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I Could Learn a Thing or Two [P TM]; Private Training Topic : Talya
Topic Started: Sun Mar 31, 2013 7:50 pm (434 Views)
Gravling
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Everto grumbled to himself as he walked the Debon Plains, he had been forced to take a 'leave of absence' thanks to someone sabotaging his experiment... it wasn't his fault that the plant spirit was angry, his assistant had refused to water it properly. The results were an angry sentient plant with flower hands that could shoot out foot long icicles... somehow... wild magic was still quite the mystery, one that would probably never be truly solved. Now he was just taking a stroll through the plains, looking for a powerful mage, one that he had only heard about in rumors, perhaps the mage would be willing to chat... that and he learned sometimes solitary mages were in fact powerful spellslingers, after all that was how he met the Infernos and quickly became one of their number.

He sighed as he opened his coat, looking at the glass drake sleeping in the large pocket on the inside of his coat. He stroked the glass drake hatchling's head and whispered to it, causing it to slowly lift it's head and let out the smallest squeaking yawn, before taking flight. Everto had decided it would be best to take the search to the skies, time was of the essence and he needed to find this mage before the Academy could send a spy to keep an eye on him. He jumped into the air as wings of flame sprouted from his back, sending him skyward along with his pet, now it would only be a matter of time before he would find the mage.
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Talya
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There was nowhere in Imythess, Talya decided, that had a sky as big and blue as the Deboni Flatlands. With virtually no hills for miles and miles, she could see forever in all directions. The grasses were flattened after a long, harsh winter, broadening her view even further. Green shoots were at ankle-height. The wanderer smiled at a little patch of early-blooming white flowers growing in between. Soon enough, the whole plains would be an explosion of vibrant color and delightful smells. This was how she planned every year: to be in the Debon Plains during spring wildflower bloom.

She had already been attacked once today. A small Nekator had wormed its way into her canteen, possibly when she dipped it in a nearby creek for a refill. The slippery wormish planebeast lunged out when she uncapped it several hours later, giving her quite the scare and leaving a nasty bite on the side of her hand. Talya thought she might buy a water-filter next time she reached a decent amount of civilization. This far out in the middle of nowhere, she would have to just make due.

Smiling up at the sky, she thought the total lack of clouds made it look even bluer. Talya hadn't let the plane-worm ruin her day. There was still so much daylight left to enjoy being alive. Between threats to her life, she knew to pull as much enjoyment out of existence as possible. As her eyes scanned the sky, her peripherals picked up something. A tiny disturbance plucked at the edges of her magical senses. Never too cautious, Talya stopped and whirled around to see what was in the sky. It was a creature with huge, burning wings. The body itself she couldn't make out, but she saw that it was flying straight towards her.

Fire. Elemental Plane of Fire. All the way out here in Debon? Talya didn't think more about it; she just acted.

She looked frantically around. There was nowhere to hide. Not even a small ridge to hide behind. Her breathing quickened. If she couldn't hide, there was no way she'd let the elemental or planebeast get the jump on her. The only way she had survived this long was by attacking first and asking questions later. Talya's feet spread just slightly into a more stable stance as she rolled back one of her jacket sleeves. Raw power flooded out of her body, sending a torrent of wind spiraling out through the carpet of grass in all directions and making her hair whip around her. Her eyes caught the light, teal irises gleaming brightly.

The energy coalesced around her exposed forearm. It took the form of arcing lightning, strong and bright. Talya lifted her arm and pointed it at the flyer, limb trembling from the sudden concentration of power. Then she released it: a single, tremendous bolt of lightning the size of one created by nature. However, it broke the laws of nature and shot into the air like a projectile, straight at the attacking elemental, threatening to obliterate it in a single blow. Talya didn't look at the result of the attack, instead using her time to start running as fast as she could down the road away from her pursuer -- just in case there were more on the way.
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Gravling
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Everto could see a speck on the ground... it was possible that this person was the mage he was trying to meet. He could feel the mana pool around the speck and he immediately went into a dive just before the lightning bolt could strike him. He growled as Pyris flew in front of him, now was the time for their new strategy, he took a deep breath and let out a stream of flames from his mouth, coating the little glass drake in it, but instead of harming it, the glass drake started to glow as it zipped forward, flying even faster than Everto. The little glass drake would fly ahead of the person who shot lightning at them and send out a stream of white flames to try and stop their movements.

Everto pulled up from his dive and kept flying forward, this time much lower to the ground and using his dive to increase his speed. He could see the stream of fire from Pyris' mouth and immediately set about using his pyrokinesis, controlling the fire as it tried to spread, instead it twisted and turned, trying to create a wall of white flames. Everto was close enough now to see the female mage, and he yelled at her, "What was the big idea throwing lightning at me!? Didn't your mother ever tell you not to attack strangers on sight? Friggin' rude to throw lightning at me ya know?"

He stayed hovering in the air, his flaming wings flapping to keep him in the air, and he mentally dismissed the flames that Pyris had tried to spread, snuffing them out with just a thought. Pyris himself was still powered up from Everto's fire breath and simply started to fly around, spinning, flying in circles, and other acrobatic feats for the young glass drake. Everto sighed as started to land, he raised his gauntlets as if to fight, veins of ice seemed to run through the gauntlets and their very presence suggested powerful magic was used to create them. Everto was already casting a spell as he spoke to her, his fingers dancing in the air as they wrote complex magical formulas, "I suggest you explain yourself before I incinerate you with a fireball." His flaming wings disappeared as he spoke, as if they had never truly been a part of his body.
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A small drake made entirely of partly molten glass appeared in front of the bolting Talya and breathed a huge gout of white flame. She skidded to slow herself down, almost falling over. It morphed into a wall of flames completely blocking her path. Against all logic, Talya didn't completely stop -- once she had gotten a view of the situation, she actually resumed running straight for the fire. She pushed her willpower into the flames, overwhelming whatever force was shaping them. A door-sized hole opened up in the flames, just wide enough and remaining just long enough for Talya to run through. The edges of her skirt and sleeves were scorched black and she could feel the intense heat while passing, but that was nothing compared to the threat of dying.

She prepared to make her escape or set up a proper place to take a stand, but then heard something unanticipated: a voice. Someone actually speaking to her. Well, yelling. They complained at her, saying it was rude to shoot lightning bolts at strangers. Talya utterly blanched, her eyes widening. She stopped so quickly in her tracks that she nearly fell forward, holding out one arm to catch herself should she fall on her face. Thankfully, the wanderer regained her balance and turned around. The speaker was a young boy, dismissing his fiery wings as he landed. Talya wasn't sure what species he was, but he certainly was no planebeast or elemental. And he was a child. She almost shot a child out of the sky.

"Oh my gods! I'm so sorry!" She really did feel bad about it, but it took a lot of effort and energy to sound as remorseful as she felt. Talya walked up to the boy, nervously wringing the shoulder strap of her satchel, half-bent to try to look him over. "Are you all right?! Please tell me you're unhurt. I'm truly sorry. I thought you were a beast from the Elemental Plane of Fire." Admittedly, the implication that she assumed 'planebeast' over much more mundane things said a lot. Talya adjusted the pair of spectacles on her nose, forgetting completely about his threat and aggression. "My name is Talya. Is there anything I can do for you to make it up?"
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Gravling
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Everto was almost taken aback from her sudden change in her demeanor, instead of running away, and possibly trying to blast him, she apologize and said she thought he was some kind of being from the elemental plane of fire. It seemed she was really the mage he was looking for, but her words still angered him, she was treating him like a child... something Everto hated almost as much as he hated stick up the bum paladins. She came closer as Everto let his spell go, stopping the spell in it's tracks. When she finally let Everto speak, he looked up at her and simply stated, "I'm over a hundred years old, I am a half demon with a curse on my blood that every male of my household will have their bodies stop aging before puberty. I am also a high ranking member of the order of Infernos, not to mention one of the most prized magical researchers in the Istan Academy of Magic."

He let that sink in as he tapped his foot, speaking again only when he thought she understood who she was talking to, "As for how you can make it up to me, I heard rumors of a powerful mage in this area and I figure it's you. The only way I can get more funds for my research is to become an Archmage and push for the funds. I'm hoping you can teach me some arcane secrets or arcane tricks that can help me with my goals and ultimately cure this stupid curse that keeps me this size." Perhaps she would simply agree... but if she didn't he would need to keep on pestering her.
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The sheer honesty of the not-so-young boy startled Talya a little bit. He must be treated like a child very often in order to have such an immediate and forceful response. A frown tugged at the corners of her mouth, and that expression only showed through more genuinely as the demon-cursed not-child revealed more information about the situation. Particularly about being a researcher at the Istan chapter of the Academy of Magic. She almost ran from him then and there, not wanting anything whatsoever to do with the Academy. Her panic probably showed through in her eyes. "I... I'm sorry. The rumors you heard, whatever they were, were probably false." Talya realized she was taking steps back away from the boy and made herself stop just to retain some shreds of politeness.

"Ah. That was callous of me. What I meant was..." she took a moment to think, "What could I possibly offer you that the Academy can't? I feel bad that you went through all this trouble coming out here and finding me. I'm not that great, honestly. Nothing like the minds at the Istan Academy." She wasn't sure whether to start walking away or to stay. Hopefully he didn't take it the wrong way and attack her. "If you're looking for someone good with metadynamics, talk to Magister Kailia at the Striberg Academy. I'm sorry, but I have to go. I can feel the rift in the distance beginning to destabilize and I'd like to study it before it collapses." She took more steps back, starting to turn as if to walk away.
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Everto watched the woman carefully as she spoke, her face had changed ever so slightly after mentioning he was from the Academy... was she a runaway mage or some kind of criminal mage? In the end she tried to give Everto someone else to hunt down but he shook his head, "I am on a temporary suspension and it's not like they would give me lessons anyway. They don't trust me and I sure as hell don't trust them. As soon as I get what I need I plan on leaving that place, nothing but red tape, racism, and academy politics. They won't teach me because a new Archmage of Fire would tip the delicate balance of power since I favor nobody. I will not be bribed, I will not be ignored, and I refuse to back down."

Everto ran around her, stopping in front of her as he spoke, "I need training from a third party. I refuse to become a pawn to Academy politics and I can't ask anything more from the one friend I have in the Academy. Now please, teach me." He bowed before her, it was something he wouldn't do... ever... unless the possible power he could obtain was truly worth it. He would learn from this wandering mage... even if it's only a minor trick.
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Talya didn't know a lot about the complex power dynamics of the Academy of Magic, but she knew enough to realize that the half-demon was telling the truth. If someone with a personality like him were to receive a significant increase in power, it might change the way things work down at the Istan Academy. Then again, it might also open up Everto to some of the less savory aspects of certain Academy officials. But if they were already keeping an eye on him, it wasn't like associating with Talya would make things substantially worse. After this pause to consider, she gave Everto a nod. "Alright. If you really want to. Follow me."

As they left the site of their brief battle, the wanderer noticed how the prairie birds returned to their singing and the wind died down. Talya lifted her chin so it was parallel to the ground, regarding the road ahead with a calculating stare. "Can you feel it?" Maybe he couldn't if he was standing so close to her. "A rift to... the Elemental Plane of Water. Yes. But it's short-lived. Can you feel it starting to fold in on itself? Let's hurry." Her brisk walking pace quickly became a jog, one hand on her satchel to keep it from slapping her hip. They neared a region of the grassland that prompted Talya to point to a space visible from the road. The air in the area had an almost liquid-like sheen to it, nearly invisible but spiraling. Talya clambered through the knee-to-waist-high grasses.

"Unstable rifts like these can wrench your control away from your own spells, if your skills aren't sharp enough!" Talya explained excitedly over her shoulder. "You could practice controlling your spells here, if you want. It should be safe. Worst case scenario you fail and your spell gets sucked into the rift." They emerged onto a field of flattened grasses, pressed down into a perfectly circular spiraling pattern. Talya took in a deep breath and closed her eyes, feeling herself calm down in the midst of such volatile ambient mana. Her irises glowed brightly when she opened her eyes back up. In an almost bouncing step, she turned around and gave a small smile at Everto. "Try casting a spell or two while I gather some initial readings."

OOC
 
The first task relates to the Archmage's first empowerment of spells. Simply practicing spells won't give the student such a sharp and sudden increase in power. Real empowerment, your trainer will teach you, is a matter of pushing yourself beyond your limits and learning to control your power at this new baseline. To teach this, your trainer will overload your body with mana through external means (such as exposing you to an unstable planar rift belching raw mana into the material world). Cast spells during this overload. Learn to control your spells properly without them blowing up in your face, and your magical power will expand to accommodate.

It'll get more interesting in the next post, I promise.
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Gravling
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Everto sighed in relief as she agreed, he followed her for a few steps before hearing her ask if he could feel something. In truth, he felt something... but it was so small he had never considered it, he thought it might just be an anti-magic field somewhere or some kind of magical device draining mana from an area in the plains. Her next statement made Everto stop and blink a few times... how could she tell that it was a rift to the plane of water... she was far from an ordinary mage, she could truly be a master of an unknown or rarely studied magic, just like himself.

He followed after the woman until he saw what seemed to be an odd distortion in the area, she pointed to it and explained an exercise to Everto. It was simply to try and cast spells near it... but his only spell that wasn't destructive was strength enhancement magic. He sighed as he let her go about her business, and focused on casting his spell. The first attempt was an utter failure, the mana was ripped from him as if a hungry child was swiping a cookie. His second attempt was so close... but once again it was swiped away... he could feel his anger growing... this stupid rift was making a mockery of his magical talent. He refocused himself, this time he felt a presence... spirits of the realm. He began to mumble as he began his casting, this time his fingers wrote ancient script along with a complex magical formula.

This final attempt was close... but he could feel the rift ready to rip it away... but the ancient script he had been writing in the air brought the help of the spirits, which began helping Everto concentrate, allowing him to keep a firm grip on his mana. He felt the bull's strength flow through his body. He turned back to Talya and smirked, "What's next?"
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It was interesting to observe Everto's work. He may not have noticed the tiny smile tilting the corners of her lips as she scribbled into her notebook. She felt the mana wrenched away from him to join the rift once, twice, aaaalmost a third time -- but he caught it. Quite the fast learner, he was. Talya didn't expect anything less from an Academy of Magic scholar. They brought to their campus some of the best arcane minds around.

Talya smirked over her shoulder at him. "Good job. But what about your fire, hmm? Internal magic is easier to control in this kind of environment, since you don't have to direct it far. A projectile as difficult to control as elemental fire, in the presence of a rift to Water -- well, that's as difficult as you can get, nearly." After finishing her notes with a flourish, Talya snapped her notebook closed and returned it to her satchel. The rift grew more and more volatile by the second, and her presence certainly wasn't helping it fade away cleanly. She closed her eyes and felt all sorts of little rips cropping up all around them. Visibly, those rips showed as sudden sparks of mana in the air. A gust blew through the grassland as the energy picked up.

"Especially--" Talya stopped what she was saying and tensed. A rip in the fabric of reality carved open, suddenly and violently. The resulting hole in the air vomited a veritable waterfall of translucent, armor-plated worms covered in legs, alongside some water. The creatures writhed on the ground in a pile in front of them, clacking their mandibles and flailing their legs to get oriented. Truly ugly planebeasts, each the width of a fist and several feet long. "Oh, goodie. Now you have something to shoot at. Be careful, their blood is probably corrosive!"
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Gravling
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Everto could feel his blood boil as watery insects, coated in slimy watery armor. Everto couldn't help but feel that the portal itself was still mocking him... even if they were armored, they were still insects. He began focusing his magic into his gauntlets, writing flowing script in the air, it hung there was complex magical sigils began to glow, this time he had a firm grasp of his fire magic and shouted out, "Don't mock me you damn portal!" A ring of flames was summoned around himself and the watery beings, next he began to fly up and cast another spell, this time shouting out the incantation, his anger fueling the fires of his soul, his eyes burned with a bright green flame as he shouted, "I call upon thee from the lands of flame! Manifest as my anger and destroy my enemies!" He could feel the portal angrily sucking at his magic, only to stop as the meteors appeared.

The green flaming rocks pounded the area into submission, turning the beasts into steam and creating craters all over the debon plains. Everto flew back over to his temporary teacher and began to breath slowly as he spoke, "That portal really pisses me off... thinking water bugs can actually defeat me. My flames will turn anything into ashes." He could feel his power, his eyes were slowly turning back to their normal red, but the slight glow of green remained, as if a reminder of his demonic flames.
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Talya gave a loud, exultant laugh as green meteors rained from the sky, brought on by what Everto seemed to have perceived as an insult to his pride. She could feel the dying rift twist to accommodate the huge shift in power, pulling on the threads. The wanderer was interested to note that the efficiency of Everto's spellcasting seemed to be affected, at least to some extent, by his emotions. It wasn't the first time she'd met someone like that, but it was definitely something she could pay attention to when teaching him new things in the future. She wondered if he knew about that and could exploit it to his benefit. Talya knew that her own casting was similar, instead relying on her willpower. Her spells scaled in power with respect to how desperate or determined she was.

The meteors not only pummeled the planebeasts, which were already boxed in by a circle of fire, but also the surrounding landscape. Talya rubbed the back of her neck nervously, seeing a lot of her own destructive tendencies in her new student. She wish she could teach him to control his spells in that respect, but doing so would require her knowing how to do it in the first place. Everto flew up to her and grumbled about his spells turning anything to ashes. With laughter in her voice, Talya replied, "Clearly." Almost casually she obliterated some stragglers that had passed through the rift in the meantime. "Alright, it's about to blow! Get away!" Talya herself broke into a sprint through the meteor-ravaged grasses, able to get a good distance away by the time she felt the mana starting to really supercoil.

The air folded in on itself and imploded. Talya threw herself prone. All the mana condensed into a single pinpoint, then cascaded into a tremendous blue and violet explosion that extended dozens of feet in all directions.

Calming her breathing, Talya pushed herself up to her feet. She hadn't been hurt by the shockwave. "Everto?" she called out. "You alright? ...Still interested in learning more?"
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Everto heard her agree and he watched her take care of the few stragglers... but when she said it was about to blow and to run... Everto flew after her. Everto could feel something wrong with the mana in the air... it was twisting and contorting in the area he had just been fighting in... until it imploded. Everto lost his concentration on his flying and collapsed onto the ground a few feet below him, he barely had enough time to cover his head as a blue and violet explosion covered the area they had just escaped from. Everto stood up and dusted off his clothes as he listened to his teacher.

He turned his head and nodded, "I'm fine, just bruised. As for learning more... of course. The training I have to do at the academy is to limiting and boring. If they ask me to use magic missile or fireball on a dummy again I think I'm going to lose it." His new teacher was powerful, kind, and smart, the perfect mage to help bring him to the next level of power.
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Upon pushing herself up from her prone position, Talya chuckled at the mentioning of slinging spells at dummies. "Yes. Well, I suppose they just want to control the situation. Walk with me, Everto." She weaved her way past the flattened prairie, back toward the overgrown road that would take her -- and by association, her new student -- to the next stop for the night. They would rest there and begin her next lesson at the crack of dawn or earlier. "You know how researchers are sometimes. Experimental researchers, I mean. They want to control every variable, put everything in a box and see how it acts. They don't realize it, but they do the same thing to their students. How can you train a proper warmage if you don't expose them to unpredictability? I mean, if I had to describe combat in one word, I would use that term in a heartbeat. You probably would too, if I'm not mistaken."

She smiled thinly at the sky. "But field researchers like me -- er, like I was -- well, we know better. You have to embrace everything you don't anticipate and learn how to adapt to it being there. Now I'm talking about both fighting and research. Inclement weather when you're trying to study a fire rift, you have to adapt. A planebeast breaks into your room in the middle of the night and tries to eat your face -- there's no practice dummy that can prepare you for that." Talya's gaze returned to the half-demon, looking almost sad. "You shouldn't be surprised when I tell you that the most powerful mages in the world could only reach that level after going through unbelievable hardship."

There was a long pause as she let her short lecture sink in. She didn't want to lecture the researcher all the time, but it was important he know those things when they take on more grave tasks in the future. "You seem committed to this path, and aware of the dangers. I won't be pedantic anymore." She took a deep breath and let it out quickly. "Our stop for the night is an hour ahead. In the meantime, do you have any questions to ask me? Ah, how are you feeling? Did the exercise work?"

OOC
 
Level 1 task complete.
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Gravling
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Everto followed her as she walked, listening to her lecture him about how a good warmage needed to face unpredictable encounters. Everto already knew this, he had faced dark paladins, evil doppelgangers, and even a man wishing to become immortal. When she asked how he felt... to be honest he didn't know how to describe it, it was like mana was infusing itself into his very being, but on a much deeper level. He thought for a few minutes before speaking, "A person's Individual Magical Effect is the code that gives us our special aura, it changes as we do. Mine was always a blazing red, the flames of my blood... but now it feels different. It feels like the aura has changed and has become something... new. Like the mana that composes my existence has become fused with my flesh and blood, as if, like the pheonix, I have been reborn."

He always liked phoenixes, they were magical birds of fire that were immortal, death only meant rebirth. When she asked for questions Everto only had one, "So who are you anyway? These rifts aren't talked about in any of the classes I've been to, so this means you're part of some special branch of the academy... or you're an outcast." It made some sense, she was apprehensive when she heard he was in the Academy... if she was wanted for something then perhaps he could help her... he wanted his new teacher to stay alive and well. He looked up at her and smiled, looking all the more like a child, "Since you're my new Master, I won't betray you. So please help me become more powerful and I shall help you, Master."

((OOC: Ready for level 2 training?))
Edited by Gravling, Tue Jun 11, 2013 12:40 am.
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