It's a bit of a shame to pass up actual lessons on freerunning, but you do have a fair amount of reading on your schedule, and you feel like you should finish off your unauthorized copy of Frame Work before you get started on the two Volcano books.
Partly, this is because it can be annoying to start a new book before you've finished with an older one. That's not to say it can't be done, as evidenced by your ongoing, on-again, off-again perusal of Twentieth Century Sorcery - but that's an encyclopedia, which is a collection of separate if related articles, rather than a singular narrative. Works like the former are pretty much MEANT to be read in pieces, if only because very few people would have the time or the interest in sitting down and going through several thousand pages' worth of extremely varied information, and they're written accordingly.
You can read half a dozen pages discussing Lightning Magic and then skip ahead a few sections to where its adaptation to modern electrical wiring is discussed, and not really LOSE anything relevant to the subject. Most other books are not so convenient, and while having to re-read a chapter or so to refresh your memory of where you were and what the author was writing about isn't exactly a hardship, it's something you'd be just as happy to avoid if you can.
The main reason, though, is because you have an idea you'd like to test involving a largely completed magical spell, and if you're going to be doing magical experiments on a book, it should be a book you own, rather than one you checked out from a library.
With that in mind, you head back to the dormitory, take a moment to see if anyone's there - they aren't - and then pocket some pillows and head to the bathroom, where you repeat this morning's invocation of and slightly awkward entry into a Mirror Hideaway.
Before going in, you get out a piece of paper and write a message on it:
Signing your name, you apply a minor magic to "glue" the note to the tiled wall just next to the mirror. Then you levitate yourself off the floor, tilt forward, and drag yourself into the glass.
Caution: Magical Experiment in Progress.
You pause for a moment, considering the brevity of the message and the space that remains on the sheet, and then shrug and add another line.
I'm inside the mirror. I'll be out by supper, if not sooner. - Alex.
It lacks something in the way of zing, but it's informative enough, which is probably more important.
...probably.
After pulling yourself into the Mirror Hideaway, you get out your pilfered pillows, drop them on the floor as a simple seat, and settle yourself down, taking out the Leatherbound Book as you do so and flipping through it until you find where you left off reading your copy of Frame Work. Then you cast one of the spells you worked on this year, a derivative of the common Spell of Haste that you originally came up with as a ritual to allow you to view the high-speed matches at the World Tournament.
As the sixth-circle Spell of Accelerated Perception kicks in, the world. Sloooows. Doooowwn.
The beats of Briar's wings go from blurry quickness to languid, almost lazy sweeps, each clear and distinct.
Her voice, when she speaks, sounds like, "Hoooow iiiis iiiit woooorkiiiing?"
Even your own body is affected - or rather, is UNaffected, the consequences of your decision to leave out most of the physical aspects of the Haste Spell in favor of maximizing the mental ones coming home to roost. Each motion becomes ponderous, each breath an extended process, and each heartbeat goes from one quick beat in a steady series to a minor musical number of its own.
All of this is within the expected range established by previous tests of the magic.
"Seeeems gooood," you reply.
Turning your eyes to the page, you begin to read.
At first, it goes well. In order to properly enhance your senses, you had to leave the magic augmenting your sensory organs and their requisite nerves and tissues in place. This means that your eyes are capable of moving and reacting at Accelerated speeds, and since you aren't someone who reads by tracing the text with a finger, you're able to get through the open pages of the book without issue.
Then it comes time to turn the page, which is more like, "Tuuuurniiiing theeee paaaageeee," as an act that should only take a second - if that - stretches out rather longer than you're used to.
Because you based it so closely on the Spell of Haste, your new spell doesn't last very long - only about a minute and a half, going by previous tests. This was as much a safety and sanity precaution as anything else, as you didn't want to risk getting yourself stuck in a state of hyper-accelerated awareness for several hours - or however long it might seem - while you waited for the magic to wear off on its own. As such, you're only partway through your fourth page of actual reading when the world speeds up again.
"Alright," you say. "First stage, successful, although turning pages at that speed could easily get annoying."
"Onward to Stage Two, then?"
You nod and focus your energies, activating two ki techniques in turn. The first of these is Ki Enhancement, with a focus on physical speed and precision, while the second is Ki Infusion, which you mean to use to reinforce the Leatherbound Book, so that you don't tear the pages or break the bindings by flipping through it at high speed.
That is... not quite the result you get, or maybe it would be more accurate to say it's not the ONLY result. The energy layered about the pages of the Book do give you the faintest sense of greater resilience, but when you go to give the page before you an experimental flip, your finger immediately "catches" against the face of the paper, smoothly pulling it up and back without having to bend the sheet or fuss with one corner..
You take a minute to just... fiddle around with this, making sure it wasn't a fluke, and the page proves to turn neatly from either direction, as do the ones next to it.
Gained Ki Paging F (Plus)
Gained Ki Reinforcement F (Plus)
You had been considering applying a Spell of Hardening to your Book, to increase the pages' resistance to tearing, but it occurs to you that the mana of such an effect would probably push aside the ki from this particular application of Ki Infusion, making it impossible to practice.
Eh, why not? You could use the practice controlling yourself while under the effects of two almost entirely separate forms of speed enhancement - making sure that Accelerated Perception and a speed-and-reflex-focused Ki Enhancement can "get along" with each other and with you under them is ENTIRELY a worthwhile exercise.
And if you do tear the Book, you know the Spell of Mending.
Settling in, you re-cast your new spell, giving it the same relatively brief duration as before to see how it interacts with your ki boosts.
...
The fact that you're able to turn a page almost as fast as you're used to comes as a relief.
"Better?" Briar asks, once the second mental speed boost has worn down.
"It is, and I think I'm going to go for Phase Three, now."
With that, you cast an Extended Spell of Accelerated Perception, tuned to last for about a quarter of an hour.
Once again, you have a good start, as the ability to read quickly and turn pages fast enough to keep up makes for a heartening indication of your progress. That said, the various slowed down physical sensations you're dealing with are still rather disconcerting. They don't distract you enough to make you lose focus, but after a decade's worth of life - and with bits and pieces of memory from several additional decades' worth of purely mortal existence crammed into your head - you have very specific expectations about what you should be hearing and feeling when you're sitting down and reading quietly, and even with the Ki Enhancement helping, the sounds and sensations of your pulse and respiration still don't register quite as they should, to say nothing of how the slowed-down fluttering of Briar's wings hasn't changed in the slightest.
However slightly it may be, the unaccustomed differences wear on you, a mild stressor that gradually builds up the longer you read, until-
*Rip*
"Whoooooooops," Briar notes.
"I see it."
-you finally pull on a page with more force than you intended, tearing the paper at its topmost edge. The damage doesn't extend down to the words, thankfully, and a quick cantrip - the mana for which ALSO moves with unfamiliar and frustrating slowness - soon has it repaired.
Still, it's annoying.
The Spell of Accelerated Perception lapses a few minutes later, with no further damage to your Leatherbound Book.
"Going to try for Phase Four?" Briar inquires.
"I think so, yes. That'll at least be enough to finish Frame Work."
"Alright. Well, since the spell hasn't started to make you jittery or see things hiding in the angles-"
What?
"-and since I don't really feel like hovering around in here while you speed-read, I'll see myself out, if that's okay?"
"Oh, you know, that rumor that people who've been messing around with temporal magic too freely will suddenly have horrible things jumping out of sharp angles at them?"
You can't help but think that the eight corners of your Mirror Hideaway - the ones on the ceiling as well as those on the floor - are all VERY sharp, as close to ninety degrees as makes no difference to the naked eye. No sooner has that thought passed through your head than you're taking a quick, cautious glance around, to make sure that nothing is sneaking up on you.
You're aware that mirror demons are supposed to be a thing, and while you have yet to run into one even after a year and more of using Mirror Hideaways on the Hellmouth, that doesn't necessarily mean that this spell is entirely safe. And you ARE in an entirely new location...
Still, you neither see nor sense any dangers, which has you turning back to Briar. "I was actually NOT aware of this rumor, Briar."
"...what, really?"
"No."
"...huh. I could have sworn..." She trails off into silence for a moment, and then shakes her head. "Okay, so, I don't know much about it myself; like I said, it's a rumor, and one of the ones that usually precedes the nasty kind of ghost story, where nobody gets out alive, so there supposedly aren't any witnesses and that makes ALL the information suspect. That said, apparently, every once in a while, somebody who gets careless with teleportation-"
What.
"-or divination spells that look into the past or future-"
WHAT.
"-or who attempts actual time-travel, will draw the attention of these things, which then jump out of the nearest corner, run them down, and drag them off to suffer a horrible fate."
"This sounds like the sort of thing I should have been warned about sooner, Briar," you say levelly.
"Hey, I only heard the story from the girls a few weeks ago, and since you've been throwing around high-end teleportation and divination like they were going out of style for over a year, now, without anything trying to eat your face, I figured it was either just a story or not an issue for you. I didn't know you didn't know!"
"Did you not think to check through the familiar bond?"
"I glanced at it, sure, but there's a lot of stuff in your head, you know? And nothing like a convenient index or card catalogue."
...okay, that's a point. Even limiting the search to "horrible entities from beyond" would only have narrowed the field so far - you know a LOT of things that would qualify for that moniker, and familiar or no, Briar doesn't exactly remember the information that's in your head the way you do. If nothing else, she has to use her own brain to do her thinking, and that brain IS a little fey.
"Do these horrible things have a name that we can look up later?" you ask.
"Aster said they were called the Hounds of Timmy Dallas?" Briar offers.
...
"That's probably not their actual name, is it," you state, rather than ask.
"Almost certainly not," she agrees.
Gained Xenology F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Your mastery of Divination Magic is such that, even working with a name that's undoubtedly gone through a few rounds of Telephone at some point, you could probably find some answers. Of course, you can't be entirely certain that said answers wouldn't be about the dogs owned by some kid from Texas, which is really not what you're after.
More than that, though, you're a little concerned that who- or whatever "Timmy Dallas" is might take offense at the mispronunciation of their name, which could cause you some issues.
Briar DID mention that these Hounds are supposed to turn up in response to some kinds of Divination, and trying to whistle up information on them that way seems like the sort of thing that might get their attention, or maybe send your spell to "Timmy" to get answers in the first place.
Either way, you'd prefer to have a more accurate idea of what you're (potentially) dealing with before you go invoking it.
Briar goes on her way, and you get back to your speed-reading, this time Extending the Spell of Accelerated Perception by another tier, pushing it to last for over two and a half hours, which proves to be FAR more time than you need to finish reading Frame Work.
In the course of your quickened study, you confirmed that most of the latter chapters in the book didn't have much more to offer you than the earlier ones did. Your new Ki Literacy trick wasn't mentioned at all, for one, and while that's not terribly surprising given how few of your seniors had figured it out for themselves before you mentioned it in class, the moves you've derived from the basic Body Flicker don't turn up, either, which is honestly unexpected.
But you did pick up a couple of pointers about using Ki Enhancement to interact with certain external forces, without actually going as far as using Ki Infusion or Ki Projection to do it.
Gained Environmental Adaptation D (Plus)
Gained Thunder Clap E (Plus) (Plus)
You can see how your Ki Strike could benefit from those tips as well, but Frame Work doesn't go so far as to spell that out.
The lack is a bit puzzling, but then, this IS a book meant for relative newcomers to the ki arts. The author probably didn't want to give too much information about how to Punch Good to students who, whatever their actual age, might not have proven themselves to have the discipline to refrain from taking any excuse to throw hands.
It takes you a bit to sort out how much time has actually gone by while you were blurring through your Leatherbound Book - which is going to need another Mending Spell in a moment, thanks to a couple more slips of your control, though you're pleased to say you're definitely getting the hang of this form of speed-reading-
Gained Ki Paging F (Plus) (Plus)
Learned Accelerated Perception
- but after a minute, you figure that it's been most of an hour since you started using Accelerated Perception the first time, and somewhere over half an hour since Briar hovered out. Your current application of the sense-boosting Enchantment will last for another hour and a half of real time, which would certainly let you make progress on another book, if you wanted. However, the only tomes that you have on your person are Foot of the Volcano, which you've already opted not to start reading yet, and the words of Hitting the Funny Bone copied into your Leatherbound Book.
Although Hitting the Funny Bone wasn't a very large book and its copy therefore shouldn't take too long to read through, you decide to leave it for another time. Partly, that's BECAUSE it's a relatively short work, but it also has to do with the fact that forcing yourself to do anything that's supposed to be fun is kind of missing the point, and would risk ruining the experience.
After all, the main reason for indulging in any entertaining media is to use up a chunk of time in an amusing manner, to give yourself a chance to relax and unwind. Using the Spell of Accelerated Perception has proven to be a bit stressful in and of itself, and the knowledge that you were rushing to "have fun faster" just feels self-defeating.
Besides, you have a potential arcane, eldritch, or just otherworldly menace to look into, while it's still in your mind. You should probably get on that.
With a quick ritual to temporarily renew your Levitation, you pull yourself out of the Mirror Hideaway-
?
-into an empty bathroom.
Given there are only six other people using this dormitory right now, the odds of any one of them being in here when you came out WERE fairly small. Still, you can never be completely sure about a situation until you've seen it for yourself.
Once you have your feet on the ground, you dismiss your Mirror Hideaway and Levitation spell, and reach into your pocket for your Magic Cellphone.
You COULD try using Divination Magic to find the true name of the Hounds, you COULD visit the Library of the Five Elements to try looking them up, and you COULD go asking around to see if anybody knew anything, but the quickest, easiest, and most reliable method available to you is calling up one of your fellow experts in the supernatural.
And while it's far too early to be calling Balthazar at home - it should be around four in the morning in New York, assuming of course that he's there - the current time in Wales is much more reasonable - a bit past ten a.m., by your count.
You dial Ambrose's number and proceed to wait.
*Ring*
...
*Ring*
...
*Ri-*
"Ambrose's Arcane Alcove, Ambrose articulating."
"Alex asks aid ascertaining available arcane advice about achronal aberrations, Ambrose," you reply.
"An acceptably amusing announcement, assuredly," the wizard returns. Then he drops the wordplay and asks, "What's this about achronal beasties?"
"Okay, so I was trying out a new sort of Haste Spell earlier..."
You give a quick explanation about "the things in the angles," which has Ambrose making a sound of vague recognition and commenting that it rings a bell.
"Give me a minute to check the books," he says, with the sounds of movement. "Oh, and did you have a proper name?"
"...I have A name," you admit slowly. "Briar and I are both pretty sure that it's wrong, though, which is why I didn't want to try using it as a focus for a Divination spell."
"Oh?"
"'The Hounds of Timmy Dallas'."
...
"Excuse me for just one second, will you?" the wizard asks.
"Sure."
He pulls away from the phone, and you hear a single, "HA!" of wry amusement.
"Right, I'm back," the old man says a moment later. "Good call on not using that name, by the way. Where did the little lady come across it?"
"Gossip from another fairy," you admit.
"Ah, fairies," Ambrose says with a certain fondness. "Bless their empty little heads. Right, then. Search bestiaries, topic 'Hounds', proper names probably beginning with 'T', cross-reference with 'temporal hazards'..."
Some magic ensues, and after a bit, Ambrose informs you that the creatures you're talking about are most likely the Hounds of Tindalos.
"Nasty things to run into," he notes, flipping an unseen page, "especially for amateur magic-users or mundane paranormal investigators who start looking into temporal spellcraft and space-time anomalies. Though apparently they've also nabbed a few people experimenting with the wrong kind of consciousness-expanding chemicals..."
Another reason not to do drugs, then?
"Quite."
"How nasty are we talking here, Ambrose?" you ask then.
Ambrose goes on to describe a quadrupedal, vaguely canine monstrosity that stands somewhere past five feet tall at the shoulder, but which has a gaunt, long-limbed build that makes it less massive than it might at first appear. Aside from being stronger, tougher, and considerably faster than most humans, the beasts are relentless trackers that supposedly never give up their quarry; once they've identified a victim, they will pursue him for as long as it takes to (ahem) corner and feed upon him. There are conflicting accounts of their mental capabilities, with some sources considering them to be the equivalent of simple ambush predators - dangerous, to be sure, but really no more than supernaturally empowered animals - while others hold that the success rate of the Hounds' known hunts is too high to be anything but the work of intelligent and experienced minds.
Ambrose gives you a few tips on things not to do if you run into a Hound of Tindalos-
"They can apparently flay the skin off of anyone who meets their gaze," he says, "so try not to do that."
"Noted."
"Also, don't try to make contact with one's mind, or even just alter its thoughts. They're basically immune to the latter, and the former just gives them an opening to drive you crazy, at least temporarily."
"Also noted."
-and then adds that, if you haven't personally encountered one of the things after all the Divination and teleportation he knows you've done, it's fairly unlikely that you're going to.
"Especially not while you've got that Spell of Mind Blank up," he says. "Useful thing, isn't it?"
It is, at that.
Do you have any other questions about the Hounds of Tindalos, while you've got Ambrose and his library on the line?
"What is a 'Tindalos', anyway?" you wonder.
"No idea," Ambrose replies. "From what my book says, it's a term that only turns up in association with the Hounds, and there's debate about what it means. Some people think it's a greater eldritch entity that the creatures serve or are descended from, if not both; others believe it's the place they originate from." He pauses for a moment. "I suppose it's also possible that 'Tindalos' might be a force or phenomenon, perhaps an alien term for 'space-time' or the disturbances thereof that are supposed to draw them to their prey. Alternately, since we're talking about beings from the great dark beyond to begin with, it could be any two or all of those in combination."
Yeah, eldritch and unknowable stuff can get really weird.
"On a different note," you say then, "I'm visiting some relatively friendly ki masters at the moment. Do you have any questions about ki or ki-magic interactions that you'd like me to pass on, or maybe test out, while I'm here? Only low- to mid-level stuff, though," you add.
"Oh?" There is a note of inquiry in the wizard's word.
"They've got a detection ward as part of their security, and they asked me to keep my magic use under sixth-circle while I'm here, to avoid setting it off."
"Ah. In that case, don't trouble yourself. I've already run all the usual tests and analyses on ki and ki-users, and on adepts from several different styles, besides."
You figured that might be the case, but it was worth making the offer, to see if you could clear the minor debt for the intel on the Hounds.
You thank Ambrose for his time, hang up, and decide to look for Amy, so that you can get started on reading Roots of the Volcano. A quick glance at the bedrooms and then the common area shows nobody around, leaving you to wonder where Briar got off to after she left the Mirror Hideaway.
Shrugging, you exit the dorm and look around, wondering how best to search for your witch-girl friend. Then you start a ritual, using the Message Spell as a base and increasing the range while sacrificing most of the duration. The end result is less costly and time-consuming than a Sending, and more than suffices for the task at hand.
When the magic takes effect, you speak: "Amy, it's Alex. I'm at the dorm, and I was wondering if I could get Roots of the Volcano back from you for a bit?"
You wait a moment.
"Sure, Alex," Amy's voice replies from thin air. For some reason, she sounds amused. "It's on the table by my bed. And just so you know, you freaked out a few people with this spell."
Heh.
Then you end the spell and go get the book. As it's a library book and your use of Accelerated Perception as a reading aid isn't quite perfected, you figure you shouldn't risk tearing it. Having access to repair spells in case of accidents is one thing - knowingly subjecting a borrowed book to probable damage is another.
You allow yourself to respond to Amy's remark with a laugh that is perhaps more of a cackle, following up by saying, "Imagine what I could do if I was actually TRYING."
There is a pause, and then you hear Amy laughing back.
After fetching Roots from the girls' room, a thought occurs that has you heading for the bathroom once more, to call up and enter another Mirror Hideaway with your seating pillows. You take two more books out of your pocket and set all three of them down on the crystalline floor, with Roots of the Volcano to the left, Foot of the Volcano on the right, and the third, as yet un-inked of your Leatherbound Books in the middle.
Then you make with the Ritual of Photocopying, applying Marking Metamagic so that it can affect two texts at once - a little cheaper and faster than performing the ritual twice.
This results in a rather unexpected display, as both the Leatherbound Book and Roots of the Volcano open up and quickly flip through their pages. No writing takes place that you can see - not that you're able to view the first pages for long - and when the magic has reached the end of Roots, Foot cracks open and repeats the process.
When all three books have been skimmed through, they briefly close and then re-open at the beginning - but the Leatherbound Book ALSO opens at that point a bit less than mid-way through its pages, where it was when Foot first began reacting to your magic.
As you watch, written characters start inscribing themselves on the open pages of the Leatherbound Book. Looking carefully between all the volumes, you see that Roots is being copied into the first half, and Foot into the second.
You HAD expected that the ritual would copy one book first and THEN start the second, but this is good, too. From what you saw when the pages were flipping - which wasn't happening at a one-to-one ratio, incidentally; the hardcover tome you got off of Ambrose is a fair bit larger in all dimensions than either of the library books - you have room enough to copy both works, but not much more than that.
If you mean to keep permanent records of these and other library books, you're going to need more blank books to hold them.
All things considered, if you're going to be copying valuable mystical information into conjured books, you would like those tomes to last as long as possible, despite whatever the world throws at them. With that in mind, the resilience of a permanent Conjuration makes for a more appealing option than mere indefiniteness.
Besides, there is such a thing as over-preparing, especially when you consider that your pocket-space only has so much room.
Gained Conjured Book II
By the time you're done bringing a new Conjured Book into existence, your Ritual of Photocopying has finished inscribing the contents of the Volcano series into your last Leatherbound Book. You take a minute to check and make sure that your spell didn't run out of pages - it didn't - or overwrite any part of the two books - also no - and then close up the original copies, stow them with your new blank book, and re-cast the Spell of Accelerated perception as you once again settle down on the pillows to read.
Your previous, magically-acquired summary of Roots of the Volcano gave you the suspicion that the author was either affiliated with the School of Five Elements, or at least working from a similar metaphysical background. The more detailed reading bears that out; while the writer never comes out and says that they were part of the School, the terminology they use reads too much like a lecture from Lu-sensei or the other masters for them NOT to have trained in the style.
The periodic mention of the value of surprise is a good clue.
Anyway, as it IS an introductory work to the field of Ki Generation, much of what Roots of the Volcano has to say falls into the same area as the other novice-level books and booklets you've taken from the library: nothing truly new; already covered it in class or worked it out in the field; but nice to have presented in a more organized format, which confirms your teacher's instructions and some of what you've put together for yourself.
That said, the chapter that talks about how to improve the duration of your ki techniques has new and interesting data for you to consider. There's also a section towards the end of the book that talks about future possibilities for Ki Generation, such as the cultivation of elemental techniques and "proper elemental ki" - but it only mentions those in a referential way, it doesn't actually provide details.
Another reason to be glad that you found Foot of the Volcano!
Gained Ki Endurance F (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Ki Power D (Plus)
Gained Ki Recovery D (Plus)
On a side note, you made some progress using ki to turn the pages of your Leatherbound Book without damaging them. Only two tears, this time!
Gained Ki Paging F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Ki Reinforcement F (Plus) (Plus)
Having spent a couple of hours under the uncomfortable influence of your Spell of Accelerated Perception, you decide to stop reading at the end of your copy of Roots, dispel the awareness-altering magic, and exit your Mirror Hideaway-
?
-to once again not find or be reflexively menaced by anyone in the washroom when you pull yourself out of the sink-top Mirror Hideaway and levitate down to the floor. You return the original copy of Roots of the Volcano to Amy's room, put your pillows back where you got them - airing them out with a quick casting of Prestidigitation in the process - and then check the time.
It's coming up on five-thirty, so yeah, probably for the best that you stopped where you were. Some time to reflect upon and assimilate the lessons of Roots and shake off the lingering mental discomfort of Accelerated Perception before you head out for supper would be ideal.
And that's what you do.
Where do you wish to sit, come meal-time?
When you arrive at the dining hall, the tables are once again full, and you're greeted by a general turning of heads and looks of intent.
Oh, yes; you still owe them the second half of your account of the Battle of the Memorian Outpost, don't you?
"Give me ten minutes to eat," you announce to the room, as you move towards the counter.
You hear a high-pitched electronic beep as some wit presses the buttons on a digital watch.
Shaking your head, you assemble your preferred meal and head for the center table-
"Aw, man, again?" one of the younger kids complains.
"I mean, it's easier for the whole hall to hear him from there..."
"Isn't 'the easy way' usually the wrong one, though?"
"This isn't Star Wars."
-where two of the seated students obligingly shift to the sides to make room for you and your tray.
Ten minutes later, with the edge taken off of your hunger, you sit back.
"Alright, so we last left off with the assembly of the undead not-Roman army..."
You describe the muster of the troops, bodies that were sometimes bony remnants-
"Ugh!"
"Awesome!"
-sometimes dessicated but intact flesh-
"UGH!"
"AWESOME!"
"Is this REALLY the sort of story we should be hearing at dinner?"
-and sometimes only spectral shades-
"Oooo..."
"Spooky..."
-wielding ancient arms and armor that were a mix of rusted and worn down, magically preserved, and the phantom manifestation of a soldier's memory of his trusted gear.
"Wait," someone interrupts, "how does that work?"
"Some kinds of undead are attached to things they owned in life," you explain.
"What, like artificial limbs or something?"
You pause, briefly picturing an undead equivalent to Darth Vader.
Not that far of a stretch, really. Life-support and sheer hatred WERE supposed to be the only things keeping him going...
"I was speaking more in the emotional and spiritual sense," you say out loud, "but literal physical attachment is entirely possible."
"Ah."
"Anyway, if you're dealing with something minor like an animated skeleton or a zombie, that sort of thing usually doesn't matter - they're too dumb to care about themselves, much less inanimate objects - but a lot of the more powerful and intelligent varieties of undead will get as angry as anybody else would if they think you're stealing from them. It can get to the point where taking something of theirs can cause what appears to be a perfectly ordinary dead body to get up and come after the thief-"
"Yikes!"
"Neat!"
"-which is one reason among many others why grave-robbing is traditionally looked down on as a career choice. The thing with ghosts is that if they have a strong enough connection to a physical object, they can generate a copy of it when they manifest. That's especially true for warriors who die fighting while wearing their preferred gear, which some of the Memorians did - and the ones that didn't DIE that way had access to what was left of the base's armory after they rose up."
You describe the march down to the caverns, and the sorts of monsters that were waiting there to confront the soldiers.
"Anyway, while the Memorians were going to war-"
"Wait, what?"
"-the priests, Briar, and I were making our way down to the lowest level of the mine," you continue.
"Is he allowed to do that?"
"What, you mean just switch tracks to a different part of the story?"
"Yeah!"
"It's called subverting expectations..."
"The reason for this," you go on, raising your voice, "is because when we were using the Memorians' war-room to scan that part of the outpost and see what we were up against, most of the monsters we saw were ones that originated from the same world that Briar does. We ALSO saw evidence that something more powerful was down there, something strong enough to swing a sword through solid rock to a depth of an inch or two without slowing down or breaking the blade-"
"Can you do that?" somebody asks.
You pause, thinking that the question is directed at you, but before you can answer, it's followed by another.
"Can WE do that?" Several heads turn towards the instructors and the masters.
"You need a good sword, a good arm, and a certain level of proficiency with Ki Infusion," Lu-sensei replies. "Being able to read the stone and spot weak points would likely be useful as well, but I will admit that's not one of the skills the Five Elements Style really teaches."
"In any event," your master goes on, "an abundance in one area can make up for a certain amount of insufficiency in another, but if you just hack away at a stone wall with your sword and brute strength, all you're going to do is dull, chip, and eventually break the blade. Most likely sooner than later."
"As I was saying," you resume your narrative, "we were pretty sure that there was something stronger than the rest of the monsters down in the mine, and since the odds seemed good that it was something from Briar's homeland, she and I had the best chance of identifying it and then either dealing with it or running away."
"For the record," Briar notes, "I voted to run away."
"Whoa, really?"
"What kind of monster was it?"
"Must have been pretty horrible, if the giant DEATH SPIDERS didn't scare them..."
"Out of curiosity, Lu-sensei," you ask. "What do you do if you got into a match with an earth elemental or a stone golem?"
"Outrun it," he says without a moment's hesitation.
"And if that wasn't an option?" you clarify.
"Well, I am personally fortunate enough that my sword, arm, and skill with Ki Infusion are sufficient to injure most such opponents - although beings made of things harder than stone are problematic."
You nod, recalling his match with Levoknuckle in the Ring of Trials. The Blue Knight's armor DID give your teacher quite a bit of trouble, even though he was using his sword and everything.
"For others," Lu Tze goes on, "most stone automatons and creatures made of living rock have quite obvious 'fault lines' along which their body parts move. You don't want to stick a blade INTO those, it's far too likely to be caught and either yanked out of your hand or crushed-"
Several of the other masters and instructors nod, one wincing in clear recollection of an unwelcome event.
"-but if you can land a strike so that it hits the edge of such a seam and takes a chip out of the material, the uneven edges can catch when the creature moves, causing it some discomfort and limiting its movements to some extent. If you're lucky or land repeat blows, you can fracture the joint and effectively paralyze the limb, potentially even break it off."
...on behalf of your friends from the Elemental Plane of Earth, / Ouch. /
"And if it should pass that you must fight such an opponent when you have no sword or other weapon to your name," your master adds, "reinforce your fists and feet and hit them as hard as you can, hopefully without damaging yourself in the process."
You look around. "Everybody got that? Because I may summon monsters to spar with people at some point, and I'm on pretty good terms with a lot of earth elementals."
There are some concerned looks, and others of interest.
"Just, you know, fair warning," you add, before getting back to your story.
You throw back your head and RAUGH at that last remark, because it's so very, very true.
"...I'm not sure I like the sound of that laugh..."
"Wow, did we break him?"
"No, no," you reply. "It's just, you're right; he really WAS horrible. Look," you say, beginning the spell, "I'll show you."
"Oh, no."
"Not more giant monsters-!"
"We're eating-!"
"Alright!"
And then you finish weaving your magic, calling up up a Silent Image of Shadow Link over by the door.
"Wha-huh?"
"I can't look!"
"...actually, you can."
"...really?"
"Yeah, it's... just a guy in black."
"How is THAT horrible?"
"I mean, the red eyes ARE kind of creepy..."
"What a rip-off!"
"That's a nice sword, though."
"Kind of dark, but yeah."
Looking in the (general) direction from which (most of) the doubtful voices came, you state, "The Image before you is of the manifest Shadow of the Divine Champion of Briar's homeland of Hyrule. While the version we faced was a distinctly lesser copy, both in terms of ability and especially some of its equipment, the genuine article has defeated world-threatening Dark Lords more times than I care to count-"
Briar manages not to outwardly let on about just how much amusement she's feeling after THAT remark.
"-over more lifetimes than I have fingers."
"Is he an immortal?" somebody at the instructors' table asks curiously.
"No, he's a serial reincarnator," you correct.
"...that's actually more impressive, in some ways," the guy responds in a thoughtful tone.
He's not wrong. For an immortal guardian to defeat multiple Dark Lords would be... maybe not EXPECTED, but also not terribly surprising, as it would be a sign that the protector had kept up his training, maintained his gear, and just generally done his Goddess-given job in the intervening years, decades, and centuries.
A Hero who's constantly being reborn, on the other hand, would forget his old skills and lose his equipment in the process, and then have to build himself and his arsenal up from scratch to take on an enemy he wouldn't have any accessible past experience with. Not to mention how, given how the bad guys usually make the first move in these world-shaking, history-defining events, he'd be on the back foot a lot of the time, trying to put together a clear picture of the threat while running around putting out the fires he, she, it, or they had been setting.
...
You're just going to stop there, lest you start feeling more admiration for Link's abilities than you absolutely have to.
It's a professionalpersonal thing.
Moving ahead, you start describing the fight, trying to convey the alarm and urgency of finding yourself face-to-Shadowed face with an unfriendly Dark Link.
Hearing that he could cut arrows out of the air without breaking his advance gets some nods of approval from the masters, looks of respect from the instructors, and impressed exclamations from the students.
Mentioning that Dark Link was able to anticipate, counter, and ultimately overwhelm your attempt to blitz him with your sword and a sequential Body Flicker, without his speed being obviously enhanced in some way, draws scoffs of disbelief from the youngest members of the audience, looks of surprise from those somewhat older, and INTEREST from the more experienced.
And when you mention his Spin Attack that literally sent you FLYING and nearly set you up to get combo smashed into the ground, even the masters look a touch startled, at least until you clarify that you had a Spell of Flight going at the time, and Dark Link was wearing a pair of strength-enhancing magic gloves which grant the user enough power to tear man-sized rocks from the ground and fling them around.
And all of this was just in the opening moments of the fight!
While you speak, you have Dark Link demonstrating some of his moves, especially that Spin Attack he charged up so quickly. He turns into a walking buzz-saw when you describe the Spell of Black Tentacles that you tried to slow him down with, and when you get to the part where you tried to drop him into a Created Pit, the Image whips out a Hookshot and shoots towards the ceiling.
"He's BATMAN, now?!"
Oh, you're aware of a couple of exceptions to this general rule in the comics, and not even just from questionably canonical side-stories and mini-series, outright "what-if?" specials, or retconned issues - to say nothing of the live-action movies - but even in most of those, it's treated as a big deal when Batman chooses to resort to lethal force.
Link, in contrast, has no hesitation about using the Master Sword or whatever other weapons he's carrying to their full, deadly potential. Granted, most of the enemies Link goes up against are demonic spawn of one grade or another rather than mortal criminals, and the ease with which Ganondorf can conjure such minions up - even bringing them back after Link has already cut them down - does raise questions about just how "alive" they actually are and how serious "death" really is for them. That's not even getting into how many of them are undead or constructs...
Even taking all of that into account, though, Link has used lethal force against mind-controlled, possessed, transformed, or simply evil members of the mortal race. Not only that, your studies of Hyrulean history have turned up accounts of a few relatively mundane wars that had one of the Hero's incarnations fighting against mortal men and women from other nations.
You don't have any inherited memories of such events, as they all happened when Ganondorf was somehow out of the picture, but you have no trouble picturing the results.
Shaking your head, you get back to the tale of your battle with Dark Link-
"He carries BOMBS?!"
"Invincibility is CHEATING!"
-pushing on to the conclusion.
Even with the Silent Image providing some visual assistance, you aren't sure if you successfully convey the full urgency of the fight, much less the true menace the Dark Link represented, but the fact that you threw so many potentially fight-ending spells at the shadow-entity and really only managed to slow him down DOES seem to be recognized by most of the more experienced fighters in the room.
As for the rest of the audience... maybe you could try to demonstrate some of those spells in your lectures? Black Tentacles might be too risky to have any volunteers try to fight, but Create Pit should be fine, as long as the target knew how to handle a long fall, and Walls of Force would be perfectly safe! ...provided nobody broke a hand trying to hammer them down, anyway...
You file those thoughts away for later consideration.
Checking the time, you figure you can finish covering the Memorians' side of the Battle of the Faerie Outpost. What do you want to do after supper?
When you finish recounting the fight with Dark Link - and leaving out the part where you saw the face of Demise, because that's a can of demonic worms you don't feel like opening with this audience - you allow the Silent Image to disperse and give a brief account of your trek back up through the mine, before launching into a proper re-telling of the Memorians' battle.
"What, no video?" somebody asks.
"I can't create an Illusion that large and complicated," you apologize. "At least, not without violating the restrictions on magic-use I agreed to."
Several heads turn towards the masters.
"No," one of them says firmly.
"But-"
"Still no."
You do your best to relay the spectacle you saw through one of your Prying Eyes-
"What's that?"
"It's basically a tiny magical flying drone," you say simply.
"One that happens to look like a disembodied eyeball," Briar adds with a certain ghoulish glee.
"Ugh!"
"Gross!" exclaims that one kid who's been consistently enthused by the creepy things you've shown and talked about. He's no less delighted by this.
"They were CRYSTAL eyeballs at the worst, and I fixed that problem," you state, sparing a frown for your partner's attempts to stir up someone's meal.
"...no dripping or... dangling bits?" the genuinely grossed-out kid asks, gesturing at the side of his face as if to take in the optic nerve and other parts at the back of the eye.
"None."
"But that's so boring!" the other guy protests.
-describing the ferocious onslaught of the mostly-Hyrulean monsters, corrupted security constructs, and undead traitors, the equally fierce defensive tactics employed by Captain Marcus and his short century, and the general chaos of the battlefield even before the mages got involved.
It goes over pretty well. In your experience, most people like a stand-up fight where both sides' alleigances are clear-
"Death to giant spidery horror!"
"They really aren't that bad..."
-with some additional catharsis from having the embodiments of potential arachnophobia get stomped.
To quote an alien ambassador you caught on TV: "No moral ambiguity, no hopeless battle against ancient and overwhelming forces! They were the bad guys, as you say, and we were the good guys. And they made a very satisfying thump when they hit the floor."
That you are surrounded by martial artists undoubtedly contributes to the tale going over well, even without visual aids. Perhaps that's why, when you finish this tale and supper comes to an end, there's just a general round of cheering rather than complaints or requests for another story?
In any case, once you've handed in your plate, you head out to do some reading.
You are not the only member of the Sunnydale party to return to the dorm after supper. In fact, the only one who doesn't do so is Lu-sensei, who you saw speaking with a couple of the other masters. As for Lily Blaisdell, she seems intent on making sure that Larry remembers to brush his teeth after the meal - and while she doesn't come right out and say that the rest of you should do the same, the unspoken implication is there and is being respected.
So it is that, when you prepare to return to the Mirror Hideaway-
"Do we want to know why you're bringing pillows into the bathroom, Alex?" Cordelia wonders.
"Watch, and be amazed," Briar replies dryly.
-you have an audience.
A few minutes of dental maintenance and ritual spellcasting later, you toss the pillows through the bathroom mirror turned shimmering extra-dimensional portal, pull yourself into a mid-air swimming position, and wave to your friends-
Cordelia sighs, even as she joins Amy and Larry in waving back.
-before pulling yourself through the glass.
Once you've re-established your little reading spot and settled down, you ritually renew the Spell of Accelerated Perception and then re-activate the Ki Literacy technique, as well as the Ki Enhancement and Ki Paging required to turn the Book's pages at a reasonable rate.
Gained Ki Reinforcement F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
The last chapter in Roots of the Volcano talked about elemental techniques and elemental ki, which gave you hope that Foot of the Volcano would discuss such things.
It does not, at least not initially. Instead, the early chapters make a quick review of the contents of Roots, and then move into "building on the basics," which is to say they provide more information about building up one's reserves, maintaining techniques, and accelerating recovery. Where Roots of the Volcano was almost entirely stuff that you already knew quite well, merely with better organization and presentation, these sections of Foot of the Volcano are perhaps half-known to you, with the pages that discuss extending the duration of ki techniques once again proving most helpful-
Gained Ki Endurance F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
-and actually discussing a couple of concepts that you don't think you can actually use until you've built that aspect of your skills up some more.
One thing you ARE able to take away and put to use immediately is that the best way to hone Ki Endurance is to use ki techniques at their full intensity for as long as possible. Just turning them on and letting them run out isn't enough, you need the focus, effort, and strain of actually making your ki WORK to complete its tasks to build up this esoteric form of stamina. It doesn't need to be CONSTANT stimulus, thankfully - alternating between periods of activity and periods of rest can do the job just as they would for running - but you can see that this is going to be another skill that will be difficult to properly develop, thanks to your innate capabilities having leapt so far ahead.
As an example, you can currently keep your foundational Ki Enhancement technique running for almost twenty minutes straight in the middle of combat or similarly stressful conditions. Considering that your typical fights don't last more than a couple of minutes, it would be very, very difficult for you to keep that technique operating under the kind of pressure you need for the whole twenty minutes it would require to really strain and improve upon its duration.
That said, there's a silver lining: you don't have to use your strongest techniques to cultivate this aspect of your skills. After all, the point is to exercise your ki itself, not any one application of it; for that purpose, your various "underdeveloped" skills, with their much shorter durations, would be just as helpful.
...granted, putting some of those skills under combat-equivalent stress-training is going to require some creative thinking. Perhaps it's because you're in the middle of using Ki Literacy right now, but you have the silly idea of trying to read a book in the middle of sparring class stuck in your head...
Yeah, considering some of the distracting, annoying, or just plain surprising things your master has thrown your way - occasionally literally - for the sake of training basic skills like meditation and situational awareness, asking him to help you learn how to read in the middle of combat would not be that far out there.
You should probably remember to lead into the request with an explanation of what you were studying that gave you the idea in the first place, though. It seems like it would be less hassle than just going up to Lu-sensei and saying, "I want to learn how to read while fighting," if only because he'd probably ask you to walk him through your reasoning anyway.
Plus, as your master in the Five Elements Style, he undoubtedly has a few training exercises aimed at improving Ki Endurance anyway. It could be that there's a stage between Basic Literacy and Combat Literacy that you have to clear first - Walking Literacy, maybe? - in order to progress at an ideal rate. Or maybe it's just extra work that would give you more opportunity to work on your desired skill. Either is good.
Anyway, getting back to the Leatherbound Book's illegal copy of Foot of the Volcano, you get to about the middle of the text when it finally starts talking about elemental techniques.
A couple of these, the Water Palm and Wind Palm, you've already figured out the basics of, while a third, the thematically consistent but perhaps slightly misleadingly named Fire Palm, you've probably seen in use - specifically by that guy Lee, who lost his bout with the young Mohra demon Gorn back at the World Tournament.
As to why the name for that move could be considered to be inaccurate, it's because the technique doesn't START with you throwing fire around; rather, it's focused on HEAT.
There is also an Earth Palm, which Foot describes as the hardest of the four elements to manipulate. The author mentions the obvious culprits of mass, momentum, and rigidity, but also notes that Earth has a higher potential to actively damage one's hands than any element save Fire, whether that's by the force of incorrectly delivered strikes bruising or cracking bone, the grit of sandy particles and the rough edges of stone tearing at flesh, or even the chemical reaction of certain acidic or basic salts.
The text does not come out and SAY that there is an "Acid Palm" technique, but the implication is there. You are not sure if that's a good thing or not...
Regardless, while it may be harder to overcome Earth's problematic qualities, it is wholly possible to use ki-enhanced strikes to magnify and direct the movement of quantities of relatively loose material - soil, sand, small stones - to give one's self an advantage in certain situations.
Even a master can be momentarily disoriented by getting some mud in his eyes.
...though that is dipping into the element of Water a bit, admittedly.
Each fundamental variant of the Elemental Palm Technique gets a whole chapter dedicated to it, and you pay close attention to the technical information and training recommendations provided therein.
Gained Earth Palm F (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Fire Palm F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Water Palm E (Plus)
Gained Wind Palm E (Plus) (Plus)
The last chapter of Foot of the Volcano advises the reader that, while there are additional books in this series, it would be best not to read them until one has achieved proficiency with the four basic Elemental Palms.
Gained Ki Paging E
An idea comes to you, and after exiting the Mirror Hideaway-
"What the-!?" Larry yelps, nearly dropping the damp towel he was carrying.
"It's just me," you call, as you drag yourself out of the glass. From the look of things - specifically the bathrobe, towel, and not-completely-dry hair - you caught him on his way out of the bath.
Your buddy shakes his head. "You need an alarm or something for that trick, Alex."
"You knew I was in there, though?"
"There's a difference between knowing that you'll come out of the mirror at some point and seeing a pair of hands clawing their way out of the glass!"
...he has a point.
-and returning your pillows to their usual place, you exit the rear of the dormitory-
"Where are you off to now?" Larry wonders, as you pass by the room where you're both bunking.
"I had a training idea I wanted to test."
He glances out the window at the evening sky. "At this hour?"
"Never stop training."
"I'm pretty sure that's not what that means..."
-and ritually cast a Spell of Elemental Body, turning yourself into a Wind Elemental. The choice is made for four reasons: one, Wind or Earth Elementals would be most comfortable in the School's environment; two, you have the most practice with the Wind Palm; three, there is plenty of air to work with; and four, this move is (or can be) the most gentle of the four Elemental Palm techniques. There's basically no significant mass involved and no actively hazardous energy, just a push and a gust of air-
!
-wait, no, you don't want to turn into a whirlwind-!
Larry came out to watch after he finished getting changed into his nightclothes, and now looks on with some amusement and some confusion. "Did you mean to do that?"
"You saw nothing," you reply, waving him off.
Larry blinks. "Huh."
"What?"
"Your voice sounds a lot different in this form."
You pause to consider that. Of the four basic elemental types, Air Elementals have the closest form of communication to human speech, since it involves vibrations that propagate through the air. Reproducing human speech in this form is almost laughably easy - which makes sense when you consider that it's next to impossible to do in Earth Elemental form, the exact opposite of your current state - but the mechanisms involved are still completely different, which would explain a difference in pitch, tone, and other qualities.
It also occurs to you that you have yet to learn even the rudiments of the language of Elemental Air. That'll be something to keep in mind for when you meet an Air Elemental or other creature of the wind and skies...
Anyway, while you do get the "whirlwind reflex" under control, you find that your Wind Palm doesn't seem to want to work in this elemental form. You aren't sure if it's your currently gaseous form's lack of mass sapping the needed power from your punches, the lack of a proper stance - or legs - or a magically induced change in your ki that's responsible, as all seem likely, but if you can't get your most practiced Elemental Palm working in the form that elemental theory says it SHOULD be most compatible with, you can't see any of the other combinations working, either.
Disappointed there, you revert to flesh and blood and consider which variation of Flaming Aura to try and invoke. Even if there's nothing dangerously flammable out back, you probably shouldn't be messing around with Fire Palm, and there's no water to work with out here, so there's little point in practicing a Water Palm.
Since the Wind Elemental/Wind Palm combo didn't work out, it feels appropriate to test a less extreme sort of Wind/Wind combination first, just to see how much of a difference it makes, if any. Plus, again, Wind Palm is the least damaging and best-practiced of the four variants of the Elemental Palm you know how to perform, so even with a potential power-boost, it's the safest.
You begin a ritual, using the Spell of Flaming Aura as your baseline and then swapping out its Fire Elemental aspect for one of Air - or at least, you try to. Halfway through the casting of the spell, you realize that what you're feel isn't an increased awareness of and ease with air that surrounds you, but a growing tingling sensation, almost electrical in nature.
You adjust the spell matrix, steering it away from the Lightning Element that you were inadvertently tapping into. You think it must have to do with Flaming Aura's default form imbuing the target with a type of energy, and - with a suitable nature or additional casting - subsequently manifesting that energy. Imbuing someone or something with Elemental Fire will obviously give rise to heat and flame, but when dealing with Elemental Air, there are several potential associations: electricity for the sky's ties to Lightning (and in this instance, because it's closest in nature to Fire); close behind that, sound, for the link to Thunder; cold for the various forms of Water that exist in and fall from the heavens; and so on. Getting a pure "Air Aura" is trickier than you were expecting, even though the base element's associations with formlessness and elusiveness were a known factor.
The issue might have come about due to your strong Earth Affinity getting in the way, but with a little extra time, you manage to overcome it. The result is a certain lightness of being, as if you didn't weigh quite as much - or perhaps more accurately, as if your body was just easier to move.
Gained Wind Affinity E (Plus) (Plus)
You run through a few quick forms to get used to the feeling, and bounce on your heels once-
!
"Wha-!?"
-which sends you QUITE a bit higher into the air than you were expecting! It's almost like a Jump Spell, except that you not only go up faster, you also fall slower - so Jump crossed with Feather Fall, or something?
"Was that supposed to happen?" Larry wonders.
"An unexpected bonus."
Even as you say that, your knowledge of Elemental Magic and Elementalogy compel you to admit that perhaps gaining this pseudo-levitational power shouldn't have been a surprise.
After all, the first thing the Spell to Create a Flaming Aura does is augment the target so that, to any supernatural methods of detection, they register as a creature of Elemental Fire in addition to whatever they were before. Such entities are almost universally immune to ordinary extremes of heat and flame, vulnerable to the cold, and distinctly unfond of water, and by taking on their nature - however temporarily - the beneficiary of the Flaming Aura takes on those qualities as well.
As you already noted while adapting the spell formula, the Element of Air does not have the same one-to-one association with hazardous forces that the Element of Fire does; consequently, creatures of Air do not all share an immunity or vulnerability to one specific thing, save their dislike of the Earth and its associated forces and entities. The trait that IS nigh-universal among Wind spirits is the power of flight, and it's THAT quality which your modified ritual has attempted to bestow upon you, coming up with a "next best thing" result due to your body having far more liquids and solids in its makeup than any true creature of Wind would, and thus being rather more subject to the tyranny of gravity.
In any case, after another experimental bounce and slow fall, you ask Larry if he'd care to test out the spell with you.
He visibly considers it, but then looks down at his nightclothes, sighs, and says, "Better not. I did just get cleaned up and changed."
The jumping's really not that strenuous, though? And the landings are basically nothing.
"Yeah, but still."
Eh, his choice.
Getting back to the reason you came out here to begin with, you line up another Wind Palm-
*whoosh*
Gained Wind Palm E (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
-which works just fine. For all that you've been imbued with the essence of the wind and sky, your technique doesn't feel like its effectiveness has been altered: it consumes the same amount of energy as before; it resolves no faster (though also no slower); and while it's a bit difficult to measure such things exactly, the number of leaves you're able to rustle with a single ranged strike does seem consistent with past uses of the skill.
Simply adding an aura of Elemental Air to your ki doesn't seem to have altered the ki itself. You aren't sure if this is a failing of the spell or a limitation of your martial technique. Either is quite possible: the arcane arts and the mysteries of ki are both very time- and effort-intensive pursuits that don't have much overlap in their methodology; and consequently, there aren't many people who've been in a position to make a proper cross-disciplinary study of the skillsets.
To put it another way, whoever designed the Flaming Aura Spell may not have known that ki was even a thing, let alone how to adapt the magic to properly interact with it. At the same time, it's possible that the necessary functionality IS built into the spell, and it's your own limited understanding of the Elemental Fist that is preventing you from taking advantage of it.
Though there's a third option, which has to do with the fact that you've only cast Air Aura on yourself the one time. It takes two castings of Flaming Aura for a typical mortal recipient to be able to start radiating fire. Perhaps that's what you need to do?
Of course, since you literally just made up this spell, you aren't exactly sure what form a second-stage Air Aura will take. Given your experiments in Air Elemental Form a few minutes ago, though, you wouldn't be surprised if you found yourself in the eye of a small windstorm. As cool as that sounds, it would also undoubtedly interfere with any attempts to test out your basic Wind Palm.
You can mitigate the potential risks of turning into a walking funnel cloud by making sure you aren't standing close to anything that might get sent flying, and also by reducing the duration of the spell - you only need it to last long enough to fire off a Wind Palm, which shouldn't take more than a couple of seconds even under really bad conditions.
Warning Larry to back up to the dorm's rear door, just in case, you move to a point in the backyard where the only things within six or seven feet of you in any direction is grassy turf, open air, and maybe some soon-to-be-unfortunate bugs.
With apologies to the insect kingdom, you begin the ritual.
A few minutes later-
*Whoosh*
"Whoa!"
-the air around you begins to moan and then roar as a strong wind stream starts circling around and around and around your position, picking up strength as it goes.
As soon as you've completed your casting and are sure that the second stage of the Air Aura is stable - though just thinking that makes you wonder if you shouldn't call it something more impressive, like a Gusting or Storming Aura - you focus and fire off a Wind Palm.
The ki-backed push on the air is sucked into the whirlwind surrounding you and disappears without a trace.
Okay, that DEFINITELY didn't work as hoped for. Still, confirmation is good, and at least you didn't accidentally throw a funnel cloud at the trees!
"Are you alright in there, Alex?" Larry yells from his place by the door.
"All good!" you shout back over the storm.
As you reach to dismiss the Aura, you pause, wondering if you should take a moment to test how this upgraded version of the magic affects the pseudo-flight capabilities of its lesser form. You've got most of a minute before the spell gives out, which should be plenty of time, unless it gives you the equivalent of rocket boosters - which seems VERY unlikely, as even the purpose-built, near-level-equivalent Spell of Flight has a fairly limited top speed.
Also, with this quick test of Wind Palm finished, what do you wish to do next?
Seeing no point in wasting the opportunity, you bend your knees slightly, jump-
!
-and find yourself ascending farther, faster, than your two previous magically-assisted bounces were able to carry you. More significantly, when you reach what should have been the peak of your jump, you don't start falling or floating back to earth - in fact, you don't even slow down all that much, instead just drifting steadily skywards.
Looks like stacking Air Auras does provide actual flight, at least for human children and adolescents. Something larger or more strongly attuned to Elemental Earth might still be relatively ground-bound with such an enhancement in place...
You take a few moments to test out the mobility provided by this form of flight, and quickly determine that it's somewhat inferior to the standard Spell of Flight, at least in terms of pure speed - whether that's acceleration or top speed. The twinned Aura would still be competitive with the Spell of Overland Flight over relatively short distances, but would lose out to that spell in terms of endurance unless you extended it by a couple of steps.
There is one area where the doubled Air Aura is distinctly inferior to those more common methods of magical flight, and that's in terms of maneuverability. Someone under the effects of Fly or Overland Flight moves through the air rather gracefully - at least as long as they're familiar with the experience of magical flight - but this layered Aura lacks something of that fluid precision. You're still able to move with reasonable fluidity and precision, at least for the handful of maneuvers you have time to attempt before your sense of self-preservation kicks in and reminds you that you need to get to the ground before the spell runs through its very brief lifespan, but there is a definite strain compared to the standard spells.
Gained Flight (Magical) C (Plus) (Plus)
Could the loss of maneuverability be due to the disturbance kicked up by the pocket windstorm that the second tier of the spell called into being? That seems quite likely, though it's also possible that the magic is unstable because you forced it into existence, and a more refined and precise casting might recover the usual mid-air agility of flight spells.
Putting that aside for another time, you make your descent, not wanting to risk a long fall - though that said, you pause about a foot above the grass, letting the clock run down to test one final aspect of the magic. Its previous form included a function similar to the Spell of Feather Fall, and you know that the Spell of Flight includes a (slightly erratic) safeguard of a similar nature, which kicks in when the main spell wears off or is dispelled. Given those two points...
!
The wind about you starts dying down, and a moment later, you begin descending the rest of the way to the ground. The shortness of the fall might make it tricky for an outsider or an unseasoned flier to tell, but you have enough experience with landings of all kinds at this point to be certain that there was a brief levitation-like effect cushioning your otherwise uncontrolled descent.
Overall, then, it would seem that the second stage of Air Aura is not as useful as standard flight spells when it comes to long-term mobility or aerial combat against highly agile magical fliers. That said, the presence of the windstorm means that the recipient of the spell(s) would be better protected against small fliers that had to get close to be a threat - such as all manner of swarming creatures - some kinds of environmental hazards, and possibly small projectiles.
You don't think you'd care to test this "wind shield" against bullets or most attack spells - you're quite certain that a Magic Missile would go right through it, atmospheric conditions being among the many obstacles that spell was designed to ignore - but arrows, spears, and flung stones below boulder size? That might be doable.
Now then...
This testing of your Wind Palm in tandem with the various Wind-elemental enhancements has you wondering about other potential synergies between your magic and ki, but you're reluctant to start testing such things right now.
For starters, the Wind Palm saw no particular improvement from your use of Elemental Magic that should have been sympathetic to it, which suggests that your other ki techniques which involve the elements - few as they are - would return similar results, while your more "neutral" repertoire of techniques wouldn't be affected at all. You can tentatively confirm that last point from past uses of ki while you were under the effects of various spells, though by the same token, you can ALSO confirm that they don't interfere with each other - or at least not enough for it to be noticeable.
The idea of using your magic to more directly enhance your ki does come to mind, but you don't know many spells that do this as the specific intent of their function, rather than as a side-effect of enhancing the body, mind, and/or spirit. There's only two such spells of this nature in your entire extensive repertoire, in fact, neither of which you've used outside of periodic practice, if even that often.
The Spell of Ki Arrow is meant to provide a ranged attack option in situations where the caster and target (assuming they aren't one and the same) have an enemy that they can't reach or otherwise affect. Such circumstances don't exactly come up for you that often, and when they do arise, you have a LOT of options for reaching out and touching someone, most of which would be considerably more effective than throwing an arrow at the target with supernatural force - particularly when you don't even CARRY arrows most of the time. That's somewhat made up for by the fact that you could ritually modify the spell to work on some other projectile, even something as simple and commonplace as a rock, but the delay makes that a bit impractical.
As for the Spell of Ki Leech, you aren't sure when, where, or why Ganondorf learned that one, given the rather limited understanding of ki down through Hyrule's history. You suspect it was originally developed as a variant of the Spell of Vampiric Touch, but as to how useful it would have been when most people - let alone most magic-users - wouldn't even know what ki was, much less be able to tap into it... well.
Maybe the King of Evil just got fed up with Link throwing Sword Beams at him, and was looking into a means of shutting that down?
Regardless, you have never actually used the Ki Leech Spell since it bubbled up in the back of your mind, and that's a state of affairs you're content to leave unchanged. Sucking the life-energy out of another living being is a distasteful prospect to you on several levels.
Between them, Ki Arrow and Ki Leech don't really provide a good base from which to try casting high-end, specifically ki-affecting Augmentations on yourself, particularly not with how little you've used them.
Building on that issue, if you ARE going to start poking at your ki flows with magic, it seems like the sort of thing that you should do at a low level, in a controlled environment, with spells set to monitor and record what's happening, Briar and Lu-sensei on hand to advise and intervene if needed, and other precautionary measures taken. You don't have access to such a facility right now, and you really shouldn't go setting one up without first clearing things with your partner and teacher.
On that note...
You should probably focus on the more difficult individual to find first. With that in mind, you brush off a bit of dust and a few stray blades of grass that ended up on your person after the Air Aura gave out, and head back into the dormitory to see if your teacher has come back since you and Larry have been out in the yard.
You're barely inside the building when you almost bump into Amy coming the other way.
"Oh, good," she says. "For a minute there, I thought you might have climbed into a mirror again..."
Not going to lie, you HAD considered it.
"...uh-huh. You know, if you're going to keep doing that on this trip, or even in general, leaving people a way to get in touch with you while you're behind glass wouldn't be a bad idea."
You pause for a moment, considering that.
A normal Message Spell won't work through the portal of a Mirror Hideaway, as a mirror so enchanted won't allow other spells to be cast through it. A Message in combination with a Spell of Scrying would be viable, but Amy can't cast the latter magic yet, it'll be a while before she does have the ability, and even then, it takes a full hour to set up, which is much too slow to be convenient for most circumstances where people needed to get your attention. It also wouldn't help anyone who wanted to talk to you when Future Amy wasn't around.
Your familiar bond with Briar is another magical effect that won't work through the mirror. You're still aware of your connection to your partner when you're on different planes from one another, but the link is muted for the duration and useless for its usual purposes.
Thinking on it, though, you recall something about the functionality of the Spell to Create a Mirror Hideaway. It's never come up before, because you normally cast this spell while you're down in your basement workshop, where other people don't go, but here and now...
"Actually," you say, "I can see out through the portal while I'm inside the Hideaway. You could write a message on the glass, or write on a sheet of paper and tack that to the mirror. Even just waving your hands around to get my attention would work."
Amy frowns. "How long would that take, if you were alone in there with your mind on some magical experiment, though?"
...
Okay, yeah, she's got a point there. Most of the time, you retreat to your Hideaway because you want to perform a magic ritual, and that's the sort of thing you prefer to devote your full attention to - not to mention that you have your back to the Hideaway's "door" as often as not, meaning you wouldn't be able to see any written messages or people trying to get your attention.
That leaves people coming into the Hideaway in person. Leaving aside the fact that you have yet to meet someone who didn't at least shiver in discomfort when passing through the glass portal, your current choice of mirrors is pretty awkward to get into and out of for anyone who can't levitate.
Maybe you need to look into a "Mirror Doorbell" or something?
Shaking your head, you ask Amy if she was looking for you for a reason.
"Yeah, I found Roots of the Volcano back on my table, and I was thinking about reading some more of it. I just wanted to make sure you didn't have the same thing in mind."
No, you're good; you managed to read it this afternoon.
"...what, the whole book?"
"I came up with a speed-reading combo," you reply.
"...of course you did." Amy shakes her head. "Well, whatever. I'll be in the common room, reading like a normal person, if you need me."
"Before you go, is Lu-sensei around?"
"Yeah, actually, he's in your room."
Huh. Unexpected, but convenient.
As Amy heads to the girls' room, you walk up to the door of the boys' room and knock. "Are you decent, Sensei?"
"Are you?" comes his reply.
"Please, I am STUNNING."
There is an amused snort from within the room, after which your master's voice starts to come closer. "You've certainly concussed or bewildered a few people along the way, I'll give you that much."
The door opens to reveal Lu-sensei, looking... a little more neatly dressed and groomed than he was in the dining hall, you think.
"Been invited to a social engagement?" you guess, having seen him in a similar state a few times before.
Your teacher nods. "A couple of old friends in town were hoping to see me."
"Before you go, then, would you happen to have time for a discussion about a possible addition to my training regimen?"
"I can certainly spare you a few minutes. Does this have anything to do with the high-jumping you were doing a minute ago?" He nods towards the window that gives a view of the backyard.
You quickly recount what you were trying to do out there, and how that gave you the idea about using magic to directly enhance your ki techniques. Lu-sensei hears you out, making no sign whether he approves or disapproves, and when you're done, he nods.
"Well, first of all, I am pleased and relieved that you did not simply go ahead and use arcane forces to mess around with your ki flows. If you'd managed to hurt yourself in the process, I wouldn't know where to begin fixing the problem, unless Briar or Amy could manage something."
That was one of the reasons you held back, yes.
"Second, I don't have any personal experience with the sort of process you've described, nor can I direct you to anyone I know that does. Not anyone who's both living and trustworthy, at any rate. As you noted, skill at arcane magic and skill with ki aren't often found in the same individual, and most of those among the martial set with access to the services of benign or just well-paid magic-users find conventional methods of magical enhancement to be quite sufficient for their needs. That," he adds, "and there is always that portion of the community that looks down on such 'artificial' or 'unnatural' enhancement as unworthy, shameful, or simply cheating."
"Ki snobbery?" you suggest lightly.
After all, ki CAN be used to enhance any normal aspect of human existence, and you HAVE personally used it to shore up your mind. Bolstering the ego, even in ways that might be considered negative, should be entirely doable.
"Quite," Lu Tze agrees dryly. "Though there is a degree of similar pride on the magical side of things."
True enough.
"Even leaving the complications of dueling egos aside, there is a certain amount of mistrust between the two groups," your master states. "Historically, various magic-wielders have caused assorted miseries for ki adepts: sometimes directly and deliberately, because a given school or monastery was in the way of their ambitions; and at other times, as collateral damage of whatever they were doing to the greater countryside. In turn, ki adepts tended to spearhead the efforts that led to the destruction of those same spellcasters, but at times have also been involved in more wide-reaching purges of the magically gifted."
Not the best environment to cultivate trust, no.
Gained Ancient Earth History D (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Chinese History E (Plus)
Gained Japanese History E (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Taiwanese History F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
"And of course," Lu-sensei says, "the sort of arcanists who go out of their way to experiment on ki-users without consent aren't usually inclined to share the results of their 'research', nor are most adepts who end up in possession of such information inclined to allow it to survive its creators."
A little disappointing, but given the means by which such data would have been obtained, you can understand why it might be torn up and/or burned to ash.
"So in short," you sum up, "we'd be starting from scratch."
"Pretty much," Lu Tze agrees. "I would also strongly recommend against using yourself as the subject of any such experiments, partly since, as already mentioned, you ARE the magical expert here and have the best chance of figuring out and fixing any magical mishaps before their effects become permanent, but also because I really can't approve of testing this sort of thing on a child - even one who occasionally acts as old as I am." He pauses, and then admits, "That said, I can name a few of your seniors in the Sunnydale School who would likely consent to act as experimental subjects."
"...really?"
"Some would want to be paid, and you probably should do that regardless," he says, "but for the chance to increase their strength and skills in the art, particularly when they live on the Hellmouth? Yes, really."
The prospect of breaking new ground in the fields of arcane AND martial research at the same time is a tempting one. Even if it turned out that cross-disciplinary enhancement of the type you were considering wasn't possible, the associated research would still give you a better idea of the hows and whys of ki, which would almost be worth the effort all by itself - and if the experiments DID pan out, well, even just being able to permanently enhance the fighting capabilities of adult human ki-users would be a very valuable skill to add to your repertoire.
Still, considering that you would be poking at the vital systems of living people, this does feel like precisely the sort of project that must not be rushed. Your grasp of the theoretic side of ki, while not terrible, is still not all that great in absolute terms, and could undoubtedly use some shoring up before you start performing in-depth arcane examinations with an eye toward the eventual equivalent of a surgical procedure. On top of that, doing a set of animal trials first might be sensible, and you might also use the time to carefully feel out the arcane side for any ethically obtained, generally accessible information on the topic.
There's also the matter of location to take into account. Even if you were completely comfortable with several perfect strangers coming over to your house - and you're not, for a variety of reasons - your basement workshop is not really set up for research of a biological nature. Lu-sensei's place is not so well-warded against general Hellmouthyness and is distinctly less equipped for arcane research than your lab, and unless something VERY strange is going on, none of the people he'd likely tap for this should have the necessary workspace and warding in their residences, either. Even recruiting Catherine Madison's help wouldn't be entirely ideal, as she probably doesn't want an increased flow of traffic drawing attention to her family home any more than you do.
But if you waited a year or so, then not only would you have more of the necessary preliminary research done, you'd also have that demiplanar workshop you've been planning out up and running. That would give you a properly outfitted space to run all your tests and experiments in, free of Hellmouthy influence or worries of observation, and - with the simple addition of a Magnificent Mansion or two - somewhere for your volunteers to stay in reasonable comfort while they waited for any magical procedures done on their persons to run their course.
And then of course, there's the matter of just how BUSY your next year's schedule is looking...
So, yeah, putting off the human trials for a bit is probably for the best all around.
Lu-sensei accepts your thoughts with a nod. "I have no problem with waiting for you to be more fully prepared for such a task," he says.
Well, with that motion tabled for the time being, is there anything else you want to ask your master before he steps out for the night?
Perhaps it's the fact that your teacher is headed out to town shortly which has you thinking about transportation - of various sorts - but before he goes, you ask Lu Tze what his opinion would be about you visiting the School of the Five Elements on a regular, long-term basis, if only to make use of their facilities - like the library.
"Well, the travel would certainly be less of an issue," he begins, "although not entirely a trivial one."
True enough. There's the matter of time zones not always lining up conveniently, as well as the problem of the more conventional travel you have to undergo to dodge attention in Sunnydale - although that last one is another thing that should become less of an issue once you've got your own demiplane to work with.
You won't have the means to establish a permanent Gate between your demiplane and your home for a couple of years, yet, and honestly, there are as many arguments to be made for not doing that as there are in favor of it, mostly boiling down to security and privacy. That said, once you've finished your studies of clerical magic, you'd be able to invoke a Plane Shift as a fifth-circle spell - or rather as a fifth-circle ritual, which is what you'd need to cast it as to get it to work at all right now. Between your trained control and Ambrose's ward on your house, you might be able to conceal a ritual of that magnitude, and if you properly learned the spell beforehand and could suppress its signature while using the ritual format, you're sure you could.
So, that's one future option for getting in and out of Sunnydale with a lot less hassle.
"As for making use of the facilities," your master continues, "some form of compensation would be expected, more so if you're planning on making use of the grounds or training equipment, and especially if you're thinking about sitting in on future classes. It's one thing to entertain a guest for a few days, and quite another when somebody's showing up on the regular."
"What would the bill look like?" you wonder.
"I'm not sure," Lu Tze admits with a slight frown. "Most students either attend for a few weeks at a time during the annual, semi-annual, or seasonal training camps, live in town, or reside at the School year-round. Somebody who can come and go from as far away as you would be, as casually and as randomly as you sometimes do, would be a new one in this branch's history, if not that of the Five Elements Style as a whole."
Not long after that, Lu-sensei goes on his way to meet up with the other masters he's heading off with. He advises that they should be back by dawn at the latest-
"In which case, I would not say no to borrowing one of your magic blankets," he adds.
-provided that the reunion party doesn't get crashed by uninvited acquaintances, like ninjas or such.
...
"...what would you say the odds are of something like that happening, sir?" you ask slowly.
"Small, but not entirely zero," Lu-sensei admits.
"...well, if you need me, you know where I'll be," you finally say.
"It's always a comfort to know where to find backup," the old man agrees.
After that, he's off.
As for you...
"...so what you're saying is, I'm unprecedented," you conclude, nodding sagely.
Lu-sensei looks like he wants to refute that, but can't think of a way to say so.
Given that your friends haven't been overly interested in making use of the Restful Blankets, you think that you can put one aside for your teacher's use without issue.
After Lu-sensei leaves, you decide to find your fairy partner. Doing so will give you some of the benefits of an evening walk, seeing as how Briar isn't in the dorm at the moment, so it's a nice two-for-one deal.
After taking a minute to ask Amy and Larry if they know where Briar is, or where she was before they came back-
"Didn't see her, sorry," Amy replies absently, hardly looking up from Roots of the Volcano.
"I think I heard her say something about wanting to check out a pond?" Larry offers uncertainly. "I don't know if she was considering going swimming, or what."
"At this hour?" Amy wonders, a little more attentively than before.
"It's probably not about swimming," you say. "Fairies of Briar's sort just like to hang out near bodies of fresh water - the purer and more mystical, the better. She might just be checking to see if there's a local spot that meets her standards."
"...nothing like that in Sunnydale, huh," Amy guesses.
"Not a one."
-you exit the dorm, leaning on the faint directional pull of the familiar bond. By itself, the link doesn't immediately tell you where Briar is exactly, but a general sense of "fairy, thataway" lets you narrow things down, making subsequent inquiries easier and more reliable.
Reaching through the connection in just such a manner, you emote, / Briar. /
/ ? /
/ Where? /
/ Here. /
Your dim sense of your partner's direction becomes sharper, as her presence increases in your awareness. You get a sense of cool, slightly damp air, the scent of green, growing things, and the murmur of a small stream.
You start walking, heading towards one of the hills. Some minutes later, you find the stream - whose bed looks half-natural and half the result of landscaping - and follow that up to a pond about two-thirds as large as Cordelia's swimming pool, at least in terms of surface area. As far as volume goes, it's much smaller, probably not deep enough to come up to your knees. There's some nice trees and smaller plants scattered about, and while you don't see any animals, your passive Ki Sense picks up signs of life in the water and hidden nearby.
Briar, back in fairy form, is perched on a tree branch that reaches far out over the surface of the pond, almost to the middle of the water.
"Hey, Alex," she greets you. "What's the latest disaster?"
"Funny."
As with some of the other spots of natural beauty you've seen scattered around the grounds, this pond has a few serviceable seats arranged about it, some seeming to be nothing more than the result of natural forces in action, others obvious shaped and/or placed by human hands. After a moment to compare distances, you amble over to the moss-covered rock which is the one that seems to be closest to Briar's spot, and settle yourself down.
"Okay," you begin, "so I finished reading Foot of the Volcano, and about halfway through, the book started discussing elemental variations on the Wind Palm technique you've seen me use a few times..."
You explain how that led you to test the interactions of Wind Elemental Magic with the Wind Palm-
"Wait, it didn't work?" Briar interrupts.
"Nope."
"...huh. I would have thought for sure..."
"I know, right?"
-your subsequent thoughts about using magic to directly enhance your ki-
"PLEASE tell me you didn't actually try to do that," Briar groans, as she lifts off from her branch and zips over to you.
"I didn't! Partner's hon- put the wand away, Briar, I don't need an exam."
"That's for the healer to decide."
-and the somewhat brief discussion you ended up having with Lu-sensei about it.
"...do you suppose he's got a date?" Briar wonders.
"THAT'S what you're taking away from all of this?" you ask in exasperation.
"I mean, I HAVE spent a good part of the last thirty-six hours hanging around teenage girls and Cordy..."
"...yeah, that's fair."
...
"...so, do you?"
"Oh, for-"
Once Briar gets that out of her system, you ask her for her thoughts on a project to examine the effects of direct magical augmentation of a living ki system.
"I mean, I DEFINITELY agree that trying something like this in Sunnydale wouldn't be a good idea," she says right off the top. "For all the reasons you already covered. Likewise, taking the time to learn about the topic and get a clean, safe, 'no gribblies allowed' environment set up for the actual exams and tests makes a whole lot more sense than trying to forge ahead with what you've got and hoping that nothing goes wrong or comes around asking pointed questions."
And as for the experiments themselves?
"Alex," your partner says patiently, "you're asking a Fae if she thinks using magic to try and make boring adult humans 'better' and 'more interesting' is a good idea or not. Think about that for a minute."
...
Okay, yeah, kind of a dumb question.
"Just a little," Briar agrees. "Although I DO agree that informed consent is the way to go for stuff like this, unlike the sort of creeps who'd say that NOT telling the mortals exactly what's going on just makes it more entertaining..."
You sit there for a few more minutes, idly chatting, but it's not long before you decide that you'd better get back to the dorm.
"He didn't say," you reply, "and I didn't ask. That said, I'm pretty sure the answer is 'No.'"
"What makes you so sure?" your partner wonders.
"I mean, he wasn't really dressed up or anything, or at least not anymore than those times we've seen him getting ready for Old Folks' Poker Night. Considering that it's probably been years or decades since he last saw the people he's going to see..."
"Ah," Briar says. "You're thinking it was too casual to be a date, is that it?"
"Pretty much."
Not that you're an expert on the subject in this or any other lifetime, but your understanding of things is that a man headed out for a romantic evening supposed to dress up differently from how he usually does, wear cologne, and maybe bring a small token of his affections. Granted, that could just be another example of modern media misleading you...
"So how WAS the pond?" you ask your partner, as the two of you move to leave. "I didn't mention it before, but it seems... pretty ordinary."
You punctuate that with a glance back at the water.
"It's that, alright," she agrees. "I mean, don't get me wrong: the School's done a good job keeping the place clean in the physical sense; and mystically, the local energies move through the area very smoothly, with no conflicting currents or stagnant dead-ends. I think they might have called in a specialist to help arrange things that way."
"Like a Feng Shui master?" you ask.
"I'd have to meet one of those before I could say for certain," Briar answers, "but probably not. Something made by a master-level practitioner of anything on the mystical side probably should have registered as actually magical, instead of just clean. Still," she adds, brightly, "a nice clean pool surrounded by generally unspoiled nature is a nice change from the bodies of water in and around Sunnydale, or most of the other places we've been to on Earth."
"But it's not a proper Fairy Fountain," you conclude.
"Definitely not, no."
The walk from the pond back to the guest dorm is only slightly more eventful than your outbound trip was, and that mostly due to Briar's presence on the return journey. Once you've arrived, your partner zips off to check on Larry and the girls, while you grab a seat in the common room-
"Hey, Amy," you greet the witch, who still has her nose in Roots of the Volcano.
"Hey," she acknowledges you.
-and get out the Leatherbound Book that you copied the words of Hitting the Funny Bone into.
The introduction declares this book to be the work of Ha Ha, humble student of the School of Five Elements of Comedy - dubbed Incongruity, Conflict, Repetition, Reversed Expectation, and Surprise - which you're pretty sure are a pen-name and NOT an actual branch of the Five Elements Style, respectively. The opening section notes that Ha Ha was a keen appreciator of humor, and grew dismayed by the lack of purely entertaining applications of ki to be found within the teachings of the "classical" School of Five Elements.
"'Which is not to suggest that the look on a highly deserving and unsuspecting opponent's face when you knock them into next week or through a nearby wall cannot be amusing'," the text clarifies, "'but violent humor is an acquired taste, and one best administered in small doses. Less aggressive forms of comedy, meanwhile, are sorely under-represented within the standard curriculum of our art; it is my hope that this book, containing the results of years of personal study and experimentation, will change this.'"
The first thing he talks about is a technique derived from elements of the Ki Strike and Ki Grip, which... replicates the effect of a joy buzzer?
...
Okay.
Gained Ki Grip E (Plus)
Gained Ki Strike D (Plus)
Chapter Two discusses how to use the Ki Step maneuver in such a way as to... make squeaky sounds with every footstep. The copied text recommends using this in the library or other places where you can stay out of sight, while still being in earshot of the person you want to mess with.
...
In the third part, Ha Ha describes how to use Ki Projection to achieve "long range tickling," adding that this one requires considerable control to pull off successfully, as well as good aim, and then in the next section, he discusses something he describes as "Comedic Intent," based off of an emotion-projecting technique that you haven't learned how to perform, at least not consciously. There isn't enough written here for you to really back-engineer the trick, Ha Ha apparently having assumed it would be known to his audience, so you make a note to discuss it with Lu-sensei in the morning.
...or maybe the afternoon.
As the hour grows late and everybody else heads off to bed, you spare a moment to contemplate your overnight plans. Your mana reserves are high enough that they should have mostly or completely recovered by morning, as long as you don't spend more than a couple of hours dreamwalking. Your ki reserves, on the other hand, have been depleted far enough that it might be best to skip any psychic wanderings in favor of a full night's rest and recovery.
As long as you keep it short and don't tap into your mana or ki in the process, a dreamwalking session should be fine - but that's for later, you still have some reading to do.
As you continue going through Hitting the Funny Bone, you note that Ha Ha had some failings as a writer. Each chapter would be fine as a stand-alone article or the like, but they way they've been put together is kind of awkward, not really fitting into any sort of natural progression. There's also the matter of insufficient explanation of a few concepts, like the conventional version of Comedic Intent, and a certain dry formality that you can't say really suits the subject matter or the title. Ha Ha slips in a few jokes here and there, and every chapter has an example of how he used the techniques mentioned, but the former just kind of draws attention to the usual tone of the text, and the latter comes across as more "technical analysis" than "funny story."
You'd like to say he was going for irony, but...
Ultimately, what Hitting the Funny Bone has to say comes down to some very niche applications of more significant ki techniques, commentary on timing, and - more than anything - an attempt to encourage the reader to think up funny applications for their own techniques, like blasting someone in the face with a low-impact Water Palm or using a dialed-down Ki Shout to amplify the effectiveness of the old "jump out and yell 'Surprise!'" trick.
Seeing as how it's somewhere past eleven-thirty when you've finished reading, you decide to call it a night. There's no sign of Lu-sensei returning - which you weren't really expecting - and everybody else is long since in bed and asleep.
As expected, everybody took a pass on borrowing a Restful Blanket, so you're able to set one aside for your master's use when he gets back, the item folded neat atop his bed.
After changing into your bedclothes and making a trip to the washroom, you settle down to sleep, perchance to dreamwalk...
...
In due course, you open your mind's eye to the world within your sleeping mind.
Gallery of Hyrulean artworks that move when you aren't looking, check.
Quietly snoring fairy partner, check.
Muffled sounds of kung fu class coming from somewhere outside, check.
Unfamiliar figure in kung fu robes, with a face like a CLOWN!
The fearsome fool raises one hand, fingers curled around the bulb of his dread horn-
!
-and then a massive tongue shoots out of the darkness, wraps around the bewildered buffoon, and yanks him backwards into the shadows with a trailing hoooonk.
"Huhwha-?" Briar exclaims. "Amup, whassat?"
A wet burbling noise comes from the gallery. It somehow sounds disgustingly happy.
"...Alex," your partner says in a clearer, if still sleep-addled tone, "did I just hear a Like-Like?"
"It's just the one in the gallery, Briar."
"Oh, okay."
There is a muffled, panicked honking.
"Care to explain why one of your weird dream images is making happy noises?" your partner continues. "And what's with the honking?"
"The answer to both is that I woke up, and there was a clown standing there."
"...so you had the Like-Like eat it?" she wonders.
"It was the first thing that came to mind."
"...weird, but whatever." With a reluctant sigh, Briar pushes back the covers of her dream-bed, sits up, stretches, and then takes to the air. "So, any idea what brought on the comedy nightmare?"
"Well, the clown WAS dressed like a more colorful version of one of the School's masters, I DID read through that copy I made of Hitting the Funny Bone before I called it a night, and it WAS written by a student of the Five Elements Style who introduced themselves as Ha Ha," you answer, as you also get out of bed. "I guess reading about ki-powered comedy tripped something."
"...I swear," your partner grumbles, "sometimes it seems like the more time I spend in your head, the less sense it makes..." You can just make out Briar shaking her head, before she puts her annoyance aside. "So, what's the plan for tonight's subconscious stroll? Another unannounced visit with Amy? Calling on Cordy instead? Looking in on Larry?"
"I wanted to have another go at finding the source of that shouting," you explain.
Burble-honk-squish.
"...but maybe I'd better take care of Greasepaint over there first."
As much as you dislike the thought of interacting with a clown, you're even less fond of the idea of leaving one unsupervised within your mindscape.
Sure, the Like-Like will do its best to contain the unwanted manifestation, but you know that real Like-Likes aren't inescapable threats, and this one is merely a projection of some portion of your will - as is the kung fu comedian it's currently keeping down. The "known" weakness of the former and the inherent dislike of the other, when viewed through that particular distorted lens of bad dreams where the thing you most want to avoid is always right behind you, mean that the punchy prankster will probably manage to escape his current confinement when you leave your mindscape to wander the wider dream-realm.
Rather than risk coming back to the fortress of your mind only to slip on a banana peel, catch a pie with your face, or be subject to some other bit of buffoonery, you decide it would be best to get rid of the clown now.
With that thought in mind, you venture into the shadows-
"Is there a lightswitch in here, somewhere?" Briar wonders.
You snap your fingers.
Lights in the ceiling turn on, or in some cases, up.
"Handy," she notes.
-to where the display of "Like-Like and Clown" stands. Now that you're actually looking at it, the Hyrulean blob monster's statue has assumed the proper immobility of the stone it's made of - or at least, it's tried to, as the captured clown's flailing legs and other efforts to escape are causing his amorphous prison to shake and wobble.
The honking had previously been somewhat erratic, suggesting it was more the accidental result of the captive's struggling, but at your approach, the noise falls off for a moment before resuming with a steady, one honk-per-two seconds rhythm, similar to a car alarm going off.
*Honk*
*Honk*
*Honk*
"So, what are you going to do with him?" Briar wonders, raising her voice slightly over the noise.
You consider Briar's question, along with your various options, and then nod to yourself and reach out to grab the clown by the floppy footwear.
It takes a couple of attempts, what with the kicking and how it briefly intensifies when the fool registers SOMETHING trying to grab what parts of him have not been swallowed by the Like-Like; you get hit at an awkward angle by the oversized shoes, which doesn't hurt, but does produce a rather annoying *squeak* in the process.
The honking also briefly intensifies, rising from "the door is open" levels to "emergency services coming through."
Still, a few shouts and the presence of a partner, combined with the fact that you can at least see what you're doing, whereas the clown is working blind, means you're able to secure one foot in short order. The honking also quiets down.
Then you start undoing the laces.
"Why are you doing that?" Briar asks, from where her human-sized self holds the other baggy-dressed leg.
"No squeaky shoes in the house of my mind," you reply.
Panicked honking, squeaking, and struggling swiftly resume, but between the Like-Like's devouring maw and the grip you and your partner have on the clown's lower extremities, they amount to nothing more than mild irritation.
One shoe is shortly off and pocketed, revealing a striped sock where five different colors - red, green, blue, yellow, and white - are arranged together in sets of five, no two of which seem to share the same pattern.
Deprived of its oversized outer layer of protective wear, the foot in question seems to go limp with shame - you know, if clowns had such a thing.
Shaking your head, you move to the other foot. Briar already has that shoe half-off, and your help just speed things up.
Once you've got the squeaky shoes out of the picture, you take a firmer hold of one clown leg, indicate for Briar to do the same with the other, and then start pulling the prisoner free of the Like-Like.
As with the genuine monster, the statue seems not to want to give up its catch, but there are three of you working against its hold now, and it's a manifestation of your mind besides, so the conclusion is foregone.
*Pop!*
*Honk*
*Thump*
And also ends with the clown laid out on the floor, horn-hand raised.
You roll the intrusive dream-image over before he can honk again, thinking to impound the red nose-ball as well, but all that greets you is slightly smeared facepaint.
"Where's your nose?" you demand.
The clown - who you decide that you're going to call Ha Ha - blinks and brings his empty hand up to his nose in a tentative, exploratory manner, which quickly turns shocked and dismayed when he confirms the absence of a foam or rubber decoration.
There is a slow, mournful *hoooonk,* which promptly cuts off as Ha Ha glares at the Like-Like.
You give the statue a more thoughtful look.
While it's tempting to call the situation "good enough" and get on with dealing with Ha Ha, you decide that you'd rather be sure to get the nose-ball.
Partly, it's because you don't want bits of clown left laying around your dreamscape, not even if this one HAS been "eaten" by the Like-Like.
There is also the fact that, because a clown's nose serves no other purpose than to adorn some funnyman's face, it is symbolic of the clown, both as an individual and as a concept. You have too much of an arcane education not to respect the potential power and danger of symbols, even one so minor as this, and hence aren't inclined to let it remain unsecured.
Mostly, though, you just want your full trophy.
Straightening up, you focus on the Like-Like and declare, "Hand over the nose."
...
Nothing happens.
You frown. "You heard me. Open up and spit it out."
...
The statue shifts ever-so-slightly and makes a faint burble of protest, but doesn't move beyond that-
!
-and out of the corner of your eye, you glimpse some of the other occupants of the gallery gesturing broadly, as if struggling to communicate in a foreign lan- oh, right.
Dreams are not unlike the Fae in that they have certain rules, and things tend to work out for the better if you act in accordance with them.
"I'm going to turn away for a moment," you tell the Like-Like, before pausing as you take in the presence of Briar and Ha Ha. "We're ALL going to turn away for a moment," you correct yourself, "and when I turn back, I expect there to be a clown's nose on the floor."
You half-turn, gesturing to Ha Ha to follow suit.
There is a confused *honk*, but perhaps goaded by your stern expression, the clown heeds the instruction.
Briar just sighs and turns about.
You count to five, and when you complete the circle that you started, you find the Like-Like with its mouth somewhat more closed than it was a moment ago, and a red ball on the floor before it.
Ha Ha gives a *honk* of amazement.
Gained Local Knowledge (Dream Plane) F (Plus) (Plus)
Kneeling, you pluck the vinyl-coated foam sphere from the ground and pocket it, to a *honk* of distinct protest from its original owner.
You regard Ha Ha for a moment, considering your options.
You don't like clowns very much. In part, this is because of how they remind you of that creepy Zant character you've seen in some of Ganondorf's memories, or the similarly disturbing Ghirahim from the Ring of Trials, but there's another part of you - as unconnected to the whole reincarnation business as it's possible for a section of your own soul to be - that just finds clowns, mimes, and similar entities unsettling in their own right.
It is fair to say that both of those parts of your awareness are inclined to use your mastery of your own dreamscape to dismiss Ha Ha back into the formless shadows of the unconscious from whence he came.
That said, you've touched upon enough basic psychology thanks to your use of the Spell of the Dark Self and studies of Enchantment Magic to grasp that trying to force down and ignore unpleasant dreams isn't a good way of dealing with them. Fear, doubt, and other such feelings tend to get worse over time if they're just suppressed and left to fester in the back of one's mind, a problem made considerably worse in the world of the supernatural, where many spells and powers exist that can take advantage of weaknesses in one's psychological armor. To truly deal with these issues, you have to bring them out into the open, mentally speaking, acknowledging them and identifying how and why they have the hold on you that they do, and then disarming them.
Or at least, that's your understanding of things. You aren't exactly a trained psychologist.
It's probably the bit about "bringing things into the open," combined with your habitual invocation of Shadow Alex, that gives you the idea.
Addressing Ha Ha directly, you ask, "How would you feel about being summoned into the waking world?"
"What," Briar asks.
*Honk,* the clown adds, the toneless blat and his flat, painted expression making for a clear, wordless, "What she said."
"We're on the Plane of Dreams," you explain to both members of your audience. "Maybe we're in the part of it that only exists in my head, but it's still a portion of the greater plane, and I can reach into other planes and bring creatures native to them into the Material Plane with Summoning Magic. I've even done it with other entities that existed inside of me."
Okay, your summoning of the Raging Boar is perhaps not the best example of that, as spirit animals don't ONLY exist inside of the person they're helping, but it's another case of something existing on a different plane - in that case, the spiritual - while also being in your head. Shadow Alex works better, as despite the use of Elemental Shadow to help give him physical form, the core of his identity comes entirely from you.
"I get THAT," Briar says. "I'm just wondering why you would want to summon a CLOWN, particularly this one. He's not that impressive - nothing personal," she adds.
There is a slightly mournful, *Honk,* even as Ha Ha nods in forgiving acknowledgement.
"And he wouldn't be able to contribute to the sort of fights you call for help with," your partner goes on. "Plus, you hardly NEED any assistance entertaining children or making bad jokes."
"Excuse you, I make GREAT jokes."
"Jokes that GRATE, I'll give you..."
*Honk-honk!*
You and Briar pause to regard Ha Ha, who is pointing at you both with his empty hand while heartily, if silently, laughing at the lame pun.
"...if I had any doubts about him being something you dreamed up, that just settled them," Briar sighs.
"Matters of raw power aside," you say, once again focusing on Ha Ha, "that's the basis of my offer: future summonings in exchange for you dispersing for the time being. What do you say?"
The clown frowns, gives a firm *Honk*, and points at your pocket.
You dig into your pocket(s) with both hands, pulling Ha Ha's shoes out with one hand, and his nose-ball with the other.
The clown brightens and starts to reach forward-
"Before I return these," you state.
-Ha Ha pauses, radiating cautious inquisition.
"I want you promise not to cause mischief in my dreams without permission."
That gets you a troubled look and a small *honk* of query. You think it translates to, "None at all?"
"To clarify, if anyone or anything foreign manages to get into my mindscape without my permission, or under false pretenses, they're fair game."
Ha Ha nods with a grin slightly more unpleasant than usual.
"Aside from that, though, no funny business."
Your fairy partner groans.
Somehow, Ha Ha's little bike horn manages to produce an equivalent to the Sad Trombone sound effect: *Honk, honk, honk, hoo-oonk.*
Then he points at Briar, looking inquisitive.
"She has permission to be here, yes," you agree. "So do the three Goddesses-"
*HONK?!*
"-bright auras of red, blue, green, or gold, you can't miss them," you explain. "There's also the Raging Boar-"
There is a deep oink in the darkness.
Ha Ha goes almost perfectly still, save for his wide, worried eyes, which are now sliding slowly from side to side with GREAT concern.
"-copies of Briar and myself that I summon sometimes, and of course, all of... these," you continue a bit lamely, as you gesture at the gallery, the maids who lean, climb, or descend into view to wave, and the many little fairies that pop out from their much smaller hiding places to do the same.
Ha Ha looks around in bewilderment, waving absently.
"All of those are either supposed to be here, or have my permission to visit if they need to," you conclude. "Anybody else that turns up without me... go nuts. Do you agree to those terms?"
Ha Ha folds his arms, bows his head, and taps one foot, making a show of deep thought.
Then he looks up, nods energetically, and passes his horn off to his left hand so that he can offer the right to shake.
You shift your cargo about, tucking Ha Ha's shoes under one arm to free up your right hand to seal the deal. As you're doing so, however, you also carefully reach out with your passive senses - as far as they'll go while still BEING passive - using ki and mental energy to try and determine if your projection of the author of Hitting the Funny Bone is about to attempt to prank you with the ki-based joy buzzer technique that was described in the text.
...
He is, the jerk.
Well, then. Just for that, it seems only fair if you respond in kind. You focus your energies, take Ha Ha by the hand-
!
-and register a brief, faint buzz against your palm before your own technique overpowers it, causing the clown to jitter and jump in place with a frantic, *honk-honk-honk-honk-honk.*
When you relax the technique, Ha Ha slumps, shamefaced.
"I'll let that go," you advise him in a warning tone. "But let it be a lesson to you. I'll be watching."
There is an affirmative *honk*, and then, after a brief pause, you hand over the shoes.
Ha Ha quickly pulls his footwear back on-
*Squeak*
*Squeak*
*Squeak-squeak*
-giving them a few experimental stomps to make sure they're working properly. Then, gingerly, he extends his hand for his nose.
You hold forth the emblem of power while pointing at your eyes with the index and middle fingers of your other hand, before jabbing them at Ha Ha.
He nods and plucks the foam ball from your grasp, carefully placing it atop his nose and giving it a couple of experimental squeezes. It doesn't honk, but Ha Ha seems relieved and delighted to have his nose back, and quickly strikes a triumphant pose, arms raised to the sky-
*Honk-honk-honk-HOOOONK!*
-of COURSE he knows that tune.
Then the clown hops backwards into the shadows, shoes squeaking all the way, until he reaches an unoccupied pedestal like the ones that all the monster-statues are mounted on. Without stopping to look, Ha Ha jumps up into place, bows deeply, and then positions himself as if jumping out to surprise someone, horn raised, body in a vaguely combative stance, and a look of delight on his painted features.
*Hoooonk!*
And then, with a final salute, the clown turns to stone like all the other creatures on display.
...
"Well," Briar says. "That was weird. Are we done clowning around?"
"I think so," you reply, turning for the door.
Stepping out of your mental museum, you look around at the local expanse of the Plane of Dreams, which is just as empty of visible features beyond the glimmering mists as it was on your previous visits. The slow, rhythmic mass shouting continues steadily, still giving no hints of which direction(s) it's coming from.
Putting that puzzle to one side for the moment, you turn about to regard your dreamscape. On previous dream-outings, you've been concerned about the possibility of getting lost in the wider plane, unable to find your way back to the sanctity of your own mind, and have relied on Briar staying behind to give you a point of reference, or on remaining behind yourself while Briar and your Shadow(s) search the mists all about.
These approaches WORK, certainly, but they're a touch inconvenient. You prefer having your partner with you when you venture into the unknown - or vice-versa, to be there to back her up when she's leading the way - and likewise dislike being left behind while others are off doing (at least slightly) more interesting things. You need something that will guide your wandering awareness back to your mindscape no matter how far you travel.
Thinking on it, you recall a certain curious little succubus who put a magical mark on you and managed to follow it all the way into your dreams, back at the World Tournament and before you started using Mind Blank. Could you do something similar, from within the dream-realm?
Briar looks on as you turn, place one hand on the outer surface of the house of your mind, and put an Arcane Mark there.
By itself, this cantrip doesn't do much, and certainly doesn't provide any special benefits in the field of navigation - at least not by itself. That said, you're aware of a seventh-circle spell called Instant Summons that allows the caster to immediately bring a pre-prepared object to their location, and one of the requirements for that magic is to place an Arcane Mark on the target item, which symbolically (ah-ha-ha) links it to you and provides a "path" of sorts for the greater spell to follow.
Perhaps you can do something similar here? Kurumu the Littlest Succubus seemed to manage well enough, and if you're being frank, your magical talents exceeded hers even back then, much less today.
Just in case, though, you ask Briar to hold the mental fort again while you venture into the mists. For the time being, you conserve your energy and simply walk - well, jog - away from your starting point, going on and on and then on a little more until, when you pause and look over your shoulder, you can't make out your dreamscape through the mists.
The first order of business is to check the familiar bond, which comes through clearly.
The second order is to try to track the Arcane Mark, which is... trickier. It's a magical effect, so Detect Magic would work to find it, except that you're WELL out of visual range and the spell isn't compatible with Reach Spell Metamagic. A ritually modified casting might get you something.
Another option is to try the Spell to Locate an Object. This one would be a bit iffy for certain spellcasters, because the Arcane Mark isn't precisely an "object," but being a sorcerer, you think you could fudge things to make it work.
...then again, could you cut out the magical middleman and just cast Locate Object on your dreamscape? Pondering on it for a moment, you figure it probably wouldn't work: first, for all that it's one "thing," your dreamscape is a LOCATION rather than a discrete object; and at the same time, despite its artificial appearance, it's still a manifestation of your mind, meaning it's kind of (part of) a creature.
Which suggests the Spell to Locate a Creature could also work.
Discern Location would ABSOLUTELY work, even without the Arcane Mark, but that's a spell you can't cast without breaking your word to hold back on the magic use.
Under different circumstances, you might need to cast Locate Object in a hurry, but since you're not pressed for time, you go ahead and perform a ritual casting to save some energy. A couple of minutes later-
...
-you're left frowning, as you get nothing. You were pretty sure that would work; Divination Magic has always been one of your best schools, and Locate Object is both a low-level spell and one you've properly researched and internalized the workings of. So, either an Arcane Mark truly doesn't count as an object, or...
...
...oh, wait. Did your Mind Blank spell interfere with the probe? You've been able to take readings off of yourself in the past, but those were when you were entirely within the effect of that Abjuration Spell, rather than "outside" of it and trying to peer in like this, to say nothing of how reading one's own magical signature is effectively an internal process, and not really impeded by Mind Blank's ward against external scans. For similar reasons, spells that you've cast on your person and are still linked to can still be read, as long as your connection to them isn't broken.
Figuring that you'd better confirm what's going on - or what isn't - you about-face and hurry back in Briar's direction.
"Problem?" you partner calls out, as soon as you get close enough for her to see you through the mist.
"Might be," you reply.
Once you're close enough, you fire off a simple Spell to Detect Magic, and sure enough, even though you're looking right at the part of the outer surface of your dreamscape where you placed the Arcane Mark, you can't sense the aura of its magic - at least not until you place your foot upon the doorstep of the temple, effectively coming "within" your mindscape once more. At that point, the presence of the Arcane Mark becomes readily apparent, both to your detection spell and your passive sense of magical energy affecting your person.
Well, then. This is a bit frustrating, though at the same time, it's reassuring; it is, after all, evidence that your dreamscape is protected from notice by most.
It's also kind of neat to see an entire "building" under the effects of Mind Blank like this. Normally, something like that wouldn't be possible without laying down a rather expensive ward.
Anyway, it seems that if you want to be able to track the location of your mindscape while you're out wandering the Dream Plane, an Arcane Mark won't do the job - or at least, not one that's been placed on the physical representation of your mind.
Dismissing the old Mark, you try placing a new one on the "ground" outside your dreamscape, about five feet from the doors. This is far enough away that it shouldn't be considered part of your mind-museum, and hence not under the aegis of the Mind Blank effect covering it, but it should also be close enough to be more permanent than the shifting mass of the dream-mists.
You can't actually SEE your Arcane Mark, due to the roiling mists, but its reddish-gold glow IS perceptible to the naked eye, and when you turn your arcane senses on it, they have no trouble registering the aura, even when you've backed off far enough from the doors of your dreamscape to be entirely "outside" of its influence.
With that settled, you go ahead and repeat the ritual casting of the Spell to Locate an Object, right where you are.
*Ping*
THERE we go.
Just to be sure, you turn and hike into the mists, keeping the spell going as you move farther and farther away, the steady *ping* of the location of the Arcane Mark providing a counterpoint to your largely silent footsteps. By the time you've lost sight of your mental redoubt, you've largely reassured yourself that this method of tracking your dreamscape is viable.
Two doubts do remain, however.
The first of these is the nagging worry that something or someone roaming the Dream Plane will detect the aura of the unshielded Mark and follow it right to your psychic doorstep. This worry is largely assuaged by the fact that an Arcane Mark is a mere cantrip, and has about the weakest arcane presence possible; unless said dream-wanderer is capable of passively detecting such minor magic from beyond visual range, they'd be able to see your mindscape WELL before they spotted the Mark. So, really, this isn't an issue to worry about.
The other question is, "How long will an Arcane Mark placed on the 'ground' of the Dream Plane last before the local psychic currents break it apart?"
This one, you have no idea about.
Is there anything you can think of that might strengthen or secure the Arcane Mark?
If you need a more permanent surface to anchor your Arcane Mark to, then you should take advantage of your phenomenal magical power and just make one.
And so, with a single ritual casting of the Spell to Create a Wall of Stone, you do exactly that, imbuing psychic energy into the working to not only attempt to reinforce the spell, but also to bypass its normal requirement of the presence of a pre-existing mass of stone.
The result is a five-foot tall, five-foot wide, and roughly five-inch thick slab of plain brown stone RIIIISING from the mists with a grating, slithering noise. When the Wall stops growing, you take a moment to examine it-
!
-and then leap back in alarm as the slab of rock creaks, cracks, tilts one way, teeters the other, and subsequently falls over on one face with a dull thud and cloud of displaced mist that billows outwards in all directions.
"Are you alright?" Briar asks quickly.
"All limbs and digits accounted for," you reply, not without a certain uneasiness. "It just startled me."
"That makes two of us," she says. "Any idea why it fell over?"
"Actually, yes," you admit. "One of the requirements for casting that spell is that at least part of the Wall of Stone has to be in contact with a mass of rock that was already there before you cast the spell. I was able to take advantage of the... flexible nature of the mists to bypass that, but as a result..." You gesture at the fallen oversized tile.
"Wall fall down, go boom," Briar concludes.
"Uh-huh."
"Is it going to disintegrate because it was made out of the mist, or...?"
"No, it should be fine. I only cheated on the terrain requirements, the actual Wall is still magically conjured stone." Well, magically conjured and psychically infused, but the latter shouldn't make the stuff any LESS permanent.
...probably, anyway. You're still kind of new to the business of mixing mana and pure psychic energy, as opposed to the composite that is ki.
You take a minute to poke at the fallen Wall of Stone with your senses - though it's really more of a platform like this - but while you can pick up the psychic infusion easily enough, you can't tell if it's doing anything. The readings do suggest that there isn't "space" within the metaphysical makeup of the Wall for more power to be injected, so you skip that for now and apply a new Arcane Mark to its top face, infusing some of your mental energy into the matrix of the glowing symbol.
The toppled Wall of Stone came down with its by-far shortest dimension on the vertical axis, but it's still "tall" enough like this that you can make out the lines of your Arcane Mark, rather than having it be reduced to a washed-out glow in the mists. The image promises to get a bit fuzzy, once the mist displaced by the fallen slab settles back into place, but it's there.
As before, the addition of psychic energy to the spell's matrix was successful, but doesn't appear to be doing anything. Then again, you ARE dealing with a cantrip, here, and you DID try to balance the energy levels, besides; if a more potent spell like the Wall of Stone didn't generate any obvious results when cast in this manner, the odds of Arcane Mark doing anything noticeable were negligible.
Adding any more energy will merely disrupt the magic, so you set that idea aside and begin casting the Spell of Nondetection, using the ritual method to outsource the spell's mana cost but also to offset some of its aura, as you had to boost the magic to fifth-circle in order to account for (and overcome) its normal material cost.
Agreeing not to cast spells of the SIXTH tier and then firing off spells one level lower than that is kind of cheeky, but more to the point, you can't conceal the casting of a fifth-circle spell, and Mind Blank's ability to break the trail leading from spell to caster doesn't really do you any good when you're the ONLY spellcaster in residence in the School of Five Elements currently capable of harnessing that much magic.
Once the Wall is warded against detection by others, you turn to the deeper mists once again. Although you're pretty sure that the Wall will remain intact and in its current location, this is still the first time you're testing this trick; as such, Briar has agreed to stay in your dreamscape to make sure you don't lose your way back.
As for yourself, you focus on the dream plane and exert your dreamwalking powers, willing a path to appear that will take you to the source of the ongoing kung fu noises, just as another such path once led you to Kahlua's dreamscape.
Sure enough, the fog begins to roll back, revealing or creating a walkway of black stone-
!
-which quickly splits and starts to go off in more directions than you can easily count. Mostly because, at the same time, you feel a sudden spike of pain. It isn't strong enough to truly break your concentration, but that's mostly because of your strong mental focus - it still hurts a fair bit!
Halting in your exertion, and thus freezing the growth of the path(s), you take a moment to recover from the psychic pain and try to figure out what you're seeing. Your goal was to create a path to what you've been tentatively calling "the Dream Class," but the way the path tried to split suggests that there are actually multiple dreamscapes which fit that vague criteria.
Maybe you need to be more precise in your intent? You were able to find Kahlua's dreamscape easily enough using this very method, so you know that going for specific people CAN work - although since you only did that the one time, you can't say that it will ALWAYS work. You know Kahlua rather well, and would not hesitate to call her one of your better friends - that emotional closeness might be reflected by a degree of proximity and/or accessibility within the Dream Plane.
On the flipside, trying to find ONE class seems to have gotten you multiple potential results, so apparently you aren't limited to searching for dreams just by the identity of whoever owns them. After all, a "class" can be a location OR an event, depending on how you define it, and perspective does seem to play a role in the shape of the dream-realm.
With that in mind...
It was sound that initially made your first dreamwalk at the School of Five Elements stand out: the sound of shouting; the sound of teachers issuing commands to students; and the sound of students hastening to obey. That noise, the frustration and eagerness as they acted and moved and sparred, losing and winning and learning, is what made you aware that something was going on.
And so, calling on your meditation training, you close your eyes, take a slow, deep breath, and try to clear your mind of everything BUT that ongoing sound, and your desire to find a path that will take you there.
...
Energy moves, and this time, you do NOT feel an abrupt stabbing pain in your head. Maintaining your focus - and carefully pushing past the spark of surprise, curiosity, and concern from your partner - you let the power flow through you until it has finished doing whatever it was supposed to. When it has not only stopped but BEEN stopped for a long moment, you open your eyes to see where the trail leads.
...
"Briar," you say conversationally, "should I be worried that I appear to have created an Underworld entrance right in front of myself?"
"I know I am," your partner admits.
The "path" that you have summoned into being tonight extends about twenty feet straight ahead into the mists, where the dark stone walkway fans out to become a square plaza about forty feet to a side. The underlying material is covered by many thin, pale brown tiles, similar to those covering the School's central courtyard-slash-sparring arena, which surround the broad staircase that fills the middle of the fog-wreathed platform. Wide enough for three or four people to pass one another without bumping shoulders, depending on their builds, the stairs are flanked by two statues in the shape of Eastern dragons coiled, snakelike, about otherwise featureless pillars; the dragons' heads hang slightly below the tops of the columns, mouths open as if to roar or to breathe flame, the latter impression somewhat reinforced by the washed-out red light of the torches burning within.
Exposed to the sky of this eerie realm, the stairs lead down at a comfortable angle, quickly disappearing into a dark passageway from which the kung fu chorus echoes, at once more distorted and yet clearer than the seemingly sourceless background noises you've been trying to follow all this time.
Old, Gerudo- and Hyrulean-trained instincts rear their head within your mind, telling you that entering the mysterious and seemingly ancient structure without weapon drawn and magic prepared is a fool's errand.
Your sensibilities as a student of the School of the Five Elements object to that, reminding you that while entering a training area with a weapon and the will to use it is one thing, doing so with blade already drawn - an offer of IMMINENT if not IMMEDIATE violence - would be offensive.
And then, you have to consider that whatever this LOOKS like, it's all still a dream... which doesn't necessarily make it any SAFER, but does mean that you probably shouldn't take things at face value.
You waver for a moment between summoning your sword to your side and simply not bothering, but in the end, you feel it's more prudent to have the weapon at your side and not need it than to need it and have to spend several seconds calling it forth.
That said, being sensibly prepared for the possibility of extreme violence is one thing; going into the maybe-Dungeon, maybe-just-weird training area with a weapon drawn in EXPECTATION of said violence is another, and you opt not to do that.
As long as it's physically present, you can draw your sword pretty quickly if you need to, even without using ki or magic to speed things along. For now, that is enough.
With that settled, you turn back to the entrance and peer down the stairway, trying to see how far it goes and what lies at the end. You have little luck in this regard; the angle of the stair isn't particularly steep - maybe forty degrees, you guess - but it goes down long enough that the ambient glow of the Dream Plane gets cut off, and there don't appear to be torches or anything down the way.
Now is that a design oversight, an intentional choice, or just an accident?
Briar came up alongside you while you were attending to your weapon, and she now joins in the same squinting, squatting, neck-craning, "try to see the bottom" dance that you're doing.
"Well," she offers as she straightens up, speaking in a tone that's trying to sound positive, and almost managing it. "Whatever it LOOKS like, it at least doesn't FEEL like a Hyrulean ruin. So there's that."
"There is," you agree with the same faux-cheer. "On the other hand, it IS a dream of sorts, so it could be subject to change at a moment's notice."
"Uh-huh."
"And just because it doesn't FEEL Hyrulean doesn't mean that it can't be full of monsters," you add. "Even Hyrulean ones, at that."
"Yeah, fair warning: if a swarm of Gohma come pouring out of there, I am not even going to TRY to fight them; I'll just lock myself in your mindscape, pile statues and other stuff up against the door, and make sure there aren't any open or unbarred windows."
With that, and one hand resting on the hilt of your sheathed sword, you begin to venture down the stairs. There's plenty of clearance, but even so, you find yourself ducking slightly as you advance. Down, down, and down you go, keeping a steady pace not quite at the speed of a walk, and with each step, the shadows grow deeper.
"Not going to try to live up to your mother's example?" you ask mildly.
"Mom didn't raise me to be an idiot," Briar replies.
There's a pause.
"I notice you don't try to claim that she didn't raise ANY idiots," you observe.
"Yeah, anybody who's MET little fairies can generally call that one out as a lie before it even gets said," your partner agrees with a weary sigh.
"Fair. Alright, I'll try not to start any monster stampedes while I'm down there."
"I appreciate it."
Even without resorting to supernatural means, you have pretty decent night vision, and more than that, a good general awareness of your immediate surroundings and whatever might lie within them. Plus, the dark by itself doesn't really bother you - rather the contrary, really.
And so, you descend into shadow, and from there into the deeper darkness that lies beyond the reach of the ambient light of the Dream Plane.
Weirdly enough, despite the fact that you SHOULD eventually lose some visual clarity in the process, you don't. Somehow, you retain the ability to discern between the tiled surface of the stairs, the black stone of the walls and ceiling, your own body, and the darkness that fills the space in between all of them.
Some kind of dream thing, you presume, as you descend deeper.
Every once in a while, you pause to glance over your shoulder to see how far you've come, gradually losing sight of the entrance proper and then the portion of the stairwell that it lit up. Not too far beyond that latter point, a small landing comes into view below you, with a doorway at the opposite end - well, you CALL it a door, but it's more of an empty portal, a squarish stone frame with nothing inside of it and nothing on its opposite side. It seems to be a wall of true darkness, properly impenetrable to the naked eye, but when you stand before it, the sounds of martial training are as loud and clear as if you were outside.
Just to be sure, you take up your sword - sheath and all - and prod the darkness with the very tip. The end of the scabbard disappears into the black without so much as a ripple or a hint of resistance, and is perfectly unharmed when you pull it back out a moment later.
Shrugging at the continued oddity of the unconscious plane, you return your weapon to its place at your side and then step forward into the darkness-
!
-only to emerge in an imperfect recreation of the School courtyard. You say "imperfect" because, although every physical object is present and correctly detailed down to the last line and angle and wear of regular use, the colors are slightly... pale. Not washed out, as such, it's more like you're looking at the three-dimensional equivalent of a coloring book which someone with an outstanding eye for color, texture, and shading and the ideal paints for the job has been working at, giving everything a near-lifelike look. It's just that the space between the lines is not always entirely filled in, and some of the places where it IS clearly need another layer of some sort of color.
The result is rather eerie, and is not helped along by the too-faint sunlight shining down from the off-blue sky.
That's not even getting into all the ghosts, who add transparency, blurry edges, indiscernible faces, and features that periodically shudder and shift between different states to the incomplete color scheme of the place. Actually, when you take a closer, mystically empowered look at them, you realize that they aren't ghosts at all, but rather accumulations of the sort of psychic impressions that can MAKE ghosts, lacking both the negativity and the spiritual essence of a soul, undead or otherwise, that are required to complete the package.
Blank-faced students perform their routines under the supervision of masters whose forms warp between tiny and frail, tall and burly, and a wide range of in-betweens, with individuals occasionally popping into or out of existence altogether. At a glance, you don't sense anyone or anything that's obviously different from the rest - not in any way beyond the cosmetic sense, at least - and nobody's appeared to take notice of you.
After a moment of standing there, watching on and listening as the spectral trainers and phantom trainees go through the motions of a class, you begin to walk a circuit of the dream-courtyard, keeping your pace slow enough so that you can take in the surroundings in detail. Wary of potentially disturbing something, you don't resort to active scans or spellcasting just yet, instead relying on what your mundane senses and the various layers of your passive supernatural awareness can reveal.
...
One thing you soon notice is that the not-quite-ghostly nature exhibited by the members of the School isn't limited to them. Many of the plants that border the courtyard also display that semi-solid, indistinct nature - in fact, it's even worse for them than it is for the humans, you just didn't notice right away because the shades are so attention-getting with all their noise and movement, whereas the flowers and bushes are just... kind of there.
Incidentally, a few of the largest trees in the area do NOT share that vague appearance, instead seeming to be just as solid as the stones under your feet - though even then, they still have that weirdly incomplete color scheme.
Some of the buildings are also blurry. The walls of the main dormitory are solid, but the door is a suggestion at best, and what you can glimpse through the windows is a bunch of objects moving and shifting around. In comparison, the two-story building where most of the formal classrooms are located is almost transparent - though it still suffices to block your view of the library from where you are - while the office that stands to the left of the main training hall has a certain similar ghostliness about it.
The central hall itself, incidentally, looks perfectly real. The echo of the guest dorm where you and your friends are staying is also very solid and well-defined, but its colors are faded out compared to the rest of the place.
As you continue your squared circuit of the courtyard, every now and then you see a person-shaped blur moving along this or that pathway. Sometimes they're alone, while at others, they appear in groups - small clusters of three to five seem most common, but you see a class's worth of students come pouring out of the main educational annex at one point, only for them to disappear into the air like a heat mirage.
It's a bit eerie to see, but not so startling as having twenty-odd exuberant kids suddenly APPEAR out of thin air without even the courtesy of a building-up or diminishing magical or psychic signature to warn you. The energies of this dreamscape feel as indistinct and mixed up as its appearance, a hodgepodge of psychic impressions, spiritual cast-offs, and arcane traces that happen to have just enough in common for them to take on a more or less unified appearance, as opposed to simply existing in the same general location, or worse, devolving into a miasma of conflicting forces and images.
As you near the end of your walk, you consider what you've seen and sensed - and what you haven't - and decide to go investigate...
...one of the trees. You know some druidism, so that will help, right?
...the library. You want to confirm what the place looks like in this dreamscape.
While you do want to investigate the matter of the seemingly-solid trees and why they're in that state when the rest of the plants have such uncertain appearances, seeing the varied conditions of the other buildings has left you curious about what the library looks like.
The fact that you can't actually see it from where you're standing probably plays a role in that.
Anyway, it's a simple matter to combine these efforts, at least up to a point, and you change course and start heading away from the courtyard, circling round the main dorm and the study hall to come at the library more directly. There were some trees planted around it in the waking world, so odds are good you'll find some stable ones to investigate after you've taken a look at the building.
The Five Elements' main book repository turns out to be in a similar state of architectural fuzziness as the adjoining classrooms, although now that you're closer to the study hall, you're able to see that there are areas of... definition, you suppose, within the greater mass of uncertainty that makes up the structure. Those points of semi-solidity look somewhat darker than the building around them, however - in fact, they're colored in starker and more ominous hues than any part of this buried dreamscape you've seen since stepping out of that unlit stairwell. The library shows similar spots of sinister, shadowy reality, a fact which rather annoys your scholar's soul to see.
Leaving that aside for the moment, you turn your attention to the nearest stand of trees, looking over the individual plants. Some of these are blurry along the edges of their trunks and especially about their leaves - though even then, they're more distinct and consistent in appearance than the lesser plants you can see - while others are much more solid-looking, but still shift or flicker uncertainly a time or two as you examine them.
Finally, you zero in on what appears to be the oldest tree of the bunch, which hasn't noticeably changed in appearance since you started looking at it. It doesn't feel any different from the other trees to your passive senses, and when you cast the Spell to Detect Animals or Plants and focus on "trees," the initial readings are likewise identical. As you let the spell do its work, however, some VERY peculiar readings start to come back.
Despite their outwardly healthy appearances, the trees with the most unstable forms all register as being in extremely poor condition, a state you wouldn't normally see unless the plant in question was suffering from long-term drought, a devastating disease, or extensive physical damage. More than that, in the brief moments when such a tree flickers between different appearances, it stops registering as a tree entirely, only for the signature of what's effectively a new but still-dying plant to pop up an instant later.
The more solid but still slightly wavery trees read as if they were still unhealthy, possibly in the early stages of drought or illness, while the effectively real-looking tree is marked as not entirely healthy, but also not particularly afflicted by anything.
Honestly baffled by these readings, you reach out through the familiar bond to speak with the expert. / Briar? /
/ ? /
/ What am I looking at? /
/ Well, let me see... /
...
/ ...huh. I think you've wandered into an unformed dreamscape. /
/ Define "unformed." /
Your partner reminds you that dreamscapes don't just exist in the minds of individuals. As you've seen with your brief interactions with the Dracula Dream at the Shuzen Estate, powerful forces in the waking world can leave strong enough psychic and spiritual impressions to re-shape parts of the Dream Plane to reflect whatever they were or did. By the same token, if enough ordinary people have a shared experience, strongly enough and for a long enough period of time, their collective energies can give rise to the same phenomenon.
/ It's a lot slower and less certain, / Briar explains. / Partly because the emotions aren't so intense or backed up by powerful magic, partly because different people's energies don't always mesh easily, or even at all, and partly because, well, things change over time, and that can make it hard for the dreamers to keep having the same experience, or even compatible experiences of similar events. /
You consider that. / So the trees like this one, the old training hall, and the courtyard all look as solid as they do because they've been here for a relatively long time and everybody's seen them and knows they should be there? And the faded out trees register as weaker because they haven't had the time to make as strong an impression on the Dream Plane? As simple as that? /
/ Pretty much, although the main hall and the courtyard are also kind of important to the School, /
your partner adds, / so that would give them a bit of a boost. /
Gained Local Knowledge (Dream Plane) F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Seeing as how the trees are just the dream equivalent of normal plants - at least as far as your simple druidic spell and Briar's somewhat greater understanding of the subject can tell - you let the magic lapse and consider your next move.
While the library is right there, the uncertain state of its existence makes it a little unappealing, an impression not helped in the least by those physically and emotionally darker spots that you can pick up. They're hardly a patch on the impressions you picked up from your encounters with the dreamscape that the presence of Dracula's giant mostly-dead body created at the Shuzen Estate, but even so, you're not particularly interested in possibly walking into a nightmare - even a weak one about desperate cram sessions, overdue library books, and/or really badly written books.
Instead, you double back to the central courtyard and hike around the perimeter, heading for the main hall. As you make the short trip, you take up your Blessed Blade and, while not drawing it entirely, slide it far enough out of its sheath that you can inspect the blade proper. You've been carrying the Goddess-given weapon around for a while now, and it's been absorbing your excess magic, ki, and other energies, supposedly with the ultimate goal of awakening the spirit of the steel.
But if it needs to be "awoken," doesn't that mean that the spirit is currently "asleep" - and perhaps, "dreaming"? And are you not currently on the Plane of Dreams?
This is the sort of situation that at least needs to be looked at, and you do so, making a slow, thorough scan of the supernatural steel with each of the sensory modes at your disposal.
As far as you can tell, the sword is behaving the same way it always has-
!
-although, now that you're actually looking, it does seem to be drawing on the essence of the dream around you. It's much fainter than the weapon's "pull" on your own energies, but it's there.
Interesting...
The walk to the main hall is short enough that you don't have time to do a really detailed examination of your weapon just now, so you slide it back into its sheath and return the scabbard to your side as you arrive at your destination.
It's the oldest building that you've seen on the Five Elements' campus, and in keeping with what Briar had to say about the formation of dreamscapes just now, it not only looks the most solid of any of the elements of the dream, its colors are also closer to their proper life-like hues and textures. It's still not quite perfect, and the much fuzzier nature of the office and the other rooms that were added on later detract from the impression of near-completion, but you put those distractions out of your mind as you approach the original dojo.
A close-range sweep with your exotic senses doesn't turn up anything unexpected or untoward. The hall feels even more real than the solid trees you were probing a couple minutes ago, no doubt a consequence of the sheer number of people who've visited the real building over the decades and everything that's happened inside its walls. There is a bit of the same shadowy aura that you picked up from the library and study hall, which you peg as a likely legacy of disciplinary matters - you've yet to meet the kid who LIKES to get called down to the main office, whatever the reason - and perhaps of arguments among the staff, held behind closed doors to try and keep them from becoming material for gossip. Still, that impression is only part of the whole, and a modest one at that; on the whole, the main hall has a very positive aura, dignified, encouraging, and just slightly anticipatory, in a way that reminds you of those moments just before a spar that you're very much looking forward to.
That said, the greater reality of the dojo - or should it be "dojang," given it's in Taiwan? - does have a downside, in that the presence of solid walls somewhat hampers your ability to see or sense whatever is inside.
You pause at the threshold, reaching to rap your knuckles lightly but firmly against the door to announce your presence.
*Knock*
*Knock*
*Knock*
You have manners, after all. Even in a dream, one should not lightly abandon courtesy.
Granted, you aren't sure if this place has any sort of consciousness - be it sub-, un-, or vanilla in nature - to receive and react to the social nicety you're offering, but you've seen your perspective and behavior shape dreamscapes even without the active exertion of full dreamwalking. Even in a mindless dreamscape, politeness costs you nothing and may earn you something in exchange.
In this case, it gets you entry, as - after a short pause - the door unlocks itself and swings open.
In keeping with your bid to exercise etiquette, you bow and remove your shoes before entering - though rather than leave them at the door, you pocket them.
A lessonmild paranoia learned from your interactions with the clown, perhaps.
Entering the dojo hall, you see that it looks pretty much identical to the waking world, but for those faint discrepancies in color. There are a few masters and students present here as well, a couple of the former kneeling together by one of the windows as if in quiet contemplation or conversation, while a third oversees a small class of adult-sized trainees. Once again, all their features are indistinct, their forms periodically shifting to reflect different individuals.
If the "human" portion of this part of the dreamscape is disappointingly more of the same, however, the building itself makes up for that. The atmosphere in here carries a psychic, spiritual, and arcane charge that is, while not exactly mighty, still distinctly stronger than anywhere else you've been in this reflection of the School of Five Elements thus far. Instead of wisps of thought, emotion, and the raw essence of unshaped Enchantment Magic drifting about, it's more of a defined pattern, if not in the manner of a spell or other power wielded by a living will.
It would seem that your initial suspicions were correct, and the central hall IS the heart of this dreamscape. Aside from noticing the greater "weight" of the place's existence, however, nothing here immediately catches your eye or other senses. With that in mind...
You can wander around this dream-School and take all the scans you want, but to fully explore the depths of this place and whatever secrets it holds, you're going to need to interact with it more directly. Talking to some of the "residents" would be a good way to do that, and some of the best candidates to try and reach out to are right here before you, since not only are they figures of authority, but they're also located here in the heart of the dreamscape.
Seeing as how the one master is presently engaged in business, you leave him be and approach the other two. Of course, it would be rude to simply barge into their private conversation-slash-meditation, so you take a seat a little distance away and wait patiently to be acknowledged.
...
...
At a certain point, you glance up at the ceiling, wondering if you should try passing the time by counting the wooden beams that make up the ceiling...
"It is said that silence is golden," one of the seated pair abruptly observes. "And yet, among metals, is gold not comparatively heavy, soft, and weak?"
...um, yes?
"Is gold also not comparatively harmless, in and of itself?" the other master returns. "It is not poisonous or toxic, and its physical characteristics make it a poor choice to use in the forging of weapons, as it would be excessively tiring to carry and wield, and prone to blunting and deformation."
...okay...?
"And yet wars have been waged for possession of gold."
You try not to think too hard about the Triforce at this point.
"Wars have been waged for possession of anything men consider valuable. The fault lies not in our stuff, but in ourselves." And as he says that, his clothing briefly takes on the appearance of a stereotypical ancient Roman, toga, laurels, and all.
Did he just paraphrase Shakespeare?
"One man's hard-earned wisdom is another man's memorable stage line," that master replies, nodding, as his attire shifts back to- okay, that's not the training uniform he was wearing before, but the Eastern-style robe is at least more fitting to the surroundings.
"I said that out loud, didn't I?" you say after a moment.
"To speak is not necessarily to be heard," you are informed. "Yet to be heard, one cannot remain silent."
You aren't sure if that was an actual prompt or just the dream drawing on generations' worth of students' belief that old masters are supposed to communicate in koans, but either way, you decide you'd better speak up before they start debating the nature of silence and gold again.
"So, have there been any issues in this place? Instabilities in the dreamscape, baby nightmares, that sort of thing?"
"Stability is an illusion," the master who originally questioned the value of gold states, "for it is transitory, as is life itself."
"Yet if life is an illusion, then we are no less illusions," his neighbor counters. "Being thus, is the illusion not real to us?"
You think he's paraphrasing again, but you can't place it. In any case, this conversation is starting to get concerningly philosophical.
"A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, unless acted upon by a force," you state.
The two masters turn their fuzzy-featured faces towards you. Despite the blurriness, you can make out their frowns, which you suspect are due to the rather random and scientific nature of your remark, compared to the more philosophical discussion you're adding it to.
"That said," you go on, "everything seeks an equilibrium. Regardless of what that equilibrium might look like or how short or long a time it lasts, isn't the drive to find it a kind of stability?"
Glances are exchanged.
"Boy has a point," the one master notes. "Perhaps a bit awkwardly made, but a point all the same."
"I don't know," the other resists. "It sounds suspiciously material..."
"Ah, but are matter and the laws which govern it not simply another facet of the greater illusion of existence?"
"Say that after you've been kicked in the head."
"Pain is also an illusion."
"One that really hurts."
"Thus validating my previous statement about the reality of one illusion to another," said master declares with a small smile and a note of triumph in his words.
His counterpart hems and haws, but doesn't seem to have a retort for that.
The "victorious" old man nods graciously to his verbally defeated opponent, and then turns his attention to you. "The current state of this smaller reality is as it should be. A certain amount of uncertainty and shadow is a natural and necessary part of the illusion, for if all could be clearly seen and known, what room would there be for Surprise?"
And there's the distinctly Five Elements Style philosophical bent that was previously lacking in this whole meeting. You'd been starting to wonder if it would come up...
Anyway, it also happens to sound like a polite, "thanks, but we're not interested" to your offer, so what will you do now?
"A few more things before I go, then," you state.
"There is always more to be said and done," is the response you receive.
"First, I would like to leave a magically-marked and warded mass of conjured stone here, to help me find my way back in the future. Would that be acceptable?"
"There are cautionary tales in the West about casting stones," the previously "defeated" master observes mildly.
"And though we do not dwell in a glass house or have a woman accused of adultery before us," the other adds, "neither would we wish to clutter up the dojo with bits of rock."
"I wouldn't be casting it in here," you clarify. There is no pre-existing volume of stone within the dojo proper, making the Spell to Create a Wall of Stone effectively useless, and you aren't sure if a ritual conjuration would get you a smaller quantity of stone with the same persistence. "And... it wouldn't be a 'bit' of rock, so much as a 'wall'..."
The formless faces trade inscrutable glances.
"Now, would that count as graffiti, littering, or building without a permit?" the one wonders.
"I believe the answer is, 'Yes'," the other replies.
...
"...is that a 'No', then?" you inquire.
"Throw a stone into a pool, and one disturbs not only the tranquil surface waters, but also what lies beneath them," you are informed.
"And possibly what lies on the far bank," comes a thoughtful addition. "Though that would require a good wrist."
"How would one even BEGIN to throw a wall?" the first master asks with bafflement.
"Very carefully, I would expect."
...
That's... probably a no. You think.
"I won't do that, then. On to the second matter: I'll be telling the masters in the waking world about this place, and I expect that at least some of them will want to visit and meet with their counterparts."
"The sharing and spread of knowledge is a virtuous task," you are informed.
"However, though one may easily lead a man to unconsciousness, one cannot force him to dream."
"Indeed. It is akin to the path to enlightenment; teachers and fellow students may help show the way, but one must still make the journey for oneself."
Okay... assuming for the moment that none of the masters have learned anything in the field of dreamwalking - which isn't a given; Lu-sensei did mention knowing at least a few things in that area - teaching them the basics of the subject would take a lot more time than you have available on this trip. Amy's been working on it for a while, now, with help from her magic, her mom, and their family books, and she's still not quite at the level of managing waking dreams - though it must be said, that's at least partly because of how much she's focused on building up her unconscious mind's defenses, which is a choice you really cannot disapprove of, given where you both live.
You also don't have any reliable means for transporting people to the Dream Plane directly. The Gate Spell or a down-cast Spell of Plane Shifting WOULD be able to do it, if you had the necessary focus and were (at least temporarily) released from that promise about not using spells above fifth-circle, but aside from those, you don't know any spells that involve going to the realm of the unconscious.
On the other hand, you ARE very well set-up for summoning...
"Alright," you say, "if bringing the masters to meet their counterparts here isn't practical, what if I were to summon some of the dream-masters into the waking world?"
"Adaptation," the master on your right, who has been the more receptive and helpful thus far, says with approval. "If one approach is unusable, pursue another. Such might indeed be a solution."
"...however?" you guess, catching the unspoken implication.
"However," the other master interjects, "the question must be asked: who, exactly, will you be summoning?"
"Well, I could start with one or both of you..."
"And who are we?" the pair say in unison, looking at you.
You return the look, noting that the one on the right looks a bit like Master Vincent, while the one on the left reminds you of Master Nielson, but thinking that you should identify them more specifically - the Contemplative Masters of the Dojo? The Masters of Debate Fu? Statler and Waldorf's Taiwanese Cousins?
No sooner have you opened your mouth to say something than both figures shift slightly, becoming largely unfamiliar to you. And though you've seen them do this a number of times already, in the current context, it gets you thinking along a new line.
"It's not just your appearances that are unstable, is it?" you venture. "Your identities aren't fixed, either."
"They are not," the masters state, nodding as one - and indeed, a moment later there IS but one of them sitting before you. "At times, we are two; at others, but one; on occasion, we are many; and always, we are teachers; yet at no time are we any INDIVIDUAL teacher. We are, at best, the IDEA of the masters of the School of the Five Elements, not the IDENTITY of any."
And that would make summoning them tricky, you know. Without a specific identity to attach to a spell and guide its efforts, you'd be forced to fall back on more open-ended Summoning Magic - and if you send out a summons for "masters of the School of Five Elements," you'll most likely either pull some late master out of an afterlife or grab the dream-self of someone asleep on the far side of the planet, or wherever a master might happen to be catching some zee's at the time.
In neither case would you actually be reaching into this hidden, half-formed dreamscape.
You could still try, of course, but you'd need something that gave you a stronger connection to your intended target(s).
The idea of asking to borrow something from the master(s) to help with "aiming" a future Summoning Spell is a tempting one, but the memory of taking Ha Ha's shoes and nose away in an effort to temporarily weaken him is fresh in your mind, alongside your concerns that the unformed dreamscape may represent a weak-point in the School's mystical defenses - if only because nobody had previously realized it was here and in need of guarding.
If you're worried about the security of the dreamscape, you probably shouldn't take actions that could weaken part of it, especially a part that's located at what appears to be the center of the thing.
You decide to put the idea on hold until you can get your hands on or confer with a reliable source about the subject of dreamwalking or the more unusual sort of summoning that you'd like to attempt here. For the former, it's a clear case of not knowing enough about the subject, whereas for the latter...
Pulling echoes of stable existences across the walls of time and space is something you're very well practiced at by this point, leaving you with no reason to doubt your skills in that area. Calling up echoes of an UNstable existence is a slightly different affair, however, as is trying to bring a target forth from the varied layers of consciousness instead of somewhere in the more material or spiritual dimensions. Doing both at once, particularly when you're still learning about the target plane and aren't sure whether or not you'll bend or break something in the process?
Yeah, more research is only sensible.
On that note...
"Is there anything you can tell me about dreamwalking, while I'm here?" you venture.
"To walk in one's sleep is already a hazardous affair," comes the response. "Why would walking in a dream, particularly in the dream of another, where the ephemeral mind and spirit lack the protection and certainty of flesh, be any less so? And that is when one merely considers the equivalents of banging one's shin or knee on the furniture, tripping on the rug, or taking a tumble down the stairs. How much worse the danger, when one encounters a parasite or predator of the psyche?"
"I've had encounters with both," you admit.
The master's head turns your way sharply, or as much so as something this vaguely-defined can be said to be.
"But thankfully," you are quick to add, "neither of those were violent."
In a tone that reminds you of Lu-sensei, even though the voice is entirely wrong, the figure says, "I believe I will need a bit more detail."
"Well, the first time was an encounter with a little succubus-"
"Excuse us?!" the masters exclaim - and they're plural again, at least four new figures having sort of sprung out of the previous singular one when he/they jumped in surprise. Said prior figure also looks distinctly different now.
You proceed to recount the events of one of your earliest dreamwalking experiences and your thus far one-and-only encounter with Kurono Kurumu-
"Oh, THAT kind of little," the master says, relaxing slightly.
"What did you think I meant?" you wonder with a frown.
"If you don't already know, you're too young to ask."
"That's ageist."
"Get used to it."
-with one of the new figures coming forward to examine you as you speak. You sense something that feels like ki - or rather, a portion of the energies of the dream plane that feel like they're TRYING to feel like ki - probing at you for a moment before the indistinct individual makes a sound of annoyance.
"Why are you undetectable?" they ask.
"That would be my Spell of Mind Blank."
"And what is that when it's at home?"
"Probably the single most powerful mortal magic for hiding from supernatural detection," you reply.
The quintet trade glances.
"And you just... happen to have access to such a spell?"
"'Happen to', nothing," you reply bluntly. "Learning that spell was a priority."
To illustrate that, you relax the hold you typically maintain over your aura. While your Mind Blank spell prevents outside attempts to detect or analyze it, it's a slightly different matter when you allow yourself to project something through the spell. Specific qualities are still obscured, but the presence of and force exerted by whatever sort of energy you're working with at the time DOES become noticeable to nearby sensitives - a fact that is illustrated by how the blurry-faced masters pause or even lean back in response to your moment of exaggerated self-expression.
/ Alex? / you suddenly hear Briar's voice in your head. / What are you doing? /
/ Emphasizing something for the dream-people, /
you reply, as you restore your usual self-restraint. / Why do you ask? /
/ Your mindscape was shaking just now, /
your partner replies. / And also glowing. /
...
/ How much? / you ask with some concern.
One of the dream masters starts to say something, but you raise a hand, silently asking to be allowed a moment.
In response, you receive a blurry nod and a hazy-handed gesture of agreement.
/ The shaking was more like 'big truck goes by' than 'the Demon King just died', / she answers, / so that wasn't too bad. The glowing was more concerning, partly because it's not usually a good sign when solid objects start radiating energy like that, but mainly because it was coming out of everything, including the walls, so it was probably visible at a distance. /
...
Whoops.
/ Are you inside or outside? / you ask.
/ I'm in the doorway right now. /
/ I thought you said the shaking wasn't that bad. /
/ It wasn't, but for all I knew, it was going to get worse. /
/ ...okay, fair. For now, just stay put and keep an eye peeled for uninvited guests, just in case. /
With that, you bring your attention back to your audience.
"Thank you for your patience," you reply.
"Done talking with whoever?" one of the figures asks.
"Was it that obvious?"
"You had the look of someone on the phone or the wireless," you're informed.
Ah. "Right. Where was I?"
"Learning the spell was a priority?"
"Thank you. It was that, and fortunately, I have been blessed in both my native talents and my teachers. My magic tutor, in particular, was able to help me work out the requirements to use the spell myself, and I have been employing it on a daily basis since then."
"Did you learn this spell before or after your encounter with the young dream-demon?" one of the masters inquires.
"Quite a bit after, and I haven't seen her since - although given the amount of time between our encounter and my learning Mind Blank, her absence is more likely to be because I made her erase the mark she was using to track me."
Then you explain about your encounter with the nightmare clown. When you mention your decision to call the phantom of your own mind "Ha Ha," it gets a couple of chuckles, a snort of what may be amusement, and a couple of dry hums of acknowledgment.
None of the masters' reactions suggest they've heard the name before, which is a bit puzzling when you consider that you borrowed the name from a book out of the Five Elements' Library. True, it's a big library, and a book on ki-powered pranks isn't something you'd expect the average martial artist to be overly interested in, but still.
"I'm still going to be a while, I have more exploring to do."
/ Have you been taking your time in there, or is it just a really big dreamscape? / Briar wonders.
/ A bit of both, / you admit. / At the very least, there's a copy of the main School campus in here, and I've only been moving around at mundane speeds, so... /
/ Fair enough, but don't try to keep this up half the night - you need to actually SLEEP at some point, and you're burning Restful Blanket time like this besides. Nayru only knows how dreamwalking interacts with that magic. /
That's a good point, actually.
/ Oh, and if you have to make any more points with the dream-people, can you try doing it with just words, or something? / your partner adds. / I don't really want to have to deal with a stampede of spooked statues on my lonesome, either. /
/ I make no promises, but I'll keep it in mind, /
you reply. / And hey; at least they're not spiders! /
/ I'm pretty sure there ARE some statues of Gohma and Skulltulas in the collection, actually... /
After your brief telepathic chat with Briar and subsequently informing the dream-masters about your encounter with Ha Ha-
"On the one hand," one of the quintet says in tones that remind you of the helpful member of the original pair, "a phantom of the making of one's own mind is not what we were thinking of when we talked about parasites and predators of the dream-realm."
"And on the other hand?" you ask.
"It's a nightmare/clown," two of the other masters reply.
"I know, right?"
-you get around to asking the last question you had in mind for this meeting, which was advice on how to infuse mental energy into the forms of the Five Elements Style.
"No idea," one master readily admits.
"Channel ki, only less so?" the second suggests with a shrug.
"Approximately two-thirds less so," another adds.
You are disappointed by these answers.
"We're the dreamed-up reflections of the accumulated perception of the masters of the School of Five Elements," the lead figure reminds you. "Teaching psychic techniques has never been part of the general curriculum."
"Perhaps for some individuals," one muses. "But if so, such students were rare enough, and their thoughts either guarded enough not to make an impression, or not strong enough to overcome the impressions of their more conventionally gifted peers."
"A single voice in a crowd, heard decades ago," the leader sums up. "Can you hear it?"
Not without considerable difficulty, to say the least.
Well, with that said, you thank the masters for their time.
With a final, respectful bow to the dojo and its occupants, you exit, pausing at the threshold long enough to take your shoes out of your pocket and pull them back on, setting your reshod right foot down on the tiled path outside before dealing with the left.
Then you head for the library, crossing along the "back" end of the courtyard and circling the nearer part of the dormitory to pass between it and the study hall. This route is a bit shorter than going around the far end of the dorm again, and it gives you the chance to take a second, somewhat closer look at the concentrations of shadow within the classrooms, before you start to investigate the ones in the library.
On that note, while you don't enter the study hall and thus are limited by the mass of the building in just how detailed a scan you can take, it does seem that the darkness born of pop quizzes, poor marks, and stand-up presentations is stronger and more defined than the vaguer dread which clung to the central training hall.
If you had to guess, you would venture that the difference arises from two points.
One of these is that the study hall sees a lot more traffic than the central hall; the classes you've sat in on had around thirty students each, and there were half a dozen classes going on in other parts of the building at the same time, which accounts for the better part of two hundred people. You don't think you could get that many individuals into the old dojo without resorting to levitation and/or shrinking spells, and if you could, they wouldn't have room to actually do anything.
The other point is that while a certain amount of unpleasant disciplinary action and not really bad but also not really enjoyable training take place in the dojo, it's also the location of a lot of spars - which are one of the FUN parts of training, whether you're taking part or just watching. Compare that to the classrooms, where things haven't exactly been uninteresting but also haven't gotten your heart pumping with real excitement, and factor in how a lot of students simply don't enjoy book learning, even when it's about interesting topics, and...
Passing the building by, you reach the library and head in.
Almost immediately, you notice that, while there are books on the shelves and racks, they're blurring in and out of existence faster than most of the other elements of the dream-School.
Looking around, you consider how to approach this.
You went to the old dojo because you figured it was the symbolic heart of the dream-School as well as the literal. That choice worked out well enough for you, so why not try something similar here? The main desk is the center of the library, both in architectural terms and operational ones, and it's also where you SHOULD find at least one dream-librarian, so it seems more likely to yield results than just wandering the stacks looking for a book that doesn't disappear the moment you try to pick it up.
As for the shadowy areas... well, they're not going anywhere, and you're in no hurry to poke at them.
The psychic impression of the desk and the office behind it are stable, although as you get closer, you realize that the imprint of the computer that was being used by the librarians you spoke with in the waking world is quite a bit hazier than its surroundings. When you think about it, that does make sense; desktop computers in general have only been around for a couple of decades, and the model set up in the library in particular looked like it was only a year or two old, so its presence in people's dreams of the place wouldn't be as strongly reinforced.
There doesn't appear to be anyone standing behind the desk at first, but when you approach - thinking to call out or look for a bell to ring if nobody turns up - the avatar of a librarian simply appears at the counter. Said representation doesn't really resemble either the man or the woman that you dealt with, instead looking like a slightly older woman wearing a pale, high-necked blouse, a tartan vest, and of course, a pair of glasses.
You idly wonder if one of the School's senior librarians actually dresses this way, if there was a previous employee that did so, or if this is just a stereotype in action.
"How can I help you?" the dream-librarian asks in a businesslike tone.
"Good evening, ma'am." You greet the phantom bibliothecary with a respectful tone and a polite nod, the modest formality striking you as more appropriate than your typical casual demeanor, given her appearance. "My apologies for bothering you so late, but I'm having a bit of trouble when it comes to accessing the books in this dream space. Would you happen to have a method of stabilizing them, along with a catalog?"
"Regrettably, the majority of our collection is permanently unavailable for perusal," the librarian replies.
"Is that so?" you respond, trying to keep the note of disappointment out of your voice.
"It is."
That was a rhetorical question, but... "May I ask why?"
"You may."
...
She's a very literal one, isn't she?
"Why is the majority of the collection unavailable for perusal?" you clarify.
"It's quite simple, young sir; most people can't read in their dreams."
...
Alright, alright, you're not going to despair. Yet. Even if the sight of thousands of books that you'll never be able to read is the makings of a nightmare all on its own...
"You said 'the majority' and 'most', ma'am," you note, clamping down on that sense of loss. "Would there happen to be some materials that ARE available?"
"There are, but most of those require permission from the masters."
You are right on the verge of saying that you have permission, in the waking world, but something tells you that won't carry over. It might be a different story if this place and its denizens were more stable, but as it stands, you suspect you'll either have to go get permission from one of the masters, or just make do with whatever is available to the, ah, dreaming public?
You kind of don't want to seek out a teacher again. Aside from the mild annoyance value of going back the way you came for the second or third time tonight, depending on how one counts, something about the idea nags at your inherited memories. It's not that feeling of encroaching doom that you've had a few times when you were considering doing or outright performing some task that Ganondorf himself had, it's more like recalling seeing something that... annoyed, baffled, and vaguely amused him?
Something about Link running around doing errands?
If the prospect of running back and forth just to get a little piece of paper is making the Demon King in your head grumble, even if it's not exactly in a bad way, you figure it's best to leave that option alone for the time being.
Plus, you did kind of promise Briar you'd at least TRY not to be up half the night.
"I don't have a permission slip at the moment," you admit. "Could I just see some of the general books, instead of the restricted ones?"
"Certainly. Follow me, please."
You do so, and are led into the stacks close enough to where you picked out your first few library books that you initially think that's where the librarian is taking you. At that very intersection, however, she keeps going straight ahead instead of making a left, heading past two more aisles and all the way to the shelves along the back wall. One of the little reading areas is set up a short distance away, its atmosphere devoid of the shadows that lurk in some of the deeper parts of the building.
The librarian - who has shifted appearance from a maybe-thirty woman in a Western blouse and pencil skirt to an older, male figure dressed in Eastern-style robes, thereby suggesting that these are impressions of actual employees of the School, rather than stereotypes given substance - points towards the shelves, and specifically, to three books that are lined up on the same shelf with their front covers rather than their spines facing the aisle, and a couple of inches of space between them.
Pointing to the first of the books, which is rather familiar to your eyes, the curator says, "We have here copies of The Fifth Element: A Collection of the Teachings of Grandmaster Wen-"
"I've read that one," you observe idly.
"-Clodpool's Commentaries-"
"Haven't read that one." The name is familiar, though; you remember Grandmaster Wen muttering it with some suspicion, back on Bali Ha'i.
"-and Twenty Cycles: A History of the School of Five Elements."
Cycles of what, you wonder?
Well, which to check first?
You are tempted to take down The Fifth Element, in order to compare what you remember of your reading of the Waking Edition of the text with whatever the Dreaming version has to show you, but whether it's the lure of new information or a desire to see what it was about this Clodpool fellow that had Wen muttering, you find your hand reaching for the Commentaries instead.
You open the book-
!
-and start in surprise as the pages begin to turn themselves, light and sound bubbling forth like a small spring. You see symbols, words, and sketches lifting off of the paper to swirl about within the multi-colored radiance, and you can hear several voices reciting something in different dialects. Two of them are using the Taiwanese you've been speaking and hearing since arriving at the School of Five Elements, one of them in a very formal manner, the other in a more relaxed style interspersed with elements of other languages - you recognize a Japanese influence on certain pronunciations, at least. The third voice is speaking actual Japanese, the fourth uses Mandarin Chinese, and you catch some English as well. There is also what you think of as a chorus of voices speaking other languages you can't put names to, but which at times remind you of the voices of the islander ghosts on Bali Ha'i - and if there's less than a dozen of them, both speakers and dialects, you'll be surprised.
Glancing at the librarian, you see that they've retained their Eastern, masculine appearance, but have also pulled out and put on the glasses worn by the previous avatar, apparently solely so they can adjust them and glare in that particular disapproving fashion specific to the keepers of books everywhere.
While the librarian's disapproval is made clear by their body language, they don't actually VOICE it, and that combined with the fairly low volume of the words drifting about you make you think that this much noise, at least, will be tolerated. Grudgingly, perhaps, but even so.
Turning your attention to the book, you manually flip the pages back to the beginning and start to read.
...
Well, no. You TRY to read, but either the book still isn't "real" enough for that despite its solidity, your current skill in dreamwalking is unequal to the task, or it just isn't possible. Regardless, the words on the page make no sense, and not just because they're written in Chinese/Taiwanese characters - because they aren't, or at least not entirely. Before your eyes, logograms shift in shape and style, and then switch to letters and words, some of them English, others not.
With typical reading a no-go, you try listening again, and frown. Your still-ongoing Tongues Spell is very helpful here, as while you personally can only SPEAK one language at a time, the magic can INTERPRET multiple dialects simultaneously. The problem is that there are just too many voices talking at once, that they're all speaking relatively quietly, and that some of them - mostly the ones that remind you of Bali Ha'i - are even softer than that.
"In Taiwanese, please."
English is your native language, you speak it at an adult level, and you're comparably conversant in Japanese. That said, given the likelihood that Clodpool's Commentaries are written in some dialect of Chinese, trying to read... or rather, to listen to a reading of the book in English or Japanese would run the risk of losing some subtleties to translation errors.
The Tongues Spell is better about literal meanings, context, and other linguistic subtleties than the Spell to Comprehend Languages is, but if whichever "speaker" you invoke had to "translate" the contents from their written form first, you might lose something.
There's already going to be some of that due to the fact that you're reading a modern version of a book that was written over a millennium ago. Mandarin and Taiwanese are undoubtedly closer to the original language that someone from Wen's lifetime would have used, but you're pretty sure even the former can't have been the dialect this Clodpool person originally wrote in. Living languages simply change too much.
It would be really convenient if you could just ask for the book to be read in whatever Ancient Chinese tongue the not-monks of the original School of the Five Elements spoke, but you don't know any of the proper names for such things, much less which one(s) would have been appropriate to the time and place in question. You're also fairly sure you didn't hear any ancient mutterings among the invisible readers, so asking would likely have been ineffective - or the dream might have tried to dig into itself for somebody's impression of reading the Commentaries in the Original Ancient Chinese, which would be rather more of an impact than you want to have on the place just now.
In any case, since both of the Chinese-descended languages are roughly equidistant from Clodpool's native tongue as far as you can tell, you decide to go with the one the Waking Edition of this book is most likely to be written in.
At your request, the other voices do not fall entirely silent, but do diminish to faint murmurs. The ones that were already fairly quiet to start with practically disappear.
The librarian nods in approval.
As for the Taiwanese voice, it begins to recite... poetry?
...
Wha-?
After listening to a few paragraphs, you determine that it isn't ACTUALLY poetry that you're hearing, it's just flowery prose. If you pick through the leaves, blossoms, and creeping vines of the auditory undergrowth, you can hear a long-gone martial artist talking about "the sage wisdom of my most honored master, fragments of which this humble disciple has attempted to record for the edification of future generations, along with accounts of the surrounding events that led to him speaking his mind on certain matters, reconstructed as best my unworthy memory and the recollections of other witnesses could recall them, in the hope they will provide enlightening context."
It sounds much grander the way Clodpool writes it, and also leaves you wondering how a person could say as much as the author crams into a single sentence without pausing to catch a breath or two. The narrator, the voice of the book, or whatever it is that you've tapped into here, just keeps speaking without ever stopping.
All things considered, you suspect that you have found the reason why Wen condemned poetry in the same breath that he mentioned Clodpool's name...
"Will that be all for now, young sir?" the librarian interrupts mildly.
The librarian nods at your reply, adjusting their glasses in a less-menacing way than before, and says, "Please keep in mind that works cannot be checked out of the collection at this time-"
...okay, maybe just SLIGHTLY less menacing.
"-and if you require further assistance, simply visit the front desk."
With that, the figure turns, starts to take a step away from you, and disappears before finishing it.
For a moment, you fancy you can hear the background music of the opening scene of the Ghostbusters movie.
Shaking that off, you spend a couple minutes more listening to the subject matter of the Commentaries, trying to commit the opening chapter to memory so that you can compare what you've heard here to what the Waking Edition of the book has to say.
Given that particular part of your agenda, you figure that you probably shouldn't keep dreamwalking for too much longer. While you've got a good track record with recalling the contents of past dreamwalks the following morning, there is rather a difference between recalling things on your own and sharing them with just one or two people you're on good terms with - and making a semi-formal presentation of your experiences to a crowd of adult authorities is another matter entirely.
Best not to risk an information overload, whether of your own memories or the people you'll be discussing all of this with later. If your past interactions are any indication, they're going to be off-balance enough just from hearing about the dreamwalking and the existence of a reflection of their School...
That being said, there is one more thing you think you should look into while you're here, and with that in mind, you close the Commentaries, silencing all the voices, return the book to its place on the shelf, and then open up your senses a bit to look for one of those spots of shadow.
You pick up a few possibilities. The nearest patch of unpleasantness is located a little way up this outer aisle, in another of the sitting areas. It's visibly less well-lit than the one right next to you, which might be a consequence of the emotional darkness that clings to the little alcove, but could also be the result of the space not having any windows of its own for some reason, or even just because some trees or the neighboring study hall have cast their own mundane shadows over it. Whatever the relationship, the murk in that area is relatively faint, and so probably pretty safe for you to poke at, but also likely to be fairly uninformative.
You can also sense a slightly stronger nascent nightmare on the far side of the building, past the main desk. Greater intensity means increased risk and opportunity in about equal measure, though the darkness you're sensing is still pretty light.
Finally, when you focus, you can make out something in the basement level. Just the fact that you can pick it up through the floor is a little concerning, and some of the symbolism associated with subterranean locations makes you leery of going down there, particularly when you think back to how the entrance to this dream-realm took a form so similar to a Hyrulean dungeon...
Although you're not exactly keen on forging into the proverbial heart of darkness, you have to admit that it IS the most likely of the three concentrations of negativity to yield useful information - and you ARE a curious creature by nature.
Quite aside from that, turning your back on the shadowed spot probably isn't a good idea. It's basically a nascent nightmare, after all, and trying to run away from nightmares - or more precisely, from the fears that are their foundation - doesn't work out in the long term. Sometimes not even in the short term.
Granted, these aren't YOUR fears, but the principle still applies.
Adjusting the position of the sword that's been hanging at your side, undrawn, since you entered the dreamscape, you make for the stairs to the sub-level, and then start down.
In contrast with the entrance to the dreamscape of the School of Five Elements, the stairwell is well-lit. It is, however, devoid of any other traffic, and when combined with the steadily growing sense of darkness ahead of you, the lack of other bodies, footsteps, or the murmur of conversations becomes increasingly unsettling.
The stairs go down two levels, and at the landing for the first of these, there are two doors: one that looks like a supply closet; and the other, which opens up into a hallway that seems to run the length of the library, with half a dozen smaller rooms on each side and another door at the far end, identical to the one you're looking through now except for the fact that it seems to be shut tight.
The uneasy feelings you picked up on the ground floor are stronger here, but most of what you're picking up here still seems fairly minor. There is a tension in the air on this level, but it's one that you recall feeling in classrooms where tests were being taken or important projects being presented, or in lesser measure from individuals stressing about homework, grades, and unpleasant social encounters.
The true CENTER of the problem seems to be located on the sub-basement, and while your readings of it are still a bit muffled, it feels more significant than just school problems.
Inherited Gerudo-trained and Hyrule-traumatized experienced instincts try to pull you towards exploring your current floor, but with an effort, you push those thoughts aside and start down the next flight of stairs, telling yourself with each step that this is NOT one of those ridiculous temple-labyrinths built and subsequently abandoned by those mad, wasteful priests, that it has NO reason to have multi-layered torture mechanisms puzzles that must be overcome to reach the end, and that any monster waiting for you in the final chamber does NOT... should not...
...
...okay, given you're walking into the core of a baby nightmare, there COULD be a giant, hideous thing with eyes in uncomfortable places waiting down there, but it probably won't have some weirdly specific weakness that a weapon or tool stashed away elsewhere in the dungeon library could be used to exploit.
And if it does, you have magic, so you're a lot less constrained in your options than certain Heroes in green.
The shadows deepen around you as you descend, but even when you reach the bottom of the stairs, it's not exactly dark. Dark-ER, yes - the illumination cast by the light fixtures protruding from the ceiling doesn't extend more than a few meters from each bulb, if it even reaches that far, and the shadows that this creates beyond the edges of the lit zones are unnaturally deep - but you can still see everything you'd normally be able to.
You DO have to squint a bit to make out the deepest corners...
Anyway, there are six rooms on this floor, one of which is a bathroom-
You make a quick check, but it seems normal.
-while the second is an office-like set-up that bars the way to the remaining four chambers, if only in the metaphorical sense. There's no one sitting behind the desk, and the part of the counter that has to be flipped up to let people through isn't locked, just latched. A little fumbling around with a Mage Hand finds and flips open the catch, followed by the counter.
The first two rooms past the desk have small windows in their doors, and while the lights inside aren't turned on, you can make out filing cabinets in both. Given that the emotional murk isn't at its most concentrated in either room, you pass them by.
A glance in the door of the last room on the right reveals some more filing cabinets, but also furniture - a table and several chairs spread around it, their exact number a bit uncertain in the gloom. As this isn't the center of the shadows, either, you turn your attention away from it and to the final room, which is the only one that doesn't have a window, and also seems to be made of reinforced, slightly rusty steel.
For a split-second, you're worried that you'll see a lock just below or within the handle, but no, it's a plain knob, which turns easily - if with some annoying squealing - when you have your Mage Hand try to open it. The door proper is heavy enough that you have to get involved to push it open, and once you do, you behold...!
?
...another room full of filing cabinets?
This is definitely the source of the (relatively) strong emotional darkness you sensed from upstairs, and the lack of physical illumination is finally starting to live up to that name as well, but at first glance there doesn't appear to be any obvious reason for it. No horrible monster looms in the corners or hangs from the ceiling, the walls and cabinets have not been defaced with sinister symbols or sickening gore, and while the room's construction involves a lot more metal than it should - and a lot of that either gone to rust or in the process of doing so - that's more of a peculiarity than anything really terrible, in and of itself.
As deep as the shadows in the room are, you give the lightswitch in the hall a couple of flicks, to no avail.
That, at least, fits for a nightmare.
You want some light before you venture inside the rusty room, but as you start to gather the energy for a Spell of Daylight, a thought occurs that has you letting your mana rest as you dip into your psychic pool instead. You reach out to one side of the door-
!
-and take down a large lantern that wasn't hanging there just a moment ago. Having grown out of the corroded steel lining the wall, the frame of the lantern is made of similar material, and the glass panels are slightly dark with soot - or something - but the style of the housing, shaped by your will and imagination, is purely Hyrulean. It's not currently lit, and there's no wick or oil to burn, no electric switch to flip, but that's fine; opening up the box, you poke one finger inside, to where the fire should be, and push a little bit of-Psychic energy -inside.
For those brief moments that it's still "attached" to your will and power, the mote of light that you will into being shines a clear, steady white, but as you pull your finger out of the lantern, the glow fades slightly and takes on a pale bluish tint. When you close the little window, the dark stain on or within the glass dims the light a little further, resulting in a pallid, fitful illumination that barely reaches four feet before being swallowed entirely by the shadows.
Success?
*Poof*
And like that, you have light. It's thin and blunted by the darkened glass, but that's by design; rather than try to push back the darkness with a brighter radiance and so start contesting the essence of the nightmare directly, you're hoping that leaning into its creepy aesthetic with your own take on a Poe's ghost-light will keep things moving along as they are.
Lantern held high with one hand and the other resting on the hilt of your sword, you enter the rust-covered record room and take a closer look.
...
You quickly realize that the corroded metal which covers so much of the floor and walls is also attacking some of the filing cabinets. In fact, as you move towards the back of the room, the amount of rust to be seen increases sharply, particularly towards the rear right corner, where one of the cabinets appears to have been knocked over... and by the angle and elevation, on top of something that you can't quite make out, due to the other cabinets in the way. Walking to the end of the aisle, you turn your gaze-
!
-and lean back in surprise when your lantern-light reveals a skeletal body pinned under the fallen shelving unit, mouth hanging open in a silent, eternal scream.
For an instant, you wonder if you've stumbled upon the scene of an accidental death, or maybe even a murder disguised as such - but almost immediately, you doubt that. While this is the part of the room where the psychic darkness is strongest in all respects, the accumulated negativity still feels too weak for there to have been an untimely death in the real-world analogue to this location. It's lacking in other respects as well, like the chill of death, the scent of blood - the smell of rust IS in the air, admittedly, but they're not the same thing - or the screams of the victim.
Not only that, but as you watch, the "corpse" shifts in appearance in the same way most of the figures you've seen elsewhere in the School did, gaining a couple of inches of height, and then a bit later, losing an inch or so across the shoulders. If there HAD been a violent death here, you would expect its psychic echo to have resulted in a singular, stable impression upon the dreamscape, rather than another of these collective impressions.
What the heck have you found, here, and what will you do with it?
You wanted to go along with the theme of the nascent nightmare, and so you shuffle closer to the apparent corpse, leaning down and bringing the lantern close to inspect it for a long moment. Then you half-turn away from the bony remains, looking over your shoulder at the rest of the darkened room.
"It's quiet," you murmur aloud. "Too quiet..."
And when you turn back to the body-
!
-it's still there.
Frowning, you inform the silent skull, "That was your cue."
...
Still nothing?
Sighing in disappointment, you stand up and turn around for real-
!
-only to find a spectral figure standing RIGHT there, its lower body little more than a vague impression of substance among the shadows, while its upper half resembles the skeletal form behind you, only with a sheet of waxy, translucent material pulled taut over the bones. Motes of corpse-light hang about it and burn in its eye-sockets as the undead shade reaches out for you with both hands.
"Myyyy leeeegssss," it moans. "IIII caaaan't feeeeeeeel myyyy leeeegssss!"
"See, that's more like it!" you exclaim, even as you do your best to edge away from the specter's grasp.
In different circumstances, you'd just back up a few steps, but the toppled filing cabinet and dream-corpse are directly behind you, and stomping all over a ghost's mortal remains is the sort of thing that's more or less guaranteed to drive it into a murderous rage, assuming it wasn't out for blood already.
Between the blockage to your rear and the upright cabinets lining the aisle, you have to sidestep, half-duck, and lean awkwardly to avoid the bony fingers coming your way - though you suppose you might as well call them talons, not only because of how sharp the tips look, but for how much damage they're likely to cause if they make contact, even if said injury wouldn't be physical.
You don't know for certain that a nightmare-born undead spirit will possess the life-draining, soul-chilling touch of the real deal, but it's not an area you're keen to take chances with.
The first and best defense is, after all, to not get hit in the first place.
"Solid eight out of ten," you continue, shifting far enough into the aisle leading to the entrance that you can properly start backing away from the pseudo-undead entity. "I particularly like the glowing eyes. Nice touch, a bit of authenticity."
"Myyyy lee-EEgssss!" the ghost wails, its voice and appearance shifting awkwardly in mid-menace. The former ratchets up an octave or two, while the latter goes from "upper half of a skeleton with a sheet of ectoplasmic skin" to "upper half of an actual body with pallid but (mostly) intact flesh, ragged clothes, and long, dark hair that almost completely hides a no-doubt horrifying ruin of a face, except for one glaring, bloodshot, yellowed eye."
You wince at the discordance of the sudden shift to a higher pitch. "Now, that? That's going to cost you some points-"
"Graaaargh!" the entity howls, as it lunges for your face-!
You have a psychically-burning lantern in one hand, the hilt of an undrawn sword under the other, a fair amount of energy in reserve, and an unfriendly, possibly undead psychic construct coming at you.
In the instant that you have before the specter's claws make contact, you pour ki into the most powerful personal enhancement you can manage, while at the same time pushing additional psychic energy into the dream-lantern as you swing it back and to one side.
For a moment, the eerie flame burns a little brighter and more white than blue - which you think catches the phantom's attention, though alas, not enough to distract it from its attack - and when you swing the lantern in front of yourself, the darkened glass and rusted frame also seem clearer.
It's a little hard to be sure, given you have only a moment to see the lantern before it smashes into the side of the spirit's head-
*Crash*
-with the sounds of shattering glass and impacting metal, a sudden flare, and - just a split-second later - another, distinctly different scream from your opponent as the force of the blow sends its too-light body flying sideways into the row of filing cabinets-
!
-which its phantasmal form flies right through with minimal resistance, leaving the cabinets rattling slightly in its wake.
As you pull back the broken glass and... not obviously dented frame of the lantern with one hand and draw your Blessed Blade with the other, you reflect that the nightmare is definitely emulating an incorporeal undead's immaterial nature. Running psychic energy through a dream-forged lantern was apparently enough to make it qualify as a magical weapon - for given values of "magical" and "weapon," to be sure - and stand a chance of hitting its target, so your sword's inherent magic should allow it to do the same thing-
!
"Rrrraaaarrrrgh!"
-and now the pseudo-ghost's hair is catching fire!
You backpedal swiftly as the nightmare starts thrashing around, beating at its head with both hands and shoving its skull into and through the cabinets, apparently trying to extinguish the white fire that clings to it. Its efforts are somewhat successful, as the tongues of flame sticking to its hair are gradually being beaten out, but you can't help but eye the drawers - presumably full of dreamed-up paper files - with some concern.
Is that smoke you see wafting out of some of them? And if so, is it coming from the burning ghost, or have some of the files caught fire?
Regardless, you should probably put an end to this sooner rather than later, and you've got a pretty good opening.
"I'm expecting big things from you!" you call out.
"AAAARRRRGH!"
"Don't let me down!"
Just in case you're using a dreamed-up version of your sword rather than the genuine article, you charge it up with spiritual energy and ki as you rush forward and thrust-
-taking it right through where the heart should be. Against a corporeal opponent, this would result in a simple stab wound; against this nightmare, the energies surging through and around your sword blow a hole right through the phantom, wide enough for your entire arm to pass through with room to spare on all sides.
You stand there, staring at the result.
The nightmare stares down at your weapon, and then at you.
You sigh. "You're letting me down."
The look on the spirit's half-formed, half-hidden face manages to express remarkable annoyance, a moment before it bursts into smoke that flows away in all directions.
...
You stand there for a moment in the dying light of your broken lantern and its scattered flames, waiting - hoping, even - that this was just the first round, and that your opponent will re-form in some more impressive state...
...
Nope, it's not happening.
It's been a while since you've been so disappointed to have won a fight. Why was that so EASY?
Is there anything else you want to do in the library?
The underwhelming conclusion of that encounter has you giving serious thought to calling it a night and going back to your own dreamscape to sleep, but the as-yet unexplored first basement level does call to your inquisitive - and acquisitive - instincts.
You head for the door of the steel-walled room, sheathing your sword-
!
-and then you pause at the threshold and glance back over your shoulder at the filing cabinets. It's difficult to make out in the darkened chamber, now that your lantern is busted and its light dying, so you just go ahead and cast a Light Spell to see what's going on - and yeah, some of that smoke curling above and around the cabinets looks a little too thick for comfort.
As disappointing as that fight was, you don't want to see the dream-library catch fire. You have no idea what that would do to the place or the greater dream-School, and even if you could say for certain that there wouldn't be any metaphysical consequences, just a burnt-out building, you'd still want to prevent it.
So you spend a couple of minutes going about the room, pulling open drawers and casting the Spell of Prestidigitation into them to try and snuff out the sparks-
*Clunk*
-and then casting a Marked Spell of Knocking to unlock several cabinets.
In the process, it occurs to you that you don't know any spells specifically for putting out fires, at least not anything beyond this use of the Universal Cantrip, which is really only good for extinguishing candles, embers, and similarly tiny flames. Oh, you have several Water spells that could do the job, and ritual-casting is certainly an option, but when water damage and time are both concerns, you're kind of stuck.
That... kind of seems like an oversight, to be honest...
Anyway, once the sparks are out and the smoke is cleared, you take a little more time to look through the files, checking for damage. Nothing has been outright consumed or obviously burned through, but given the blurry, shifting nature of the papers you find, it's kind of impossible to tell if there's been any actual damage as a result of the brief fire.
You're leaning towards "no," but you could be wrong...
Anyway, after you're satisfied that there at least won't be any FURTHER damage to the contents of the room, you close up all the drawers and exit the room
-and then head up to B1 to poke around a bit and see if there's anything interesting that you missed by going straight to the "boss" fight.
This exploration proves fairly straightforward. While a bit shadowy, B1's single passage and the rooms lining it aren't so dark that you can't see into the latter from the former. They prove to be outfitted to serve a mix of purposes.
Some are clearly the "quiet rooms" that the lady librarian in the waking world told you about, set aside for reading. There seems to be little in them apart from comfortable-looking chairs, small tables, fuzzy impressions of plants... and some books, backpacks, and other items that look like they've just been left behind by their owners, who are not otherwise in evidence...?
There are also a couple more rooms full of filing cabinets and shelves. These rather obviously do NOT have metallic architecture or unnatural rust-stains everywhere.
There's one door that doesn't have a window, and which proves to be locked when you try the handle, and there are also the storage closet back out in the stairwell and the door to what you assume is the OTHER stair, at the far end of the hall. Both of those are locked as well.
After a moment's thought, you hang the lantern back up on its hook outside the door, making sure as you do so that the flame is completely out, and that the frame doesn't bang against the wall, as that might dislodge some of the shards of broken glass still hanging - however loosely - in their original positions.
It might have been interesting to take a souvenir of this excursion back with you, but it seems unlikely that you'd be able to take a dream-born item such as this into the waking world, at least not without throwing some fairly involved magic at it. You don't know for sure what sort of spells would be required for such a thing, but given the limitations of the Spells of Minor and Major Creation and what you understand of the theory of True Creation, it seems likely that the attempt would be testing the limits of your promise to refrain from using high-tier spellcraft.
You're also drawing a complete blank on any equivalent psychic ability you might use to smuggle the lantern out, and on top of that, you're unsure what effect removing a portion of this dreamscape would have on its greater whole.
All in all, it's probably for the best that you leave this here - and make sure to "shut the door" when you leave the dreamscape proper, to limit the chances of anyone or anything finding their way in here and collecting something you made.
With nothing you've seen on B1 really catching your eye, you do an about-face, head back to and then up the stairs, and from there go for the exit.
"Will that be all?" the librarian asks, standing next to the door in another female form.
"It will, thank you."
"Have a pleasant evening," the entity replies, before walking away and disappearing among the nearest stacks.
You depart the library - noting as you step outside that the dreamscape's sky has jumped to a nighttime setting - and make your way back around the main dormitory and across the central courtyard - now devoid of trainers and trainees - as you head for the exit.
As you approach, you see that a couple of the vague-faced instructors are standing there, flanking the stone doorway that seems to hang in mid-air, its interior full of nothing but darkness.
They nod in acknowledgment. "Will you be leaving us, then?"
"I will." Manners compel you bow politely. "Thank you for having me."
The bow is returned in kind. "Thank you for coming. Also, if we could ask you to make sure the way is shut behind you-?"
"Already planning on it."
"Good, good."
Nothing untoward happens as you pass through the darkness and up the long, progressively lighter staircase to the mist-covered surface of the Dream Plane, nor as you're willing the Hyrulean-looking entryway to close up and disperse.
As you head back to your dreamscape, you glance at the Arcane Marked and Nondetectable Slab of Stone laying in its front yard.
What do you want to do with this?
And when you awaken, did you want to discuss the Dream School of the Five Elements with the Masters of the Waking School over breakfast, or do you prefer to wait for a more private setting?
While a part of you would be perfectly content to be rid of the Slab of Stone, another part notes that it's only been a couple of hours since you created the thing, which isn't nearly time enough to see what the long-term results of conjuring an object out of the vaporous substance of the Dream Plane are.
Given the latter, you decide to keep the thing around for the time being - but acknowledging the security concerns that drive some of the former desire, you figure you can at least move the stone inside your dreamscape proper.
There is the matter of HOW to move it, stone being dense enough that you're unsure of your ability to lift this much of it with a simple Spell of Levitation, but after a moment you mentally shrug and cast the Spell to Shrink an Item instead, with the duration cut down far enough that it costs you almost nothing to invoke the magic.
*Pop*
Easily plucking the stone-shaped "pillow" from the mist-covering ground thanks to the guidance of the Arcane Mark you left on it, you head inside, shut the door of your dreamscape firmly behind you, and then toss the plush rock to one side.
*Puff-THUD*
"What was THAT?" Briar wonders, from a couple of rooms away.
"Just me relocating that piece of rock, Briar," you call.
"Oh. All done with the dreamwalking, then?"
"For tonight, anyway."
With that, you head for your dream-bed.
"-and that's when I decided to call it a night," you conclude over breakfast, some hours later.
"What kind of a lame boss fight was that?" one of the kids in the audience complains.
There are quite a few more of the students present for the earliest serving of breakfast than you were expecting to see - twenty or so when you arrived, and thrice that by the time you've finished speaking with the adults about last night's subconscious excursion.
You would like to say that the students were attending this earliest meal of the day in such numbers because word had gotten around about you starting your day early yesterday, and they wanted to hear more of your stories - and there is certainly some of that at work.
Mostly, though, they're here because that not-a-tournament you were told about starts today, and everybody here means either to attend it, or to make the most of a day when fewer people will be kicking around the School - and when specific individuals won't be.
As you understand it, the list of absences, especially among the teachers, is extensive enough that classes have been cancelled for the day. You'd asked if that had anything to do with why they were conducting classes on a week-end, but you were told that's pretty normal for this place.
Your tale of the dream-School has left several of the adults giving you looks of mingled bewilderment, exasperation, and grudging gratitude. Lu-sensei is not among them - when you woke up somewhere after five, you found him out like a light under that Restful Blanket you left out on his bed - but his absence isn't particularly felt, at least on your end. His PEERS are probably feeling it, though, especially since there are a few other masters who are also missing from the line-up you saw yesterday.
More guests at that reunion your teacher mentioned?
"Thank you for that... account, Alex," Master Vincent says slowly. He looks like he hasn't gotten nearly enough sleep, making you suspect that he was also in attendance at that party. "We'll look into the matter... at some point."
A couple of his peers and junior masters give him looks that you're pretty certain are saying, "We will?" or "How were you planning on doing that?"
Also, Master Song, at least, is probably thinking the older man really ought to go back to bed.
Master Vincent waves off the inquiring-slash-demanding glances. "In the meantime, we have an exhibition to be getting to."
Yes, the not-a-tournament. Apparently, it's a big enough event that the School of Five Elements and the nearest town aren't really set up to host all of the expected attendees, or maybe just don't want to? You've gotten slightly mixed messages on that account when you've asked about it... anyway, the event is being held in the next-nearest settlement, the one on the coast, and the School has retained a couple of buses to transport those who will be going and who either lack the skills to cover the distance in a reasonable amount of time, or just don't want to exert themselves.
You have multiple methods at your disposal for covering the distance between the School and the town, but given the possibility of a sparring match or two in the near-future and the less-than-full state of your ki reserve, you'd prefer to avoid exerting yourself in that fashion for a few more hours, if only to try and squeeze in a little more recovery. As for the various magical methods, you figure that the School would probably prefer that you keep the overtly sorcerous hijinks to a minimum, at least until circumstances either require an arcane response, or line up in such a way that the revelation of your capabilities will have the most amusing results.
There's going to be a fair number of people at this get-together, and you know the value of playing to a crowd.
With that in mind, the bus is the easiest method to use, particularly since the vehicles will be running a shuttle service back and forth between the School and the exhibition over the course of the day.
On that note, the first bus will be leaving at 7:15. Every seat on that one is already spoken for, and nobody who's going is particularly keen on giving up their spots, but there are still some seats open on the second bus, which will depart at 7:30. So that's you settled.
Checking with your friends, you find that Larry and Cordy are both equally interested in checking out this "kung fu fair," while Amy and Briar are a bit less so - though given your choice to go and the shenanigans that ensued the LAST time you visited a regional meeting of martial artists, your partner is inclined to accompany you regardless. Finding space for the fairy is no issue, which leaves two seats. Arguably, you should also take one of your responsible adults along, and unless you want to ask one of the other masters to handle the potentially hazardous business of waking up Lu-sensei, said responsibility will default to Mrs. Blaisdell. Then again, you're not going THAT far, and there are plenty of masters and teachers going...
Do you have a particular preference for which friend(s) go with you?
Once that's settled, you head back to the dorm to brush your teeth and otherwise make sure you're ready for the trip.
The debate that ensues is short but spirited.
Everyone pretty quickly agrees to let Lu-sensei sleep in after his busy night, and Amy is perfectly willing to wait at the School for an hour or three - or more - to let the old man know where everybody else has gone, once he's awake and has sorted himself out.
It's also fairly quickly agreed that if a couple of you are going up to town, Mrs. Blaisdell should probably go along-
"Briar has her hands full keeping Alex out of trouble already," Cordelia observes.
"And then some," your partner agrees.
"Yes, yes," you mutter. "Get it out of your systems..."
-which leaves you, Cordy, and Larry to decide among yourselves who gets the other two seats.
You don't have a particular preference for who gets the one seat, though you will, of course, be taking the other, but as you listen to your friends argue the point, a thought occurs.
"I could shrink you," you say aloud.
"What was that?" Larry asks.
"You said what, now?" Cordelia says at the same time.
You clarify your offer to reduce one - or heck, both of them - to approximately Briar-size for the duration of the bus trip. You're even willing to throw in a Spell of Flight for the duration.
Your friends trade doubtful glances.
"I don't really want to be tiny," Cordy offers. "I've seen Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and it looked lousy. No offense, Briar."
"None taken," your partner replies. "Having to get along in an unreasonably oversized world CAN be a hassle."
Cordelia spares Briar a look of deep suspicion at that.
"Yeah," Larry says, before Cordy can voice whatever she's thinking, "and besides, I've been hoping to catch up to Alex in height for a while, now. Shrinking's pretty much the exact opposite of that."
"I have my doubts you'll be able to catch him when he's cheating so much-"
"I am not."
"-you really are, Alex," Briar says in an aside, before turning back to Larry, "but as I do enjoy the times when I'm able to be taller than him, I can see where you're coming from. I'll add that neither of you have experience being fairy-sized before, and a crowded bus in motion, which will probably have some windows open, isn't the best environment for a first-time tiny flier."
...okay, there's that.
"Alright, then," you decide. "If nobody else wants to be shrunk, I'll shrink myself and let one of you have my seat."
Lily Blaisdell frowns slightly at this. "Wasn't it just established that could be dangerous?"
"For people not used to being fairy-sized or flying," you agree. "I have previous experience with both, and a lot of ways of defending myself if something unexpected comes up."
She's still frowning after hearing your assurances - probably Grandma Instinct at work - but a glance at the hopeful expressions of the other two would-be travelers seems to decide her.
"What happens if somebody asks you to tell a story on the ride to town?" Amy interjects then.
Given how you've either been asked for or offered up a tale at every meal, this is a fair question. Fortunately, it has an easy answer.
"I know the Spell of Ventriloquism," you state. "And if it turns out that throwing my tiny-sized voice around isn't enough - and being fair, it might not be - I also know the Spell of Dragonvoice."
Now it's Amy's turn to frown. "Isn't that one meant to help you talk like a dragon?"
"It is, and I'm glad to see you remember our lessons, even if it is a fairly niche spell."
Amy shrugs. "I mean, dragons."
True enough. "But," you continue, "the spell also makes your voice quite a bit louder, without you actually having to shout or otherwise stress yourself."
"Ah." She nods. "If you can't win by reason, go for volume. Got it."
Lily laughs at that for some reason.
With the space issue sorted out, you go ahead and ritually cast an Extended Spell of Flight on your person, and then follow it up with a ritual, Extended Spell to Reduce a Person, which you hold on standby as you and your companions make your way to the bus.
This way, you can explain things to the teachers, shrink down, and get aboard with a minimum of fuss.
There are still some inquiries as to whether or not having two tiny people flying around the bus is entirely safe, but given that this is Briar's natural state, that you are an experienced flier, and that you can throw out an Emergency Force Sphere at a moment's notice - among many, MANY other options - it is safe to say that you convince them.
"Can we hear another story while we ride?" somebody asks.
"Story! Story!" some of the other passengers chant. Not all of them are kids, at that.
"Well," you say, affecting great reluctance as you fly towards the middle of the vehicle, "I suppose there is ONE..."
You've already talked up the mostly-martial exploits of one of your friends to the crowd, which has you giving serious consideration to doing the same for another member of your social circle. Kahlua has one of the more impressive track records in that regard, and you've known her the longest of all your non-Sunnydale friends, making her a tempting candidate - particularly when you could recount her exploits at your birthday Trials, and hype up the Ring at the same time.
Two things stop you from doing this, however.
The first is that you know one of the masters - specifically, Master Nielson, who you know doesn't have a good relationship with Lu Tze - got punched through part of the architecture by Miss Akasha back at the World Tournament. There is definite ill-will there, and by extension, towards the rest of the Shuzen Family, and every time you bring up the vampire clan in conversation, you're risking annoying one of your hosts and those who align with him in the politics of the School.
True, you have already mentioned the Shuzens in your stories - and Kahlua in particular - but that was mostly as a background element when you were discussing Sokka's Sokka-ness. Describing the exploits of a member of the family specifically would be a different matter, and something you should probably avoid, or at least ask permission for ahead of time.
The other reason you decide against describing Kahlua's Trials is a simple matter of timing. She cleared seven out of nine Trials and made a good effort at the eighth before Volvagia's volcanic aura proved too much for her, and even if her first couple of bouts went by relatively quickly, the third on up took long enough that you aren't sure you could do them justice in the time you have before the bus gets to town.
You do not want to spoil a good story with a hasty ending - or, Goddesses forbid, a cliffhanger.
As you consider your alternatives and the bus starts moving, your eyes slide towards your companions, and a slow, wicked-but-not-actually-evil smile crosses your face.
You cast the Spell of Ventriloquism, applying the Marking Spell Metamagic to give your "thrown" voice multiple points of origin, which you try to spread out evenly about the bus's passenger compartment.
"Can everybody hear me?" you ask.
"Yes!"
"Wait, if he's flying around up THERE, why is his voice coming from back HERE?"
"It's coming from over here, though?"
"Oh, hey, magical Surroundsound!"
"Man, that's handy."
That girl is not wrong.
"So," you say, "it occurs to me that I have been telling a lot of stories about myself, which could be seen as boasting, and also about people who none of you can easily meet to confirm that I'm not actually making stuff up."
Larry and Cordy both sit up straight at that, clearly suspecting what's coming.
"With that in mind, my next story involves my friend Cordelia Chase-"
"Alex," she warns.
"-and her battles in the Ring of Trials."
Cordelia pauses. "...continue," she allows.
And so you do.
Of course, you have to explain for the students and most of the adults in the audience what the Ring of Trials even IS, first, but that only takes a few minutes, after which you describe how Cordy turned an Octorok's projectile against it, defeated a Leever using her "mermaid trick"-
"Mermaids are real?" somebody asks.
"They are, and while there are friendly ones, there are also some that will drown you and eat you, or eat you and then drown you," you clarify. "Cordy's met both kinds."
-ripped out a Tektike's eye with the same-
"EW!"
"Cool!"
-shot a Peahat out of the air-
"Flying plant monsters? Seriously?"
-beat up a Moblin, stole its spear, and intimidate the dog-faced goblin into surrendering-
"..."
"No comment?" you wonder.
"I mean, a cowardly goblin just makes sense, doesn't it?"
Eh, fair.
-and finally beat a vampire with trash-talk, that stolen and then broken spear, and a Ki Blast.
There is a general round of applause at the end.
Cordelia doesn't quite preen, but she's definitely enjoying the approval.
You're coming up on the town limits by this point, so you don't try for a new story. Instead, as you get your first look at the coast and the settlement spread out along it, you are reminded that you'll be making a fish run here in a couple of days' time.
Within the ranks of those within the School who are aware of your upcoming participation in one of their traditional chore-slash-training assignments, there are undoubtedly some who are expecting you to attempt the Wednesday afternoon fish run with nothing more than reasonably detailed, slightly vague, and/or somewhat misleading directions to guide you. It may well be part of the tradition, at least for students making the trip for the first time.
If so, they're just going to have to live with disappointment, because you don't see any reason NOT to get some idea of the lay of the land, now that you're actually here in the town of Changdu.
"So," you ask through your still-active Spell of Ventriloquism, "how would you reach the fish market from here?"
"Well, first-"
"No, don't tell him!"
"It's NOT that big a deal-"
"It's part of the challenge-"
"What 'challenge' are you talking about?"
"Yeah, you grew up here!"
"That's not my fault!"
The teachers get involved before the argument can proceed much further than that, and their ruling on the matter is that being born in town or asking for directions to the fish market are both entirely valid.
"Some people are lucky, and others plan ahead," an instructor notes. "One should make use of one's advantages, particularly when it comes to the matter of not ending up smelling like spoiled fish or having to go without meat for that evening's meal."
...wait, they dock you part of a meal if you fail the run? How evil!
...
Not that you're particularly worried about it, your natural physicality and various ki-based movement boosters being as good as they are, but still! Evil!
On a related note, you still need to discuss the possibility of using your Arcane Pocket for this task with Lu-sensei. You make another mental note to do so, with an addendum to not forget again!
Anyway, with the teachers having settled the matter of what's allowed and what isn't, the more helpful kids give you directions to the local fish market, pointing out which streets you should go down as you pass them - at least until the bus route takes you in a different direction, at which point the route gets a little more difficult to visualize. You still commit the instructions to memory, of course, but you'll have to wait and see how reliable they are.
The bus soon pulls to a stop before a modestly-sized community center, smaller and a touch less well-maintained than the one in Tokyo where you attended that Halloween party. Whether that's down to shortcomings in the municipal budget, a slightly harsher climate, or just greater age, who can say?
Regardless, there's a number of people spread out on the grounds, parking lot, and adjacent sidewalk - at a guess, you'd say there are two hundred people already here despite the early hour, not counting however many are already inside the large two-story building, making this the biggest group of martial arts practitioners and aficionados you've seen since... well, okay, since dinner last night. But you fully expect that number to increase as the day progresses!
As the occupants of the first row of seats get up to exit the bus, you check on your active enhancements. The Spell of Flight is just about done for, but you've still got several minutes before the Spell to Reduce a Person runs out of gas. You should probably make sure that the latter spell is ended or dismissed before you get off the bus, just to be sure that nobody sees it.
Unless, of course, you have a valid reason to stay small?