodging and blinking away from their attacks. She was starting to have fun with it!

As she dodged another attack, she was able to break off a chunk of earth and floated it towards them. Performing the hand seals, she watched as the rock would have hit the man in the face. If not, then making it crack like she'd done accidentally before would have sent shards into their face. She forced her aether into it which caused the rock to compress and start shooting off little shards. Sjal had to jump out of the way so she didn't tear her shirt.

For the next hour, That was all Sjal worked on. She practiced breaking off chunks of earth that were just the right size so that her attack would work better. She wanted to be able to be attacked by multiple people and use her new abilities to take them both out. She knew this wasn't going to happen on literally her first day of training, but it was a nice goal to work towards.

Sadly, a big grumbling sound from her stomach told her that it was time to take a break. She looked over to Raya and said, "alright, let's get going then." She sliced open a small portal and walked through it. Smells of meats and veggies would fill their lungs as they entered one of the bustling restaurants that she'd come to like.


All casts at Novice level and are Free
Except the Journeyman Portal at the end
1.56/3 master reserves from last thread
+.42 recovered over 1 day
-.11 portal

1.87 master reserves left

 

[Sjal]

Thread Title: Training at Dawn

Thread Summary: Sjal and Raya do some training to get more in tuned with their new powers.

Expected Rewards: +6xp Raya, +30xp Sjal

Thread Link: https://antarok.net/threads/training-at-dawn.510/#post-2719
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