Before the Ascension
The young girl fidgeted at daily inspection. Her clothes still seemed uncomfortable to her, even months later. She looked out to the trees growing nearby and breathed out heavily, wishing for a part of her old life, her old friends to come visit her. She had convinced Sentinal to join her, but she never really got to see him since she was so heavily involved in magical training, and he in his martial training.
"I wonder if they'd let me learn more about swordsmanship..." she thought, barely even registering that the inspector was in front of her as she saluted him and stood for inspection.
"Sareesa, your collar is undone and your hair is still longer than regulation limits. I know you just want to learn more about your... gifts, but we consider uniformity of training and appearance to be of utmost importance when fighting demons, so that we can quickly identify rank and speciality." said the inspector marking something down on his form.
"Sorry sir, I'll have my hair taken care of right away." Sareesa said mechanically while buttoning her collar again. Truth be told, she had unbuttoned it earlier trying to get some more air, it didn't really help much though.
There were still several more priests and priestesses to be inspected, Sareesa stood staring off into the distance lost in her own thoughts.
"He's nicer to me than a lot of the other priests... I wonder if it's because I show so much promise, or because they plan on using me to normalize relations with the myriad of Troll tribes because I can speak their language, and am considered as a member of one even. I'm over-thinking things, I probably just remind if of a favored niece or something." Sareesa thought, though they soon turned away from the inspector and any preferences he might have among the priests and back to other matters.
"I hope I'm on cooking duty next week, when Van cooks the food is always overdone. I don't see why they don't let me take care of that duty constantly, everyone loves it when I show off what I learned back home. It's probably to teach us the importance of doing certain things even if we don't like them. It's a little ridiculous though, why should everyone have to suffer because someone else is a lousy cook." The inspector soon dismissed everyone and like all the others Sareesa walked over towards the building that housed the library and classrooms in which they were learning magic.
As Sareesa walked she felt a sharp pain shooting up her foot. She jumped back holding her foot in mid-air with her hands, her other foot keeping it's balance well enough. She looked at the bottom of her foot, nothing, and then at the ground where she saw a small, crystalline, purple stone jutting out of the ground. It must have been that which she had stepped on. She knelt over on the ground and picked up the smallish stone. It seemed to. . . glow. She pocked the stone and put it aside to investigate later. She hurried off to class, eager to learn as much as she could about magic from the masters.
She got into her healing class just in time and quietly sat down in the middle row, trying not to create much of a fuss. The older priest began to teach his young students, but Sareesa's mind kept drifting back to the rock she had stepped on.
"I've never seen anything quite like it before. Before I touched it, it was as lifeless as any other rock. On my touch though... it thrummed with quiet energy. I wish I was at home, the Elders there would know what this is surely. Maybe Priest Varsus knows what this is too, but he'll probably want to make sure I can't have it. Make sure I can't hurt myself or something." she thought, not really paying attention to what was going on.
"Sareesa, give me one way in which you can tell whether or not you will be able to heal someone that has been injured.""Damn, I should have been paying better attention, he always knows when I'm thinking about something else." she says quickly going through her memory to see if she can remember anything.
"Well, in my experience, you want to clean away any contaminants first, if those are trapped inside it can be worse than the healing itself. To absolutely tell if you can heal a wound, if you know how large your mana pool is, you can heal a wound about half of it's size in normal circumstances."". . . Good, leave the anecdotes to me though Sareesa." he said, going back to his teaching. Eventually the class ended and Sareesa approached him after the other Neophytes had left.
"What can I help you with? You seemed distracted during my teaching today." he asked.
"I want you to look at this peculiar stone I found earlier today, tell me what you can ascertain from it's details." Sareesa said producing the glowing purple crystal. Varsus looked at it stunned for a moment.
"Where did you find that 'stone'?" Varsus asked taking it from Sareesa's hands the glow immediately winking out as soon as it left Sareesa's touch.
"I stepped on it outside. When I went to pick it up it started glowing so I thought it might be important." Sareesa said. She looked uncertain, as though she expected that she might be in trouble at any moment now.
"I don't know anything about it if that's what you want to know.""This crystal is used to amplify spells." Varsus explains.
"It seems your talents allows you to activate it without thought, just by essence of touching your skin." Varsus says as he experimentally puts the crystal to Sareesa's head, the glow returning again as soon as it touched Sareesa.
"This is... interesting." Varsus says the wheels in his mind beginning to turn, trying to come up with reasons for what might be happening.
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Topic: Zealots and Demons, The Fall of a God, Turn 122: A Standoff (Read 136739 times)