Guardian 2.6

"Hah!" Madison dropped her hand down onto the brick that we'd set up on top of two other bricks, easily cracking it down the middle with a plume of dust. It joined the five other bricks that she'd broken the same way after I granted her the [Holy Weapon] buff.

"It just doesn't get old!" She exclaimed with a too wide grin. I smiled lightly as well, watching her have fun with the spell. It was cheap to hold for a short while, and I figured it was a good reward for her consistent prayer contributions. And to let her try out a more visible power than the subtle effects of [Endure].

Breaking these thick construction bricks we'd taken from run down buildings was something that could be done at non-magical 5 attack, or even 4 with the right technique I suspected, but it was much easier using the [Holy Weapon] spell. There was also the side benefit of it not hurting if the attack was made using the magical aura rather than a bare, regular human hand.

"This might be our last training session in a while," I said, after she came to sit down on the crate beside me.

"How come?"

"It seems like it's not helping us get to the next level. Our EXP hasn't moved at all lately. We probably need to get in real fights to progress further," I explained while cancelling the [Holy Weapon] aura on her.

"So we're finally going to go patrolling? What level am I at now?"

"Level 3, veteran. And we're not patrolling yet. Fighting crime is risky, especially when we have to worry about villains. I need to make a lot more preparations first, but I'll be debuting a cape identity for myself soon."

"Have you decided on a name?"

"I already talked to the PRT and used the name White Mage, but I didn't have a costume ready then."

"Ohh, like the character class! That's cool. I guess it fits for a Trump. And you've even got the magic chants!" Then she put a hand on her chin. "But White Mages don't really fight on the frontlines. So am I going to be the tank?"

"What do you mean tank?"

"Oh, it's just slang for the character that soaks up damage. It's usually a warrior type and part of the classic RPG party triangle: a tank, a healer, damage dealer. Sometimes the tank and the damage dealer are the same, but usually it's another sneak-based or ranged damage dealer."

"Well, no, then, you're not going to be the tank. I'm not sure what you're going to be yet. But those spirits are going to be the meat shields," I said, pointing to the guardian spirit who was floating beside us. "These guys have a ton of health."

"Oooh, yeah they'd probably make for great tanks, and since they don't have vital organs they might even be immune to crits," said Madison, having sparred with it earlier, knowing how tough it was.

"Crits?"

"Critical hits, I mean. When something does extra damage because it hits something important. I can't believe you didn't know this stuff. Where did you find the name White Mage?"

I shrugged. "I researched some role-playing games for inspiration after I got my power, and it came up. I didn't see anything describe the classes that way though," I said.

"El oh el, for inspiration? No way, you dork. So your power just decided to feed you stat windows and game menus on its own? Have you never played any of the games before?"

"I don't know why it started doing that. But no, I haven't played any."

"We totally need to play something together! Maybe dungeons and dragons? It's this totally awesome tabletop game from Aleph, but we need to find a couple more players to join us. I've played some of the DnD inspired games, but it would be so much more fun if we played the tabletop in person and acted out the scenes."

"Okay?" I said, hesitantly. "I thought you said you were a normal girl, not a tomboy. Aren't video games a guy thing?"

"Hey, that's sexist. Games are for boys and girls. Besides, in the role-playing scene, 90% of cosplayers are girls," she said defensively. "I'm sure lots of them play the games too. You know, on Aleph the cosplay scene is more about games and anime, they don't really dress up as capes like Bet."

Fair enough. It was strange to think about getting together with Madison just to play games and not work on cape stuff but maybe that'd be good for team building? "Well, okay, but I don't know anyone who can join us, though," I added.

"Figures. I don't know anyone else I can ask either, who wouldn't think I'm a geek and stay away. But since I'm hanging out with you now I guess that doesn't matter anymore, so we can try asking some of the other geeks and nerds. Maybe some of the boys too, if they aren't creeps about it."

"Right," I said, nodding along. I didn't really care for hanging out with anyone else, but if Madison wanted to, I couldn't see the harm in humoring her. Maybe I would find it fun too. "This reminds me, I have a task for you."

"Oh! A new quest from the goddess! Your humble servant is ready for anything!"

"Um…it's no big deal, I just want your help to flesh out the concept of…well, the goddess. Make it into something uniquely recognizable, titles, rites, prayer lines, that sort of thing, stuff I can use in public to build up the idea, then eventually get other people to pray and give me more energy so I can do more stuff."

"Oh my gosh, are we writing scripture? Am I the first apostle? I totally am, aren't I?"

"Nothing like that, I just need to give it some proper definition so that it's consistent and people don't go off saying whatever they want and warp it into something else, and then use my name to do bad things."

Madison nodded with a smirk. "We have to stamp out heresy from the very beginning."

"Right. And I was thinking I might use more than one cape identity, and so I need some help with a second name too, one that's more of a frontline fighter, because I'm going to have White Mage be mainly support. And we need a name for our group. So if you can do some brainstorming, and I'll think of some too, and we'll fit everything into consistent themes."

I'd already planned to make a different combat costume, but now that I had access to a familiar and a whole bunch of different item options, it was entirely feasible to just assign a different identity to that new costume. It was something I'd thought about before since I had many different powers, but because it was risky to limit myself to only a subset of my powers at any given time, it would have been hard to pull off. Thanks to the familiar though, I could still cast long range spells via my White Mage persona without being physically present, which meant I wasn't really hobbling myself to do it.

And as much as I was concerned about leaning into the religious aspect of my powers with the possible Master associations, it wasn't something I could avoid forever if I wanted to make the most of my powers. I wanted to have a Temple sooner or later, and I'd need to start getting followers to expand my Power generation further.

So better to start planting some seeds, begin with professing our own faith in a higher authority—which wasn't necessarily me. The key I figured, was to attribute the divinity to the idea of a new goddess that I'd created, and have my cape identities become its first chosen champions on earth. To efficiently funnel the prayers, I would need to establish a clear uniqueness to the goddess, while anchoring it to her worldly agents. That way, regardless of any similarity of title, domains, etc, and the lack of a name, people could identify the goddess based on the fact that my cape identities were exclusively her champions.

I'd looked it up, and there were actually some capes and groups with a religious bent which weren't necessarily feared like Pastor was. The big one was Haven, a Christian group down south, which seemed to get on just fine with the PRT.

The distinguishing factor was of course the fact that Pastor gave out powers, and Mastered people while doing it. And he did it in a pretty obvious, villainous way, almost forcing people to believe and taking over a whole town.

Eventually, I'd be giving out powers as well, whether through raising up heroes, bestowal, or items, but I could do it in a much more subtle, and hopefully more convincing way over time. And I had a particular advantage in that, I didn't necessarily need to come into contact with someone personally for them to be able to access some powers.

After some thought, Madison spoke up, "What kind of themes do you want to go for? So far you've got light based powers, healing, a holy spirit, and a dove…and you mentioned the White Realm. So I guess that's light, renewal, holiness, hope and peace? Though holiness is true of any religion. You'd probably want to keep the white color theme too, right?"

"Yeah, all of those are on point. Life and light are probably the big themes. My ankh symbol represents life, and most of my powers have some side effects with white light."

"Okay. We can start there. Queen of Life and Light. That's probably better than just Queen of Heaven. Any other specific themes you wanted? Goddesses of life are usually thought of as mother goddesses too. There's an association with birth and fertility. Is that something you want too?"

"No, that doesn't feel right for me. There's definitely a part of my power that approves of the birth of life, but it's almost…selective. Like it doesn't cover nature, but birth and fertility are just natural processes, so it's kind of related because you have to be born first before you can do anything, but isn't really connected to Life energies."

"Okay…you might have to explain that one to me," Madison said with a confused expression.

I drew into myself for a moment, trying to remember all the feelings and impressions I'd gotten when I touched the White Realm and used its powers.

"The Life that my power is about, is more about the experience of growing, but there's purpose behind it. Bringing order where there was none. Creating, building, always advancing. It's progress. It isn't like random evolution or natural instincts. It's about life with meaning. So I'm not about preserving nature and living with the trees and animals, or of reproduction just for the sake of reproduction, you know what I mean? Not all life is equal, and reproduction should never be an obligation. It's only a good thing if it's willing and enjoyable, and brings results that the parents celebrate."

"Ah…I get it. It's like life that had intelligent design behind it."

"Yeah. Civilization is good. Progress should bring wealth and prosperity. The people should be rich and happy, my temples should be full of gold. They should be resplendent and inspire the people to excel, to learn, to always seek to be better than they were yesterday and help those less fortunate who have the will to better themselves. To retain the fires of youth no matter how old they grow, to admire ideals of justice and kindness, find enlightenment and wisdom through experience, and to have true passion for everything that they do," I explained. "To live a Life worth living."

"A life worth living, huh…" Madison repeated back to me with a thoughtful face, then she giggled. "Hah, it's like the difference between being alive and actually having a life!"

"Was that a joke? I didn't get it," I said.

"Come on, you know the expression, 'get a life you loser'?" Madison asked.

"Why am I not surprised the first thing you thought of was an insult?" I sighed, but my lips curved up just a bit. It was a little funny, now that I understood the joke.

"Sorry, sorry. I couldn't help it. But that's great, it sounds like you've already got a pretty good base to work with. We just have to add some oomph and pizzazz. Leave it to me!" said Madison.

O O O

A/N: In case you were wondering, those ideas Taylor got from her impression of the White Realm do actually come from the game. Probably a bit different from other white magic in other settings, but in MoM there's a clear separation between Nature magic vs. Life magic, and there are some interesting spells at the higher rarities.

Also, it wasn't shown in-story but at some point Taylor used the EXP/level terminology when they leveled up and Madison caught on, so Taylor just explained that she sees stat windows for her followers and EXP notifications. I didn't think that was really worth showing on its own, since Thinker powers are a thing in Worm but that regular people don't know much about. And Taylor's interface applies to a pretty limited set of things that just help her use her Trump power, and that kinda makes sense for a secondary Thinker power. So the way that conversation went, Madison was basically confused and surprised for a little bit, but nodded along as if it was normal, assuming that the power simply came in a form Taylor was already familiar with.