Xander Quest Chapter 348: Another Magical Summer 20, a private fanfic

While all this running around and monstrous diplomacy has helped you to get this far in good order, not to mention with your own little army, it has taken a lot more time than you were really intending to spend on these Trials when you entered-

At that thought, you spare a moment to be relived that you only went for three tasks today. If you'd asked to attempt nine Trials, at the rate things have been going, you'd probably be here until suppertime!

-and the fact that you went off by yourself several times kind of put the whole point of gathering the aforementioned force of minions into question.

Perhaps that's why you decide to lead the impending attack from the front, instead of taking a more commander-y position towards the middle or even the rear of the monstrous mob? One part wanting to stay at the forefront of events, one part wanting to actually fight WITH your followers, instead of continuing to oversee them from a distance?

"ONWARD!" you declare, raising your sword and pointing forward.

Or maybe you just really want to pose dramatically for all your horde to see?

"FOR THE MASTER!" a bunch of goblins cheer.

The Deelers wave their front legs while hissing acclaim, and the voiceless Stalfos waves its own sword in salute - as does Altria, who seems to be caught up in the moment.

Or maybe she's just eager for another fight. That's also a distinct possibility.

Since you're closer to the peak now, you pick up the pace of the march a bit, returning to the summit... okay, since your minions are mostly short and don't have multi-layered mobility-boosters helping them along, not to mention how you do your best to keep them in formation for when - not if - you make contact with the enemy above, this trip up the path still takes somewhat longer to cover the same distance than your first trek did. That said, it's only a few minutes more, which is pretty good time for an undisciplined rabble.

The collective advance of a group this large has some side-effects, one of which is the thin cloud of ash that so many marching feet kick up. It's short-lived and a bit difficult to make out against the general murk in the air, but somebody in that stronghold must have been paying attention to the route down, because you hear another horn blow as your warriors approach.

When the scrap-metal keep and its one-quarter fallen wall come into view scant moments later, you see almost immediately that moving quickly was the correct call, for the monsters stationed in this base appear to be in the middle of leaving it, some of them having assembled in a small and loosely-organized formation of their own on the not-quite-a-road.

At a guess, you'd say that who- and whatever is in charge here saw how quickly you brought down the front wall, possibly heard a hasty account of your complete and single-handed destruction of the outpost from its survivors, and decided they'd rather meet your forces in the field - so to speak - than to leave them inside a fortification that was just going to get knocked down.

With your approach having been betrayed by the ash, the Moblins, Daira, and Dodongos gathered before the breached fort are about as prepared to meet your troops as they can be, under the circumstances. At a quick glance, you'd say there are less than twenty of the former, four of the second, and half a dozen of the latter. You can see perhaps half as many spear-wielding goblins and axe-wielding gator-men either picking their way through the wreckage or still keeping watch from the intact portions of the wall, and the size of the remaining base is such that there could easily be as many troops still out of sight as there are currently visible.

Your decision to stand at the forefront of your own army means you'll be a prime target for the enemy, but it also means you'll be drawing attention away from your much weaker minions and in a position to literally shield some of them from danger. That'll be helpful with the Dairas in particular, whose Axe Beams would almost certainly be able to kill a Bokoblin with a single hit, but some final matters of deployment remain.

You're the most powerful thing on the field - aside from the volcano, anyway - and the Dairas are the strongest enemies that you have to worry about right now. It makes sense for you to target them.

Having Altria, Haron, and the Stalfos go after the enemy's rank and file is perhaps not so clear-cut an assignment as your own choice, but they're all strong and/or skilled enough that the biggest threat the Moblins' spears will pose to them is via sheer numbers, and with three strong combatants hitting the enemy lines all at once, even that danger will be diminished.

Altria's speed, Haron's relative size and ability to spit fire, and the Stalfos's lack of any soft fleshy bits to stab just make them that much harder for the Moblins to hurt.

This match-up, meanwhile, is almost counter-intuitive. The Dodongos aren't even a patch on their King, but they're still big enough to choke down a Bokoblin or Deeler with just a bite or two.

"But they breathe fire!"

"We're fireproof right now, remember?"

"...oh yeah."

"Idiot."

"No, no, it's easy to forget..."

There's also that aspect, which would normally be devastating to a force like this, but which your Spell to Resist Fire has the potential to turn into an advantage for YOUR side. The Dodongos are positioned at the front of the enemy formation, and their handlers are pointing at your oncoming horde and giving orders - you catch the Goblin word for "Fire" easily enough - making it pretty obvious that they're about to have the big lizards make like the living flamethrowers they are.

The moment of surprise when the Bokoblins and Deelers charge into and THROUGH half a dozen gouts of flame en masse, to no ill effect, will give your guys an opening to get in close and either stab them through the soft, fleshy interior of their mouths, or scramble over them and go for their vulnerable tails.

It is perhaps a shame that you don't have any Bombs to hand for the traditional method of Dodongo-hunting, but then again, handing high explosives over to a bunch of goblins would just be asking for problems.

Your protection spell is only good against FIRE, and only so far. Explosions would be another matter.

You close ground.

At a certain distance, the Dairas begin empowering their axes, and shortly after that, they start swinging, sending a barrage of Axe Beams your way - almost literally so, in fact. You maneuver your force shield to intercept the strikes, soaking three out of four to some cracking noises from your Vambrace's projected barrier, while the last Beam sails past you and into the mob-

*Scree-KLANG*

-where by the sound of things, Altria intercepted it with her sword before it could hit anybody.

You respond in kind-

*Scree-KOW*

-the Overloaded Sword Beam blasting past the Dairas' attempts at defense to hit one of their number along the upper torso and left shoulder.

Then you're in flaming range, as the Dodongos open their jaws and exhale clouds of orange-hot fire at your army, sweeping their heads from side to side to spread out the blaze and hit as many targets as possible. There is a lot of screaming from your army-

"'ere we goooo-!"

"I can't believe I'm doing thiiiis-!"

"Non-burny thoughts, non-burny thoughts-!"

"YES! BRING ME ALL THE FIRE!"

-but none of it painful, and while most of the Dodongos can't see past their death-spewing jaws right then, looks of surprise are plentiful on the faces of dog-headed goblins and gator-headed warriors alike as you and the rest of the first line of your troops emerge unscathed from the blaze.

Then Haron's breath comes shooting back the other way, the cone of seemingly burning leaves hitting a number of the packed-together enemy Moblins - and clipping a couple of the Dairas besides, not that you're going to complain - and setting at least half of them on fire!

And then you slam into their line and things get CONFUSING.

This isn't your first fight, not by a longshot. Even if you discount the nonlethal nature of your innumerable sparring matches at Lu-sensei's, when visiting your friends, and during the scheduled portions of the World Tournament, the UN-scheduled events still gave you a solid introduction to the world of mortal combat.

This is also not your first time taking part in a proper battle. That honor, at least in this lifetime, technically goes to the day of your original meeting with the Memorians, although your first time fighting as PART of a relatively large armed force, rather than wandering around doing your own thing while the main clash of forces played out elsewhere, would have to be during the clearing of the Earthside Memorian Base.

Even in that latter instance, however, you were operating in more of a support and semi-command role most of the time: providing magical aid where needed; directing your summoned allies; and otherwise leaving the bulk of the actual fighting to the professionals, living or undead.

Your earlier battle with Haron was your first time taking point in a battle, and even there, not only was the fight hilariously lopsided at about half a hundred to one, you didn't stick around in melee range for very long.

This time, the odds are more even - if still not what you'd consider "fair," given one side has you and Altria to call upon - and you're trying to occupy the attention of no less than four strong monsters all at once, while the rest of the fight rages all around you.

Not to mention that you need to get into striking range of the Dairas before you can even begin to do your part of the fight, and the initial approach does not go as well as you would have liked. Even if the Dodongos are too busy breathing their ineffectual fire to try and bite, you still have to navigate through tail-swats, spear-thrusts, and Axe Beams to get into striking distance of your chosen targets, and the barrier projected by your Vambrace of Force Shielding isn't so large that it can cover you from all angles, especially not when you've got so many enemies to worry about.

With your ability to outright dodge somewhat hampered by your need to actually reach the Dairas, you're limited to subtler forms of threat-avoidance - twisting your torso to avoid a probing spear, shifting your head to one side to not-quite-duck an Axe Beam, and so on - as well as whatever your shield and multi-layered defensive effects can provide.

As your shield is the only part of your defense that you know for certain can block an Axe Beam without harm, you have to use it to do just that. Everything else that you can't avoid, or which isn't coming at you from an angle that the shield can conveniently handle while attending to its main duty, you must either try to fend off with defensive bladework, or accept being hit by and hope that your mystical armor is enough to absorb.

Of course, given that the rest of your army is right behind you, your enemies can't exactly focus all of their efforts on hitting you personally, but as you're one of the more unique-looking members of your force, that still gets you a fair amount of attention.

As you half-step and half-leap over the lash of a Dodongo's tail and find three Axe Beams and five Moblin spears coming at you, part of your mind idly wonders if the escapees of the destroyed outpost happened to pass "your" description along...

*Whoosh*

The Dodongo misses you, and is subsequently too busy roaring in protest at the Bokoblins and Deelers that are mobbing it - after having the temerity to NOT die to its fiery attack - to try to follow through.

*Scree-KOW!*

Your shield stops two Axe Beams cold, while the third has to be deflected by your Blessed Sword and its newest and still-building Sword Beam charge.

That leaves the spears-

*Thrust!*

-two of which you're able to avoid, if narrowly-

*Poke!*

-a third of which hits your Mage Armor and is jarred away, doing you no harm-

*Slice!*

-while the last two both score glancing blows, one high on your sword-arm, the other to your side, just above your hip. You don't feel pain, per se, but that's likely due to the adrenaline and the morale-boosting effects of your ongoing Spell of Heroism.

And then you're through the mid-range and into the melee proper, with goblinoid bodies crushing you from all four directions, howls and screams and hissing - some of it reptilian, more arachnid - thundering in your ears, the choking stench of ash and molten rock swiftly joined by monstrous body odor and the metallic reek of blood, and weapons seemingly EVERYWHERE-!

Despite your intention of going for the Dairas, at one point, you find yourself cutting down a Moblin, and then a bit later, taking off the end of a Dodongo's tail that was just there. You slash and stab and throw Beams at the Dairas, blocking, redirecting, and side-stepping the blades of their actual axes in exchange, and while you draw blood several times and see one of the gator-men fall backwards as if it might be dying, there just isn't time to confirm the kill - not that one, nor any of the other might-have-beens.

And then, quite abruptly, the press of bodies lightens, and you find yourself facing a seemingly unharmed Daira, who snarls and comes at you, axe glowing and drawn up for a powerful two-handed swing.

You move almost without thought, as years of training, dozens of high-speed sparring matches, and fewer but still numerous lethal combat encounters point to the same conclusion: AN OPENING!

The Daira has no idea how fast you can move when you really get going, and as you blur forward-

-why is the butt of a spear in your path, never mind, adjust your stride and step over it instead of into-

-sidestep the sloooow backswing of that other Daira's axe-

-okay, no, there are too many bodies in the way, so duck and shuffle under the axe-

-and watch out for that Bokoblin who's desperately trying to discover the secret to wingless flight. If he doesn't figure it out in the next few fractions of a second, you don't think he's going to enjoy his landing...

As it turns out, it is a lot harder to effectively use a Body Flicker in the middle of a monstrous melee including dozens of combatants on both sides than it is to use the technique in a one-on-one spar. Who would have thought?

For once, using Ki Overload actually ISN'T helping you, as the additional momentum wrenches at you that much more with every little adjustment that the battle around you forces you to make to your initial trajectory. In turn, you have to burn up more of the ki invested in the Flicker to compensate, leaving less and less for further course-corrections.

You still close the distance to your target in what must be - from the Daira's point of view - the blink of a crocodilian eye, of course, you're too well-practiced at the Body Flicker to have it gutter out halfway or something equally embarrassing, but even so!

Gained Ki Overload C+++

You emerge from the Flicker with your blade wreathed in your latest Sword Beam and already swinging, channeling some of that annoying extra force into a downward slash across the chest, rather than going for a thrust that might do a lot more damage by depth of penetration, at the risk of getting your sword caught on something inside the body. As the Daira reels from that hit, momentarily frozen with its axe still raised to strike where you WERE a moment ago, you start to bring your sword back up-

-and then a sense of movement and avoid from behind has you abandoning the attack and pushing, shield-first, past the wounded Daira, as instead of striking against the gator-man, you bring your sword around to guard against whatever nearly hit you from behind.

It turns out to be one of the enemy Moblins, and he didn't so much "almost hit" you as he "nearly ran into" you, while staggering backwards with several VERY unwanted passengers on his case. He's got two Bokoblins and a Deeler clinging to him: one of the former wrapped about a leg, biting as hard as he can; the second on what seems to be the Moblin's spear-arm; and the spider perched with some legs atop his shoulders and others atop his head, which it hiss-screeches in his howling doggy face.

It's quite a picture; fortunately, your situational awareness is good enough that even as you stare at the quartet as they go staggering past - while also fighting down the momentary impulse to yell at them for attacking the wrong enemy - your Force Shield remains at the ready between you and your chosen opponent-

*Scree-KOW!*

-and your sword, luckily, is in position to intercept that Axe Beam from the OTHER Daira that noticed you just now.

And Altria just hit that one from behind.

You've encountered the quote a few times, whether in your diverse readings, some of your lessons, or on TV, and it resonates with certain experiences from your past lives.

Ganondorf was actually quite good at putting together long plans that got his enemies to do a lot of the work for him, but even so, various Links and Zeldas managed to throw their wrenches into his grand schemes, often enough just by not dying when he expected them to. And of course, the Demon King of Evil was himself the destroyer of many other people's agendas...

For all of that, though, this is your first truly up-close-and-personal encounter with the chaos of the battlefield, and it drives the lesson home in a way even your previous observations of large-scale combat didn't.

You'll try to keep it in mind going forward.

Whether you wanted her to attack it or not, Altria seems to have that Daira in hand - and more to the point, she's done you the not-inconsiderable favor of taking the gator-man's attention off of you, so that you don't get caught between two of the axe-wielding menaces.

You would really hate to try holding off a pincer attack like that. You've only got the one force shield.

On that note, however, there were two other Dairas on the field, whose locations you don't know. You would prefer not to get caught between a pair of such monsters again, even briefly, so you should probably focus on finishing off the one you just injured.

Sliding your sword away from the axe of the Daira that now has a small dragon to worry about, you turn about to face the one you were holding back with your shield, a plan already formed-

"Hold on! Hold on!"

"I am holding on!"

"Imma be sick..."

"HOLD IT IN!"

-and then have to take a step back as a frustrated Dodongo goes stomping by, snarling furiously as it twists about from side to side, struggling to dislodge the three Bokoblins that have ended up on its back. The big lizard doesn't have enough neck to twist around to bite or fire-blast the goblins, and its tail is similarly a bit too short and inflexible to reach up to hit them.

You wonder why it doesn't take a page from King Dodongo's book and roll forward, as that seems like it would at least dislodge the Bokoblins, if not crush them outright. Then again, there's so many bodies around that there's not a lot of space for the beast to work with...

As the six-foot-plus lizard moves through the area, you cast about for the six-foot-tall gator-man-

-who is using the flat of its axe to swat a Deeler from its shoulders before the spider can bite, while swinging its tail about-

"Whoaaaa-!"

-to give another Bokoblin an impromptu flying lesson.

Readying your ki, you take a step forward-

"KILL YOU!"

-and have to parry a spear-thrust from a Moblin who's bleeding from several places, including a swelling, off-color lump around a couple of puncture marks.

It would seem that Deeler venom isn't a paralytic. It could be a rage-inducer, though, if the red eyes, foaming lips, and frenzied, clumsy sequence of thrusts are any indication.

You block the next strike with your shield, dodge a third, and then send the mad Moblin reeling back with a stroke to the chest-

-at which point you turn around to see what just bumped into you, and find another Daira making the same sort of motion.

From the blast mark on its upper torso, this is the gator-man you zapped in the opening of the fight, and you don't hesitate to take advantage of its injury and position and your accumulated ki to launch a Strike Flicker right then and there. After what just happened with your Body Flicker, you refrain from Overloading the technique, for fear of overcommitting and/or getting your weapon stuck in the body.

If nothing else, an Overloaded Strike Flicker would not have been necessary to score a hit; the Daira was already moving its axe into a guard position before it saw who it had backed into, but your accelerated strike simply resolves too quickly for it to get its own weapon in the way of yours. The result of this is another wound on its left, specifically to the upper arm, which was the closest to you at the moment of your attack. The damage doesn't quite render the limb limp, but from the snarl and the way the Daira shifts to a singularly right-handed grip on its weapon, you're confident in calling that a disabling strike.

As you wait for your ki to cycle, you follow up with a more mundane stroke-

*Clang!*

-which the Daira is able to parry.

*Screech-stab!*

This doesn't stop your subsequent thrust, which slides your sword along the axe-blade with an ear-piercing shriek of steel on steel until the tip of the weapon pierces the Daira's scaly chest.

And then fire sweeps over you, your current opponent, and a good swathe of the area around you-

"AAAHHH wait, I still can't be set on fire!"

"Praise the Master!"

"And damn whoever just tried to set us on fire!"

"WHY MUST YOU TAUNT ME?!"

-as Haron takes the opportunity to do as boss monsters so often do, and nuke a large area of the field. The Daira are tough and well-adapted to Death Mountain's volcanic environment, but they aren't actually fire-proof, and while Haron's fire-blast is not as effective against the scales of the gator-man before you as it would have been against unwarded goblin-flesh and spider-chitin, it does do visible damage. The eyes, in particular, snap shut in reflex against the heat and glare, which leaves you a perfect opportunity to stab the Daira in the throat.

Which you do.

As the Daira collapses in front of you, you keep your force shield raised in case the monster attempts a last attack with its dying strength, but that proves unnecessary, as its form bursts in black smoke. There's actually quite a bit more of the stuff floating around - and lots of little skulls - and when you look about, you see that your forces have largely wiped out their opposition-

"Stupid lizard!"

"Why won't you just die already?"

"I can't- it's too- HUUURK!"

"No!"

"Ugh!"

The Dodongo roars in protest as goblin-puke gets in its eyes, and nose, and possibly in its mouth.

-with a few exceptions, which are being dealt with.

Taking a head-count, you quickly determine that your victory cost you. You're coming up five or six Bokoblins short from what you had earlier, and just as many Deelers are missing from the swarm. Your stronger fighters are all intact, although the Stalfos has a rent in its rusty breastplate and the ribcage underneath that wasn't there before, the Deeler matriarch seems to be missing part of a leg, and Grum is tying a piece of cloth about his left arm. In contrast, Altria is mostly just dusty, spattered with monster blood, and breathing a bit harder than normal, but not unusually so for having just exerted herself.

Also, while you've been fighting this group, a "second wave" of similar size and composition has formed up in front of the collapsed wall. Even more monsters, mostly Moblins, are coming out of the still-standing gate, although the flow seems to be diminishing.

You could catch most of the second wave of enemy monsters with a Fireball. It would be quick and cheap, and between your mastery of Elemental Magic in general and your affinity for Fire Elementalism in particular, you'd have pretty good odds of wiping out your targets.

That said, a single Fireball wouldn't cover enough area to account for all of the monsters, and the Dairas have demonstrated enough fire-resistance that even the ones you caught in the blast might survive it in fighting condition, so perhaps another spell is merited?

Chain Lightning presents itself as an option, and would be more likely to fry everything it hit, if at a greater cost in energy. But there are enough monsters facing your diminished force that you'd still be left with some survivors, and due to the more precise nature of the electrical spell, those would be completely unscathed.

But if fire and lightning won't work, what about the last member of the trifecta?

And so you cast, forming a tiny sphere of swirling blue and white energy at your fingertips, which a pointing motion sends flying towards the heart of the enemy formation. The Moblins and Dairas see it coming - though the orb is not very large, its colors stand out sharply against the red-tinted grey, brown, and black that dominate the local landscape, to say nothing of how it glows - and those near the point of impact move to dodge, but the lack of a widespread evasive maneuver makes it clear that the force as a whole don't know what they're facing.

Consequently, when the Freezing Sphere detonates, not a single enemy monster avoids the sudden explosion of sheer, biting cold. For all the dazzlingly bright white and cool blue energy unleashed by the blast, there isn't much actual ICE involved - which is unsurprising, in light of how dry an environment you're in right now - but when the dome of freezing magic disperses a moment later, it leaves behind a field littered with a score of what appear to be statues carved from ice.

A few of these "statues" shudder, shift, and crack free of the thin layers of frost that formed over their skin - or possibly OUT of it - but most remain immobile.

*Hiss-crack!*

Others pop and crackle as the frigid air about them is dispersed by the volcanic heat that pours endlessly from Death Mountain's roaring maw. Where super-cooled flesh comes into contact with super-heated air, the result sends many a tiny fracture shooting through the bodies-

*Crash*

-some of which lose ill-positioned limbs that are suddenly unable to support their own weight.

Well, that's disturbing. Then again, killing things with fire is hardly pleasant itself...

Gained Ice Affinity E+++
Gained Ice Elementalism D

Due to the area of effect of a Freezing Sphere being twice as wide and thus four times as large as that of a Fireball - ideal conditions permitting, anyway - only a few Moblins still back in the "mouth" of the gate for the ruined wall managed to avoid being caught in the blast. They stare in shocked horror at the field of frozen statues and a handful of frostbitten survivors moving painfully among it, before turning and fleeing back into the fortress, howling in terror-

*CRASH!*

-and slamming the portcullis behind them.

For all the good that does, when the wall around the gate is gone.

You don't really NEED to take the junk-base, now that you've destroyed the bulk of its forces and terrified the rest into trying to bunker down and wait for the storm of your wrath to pass. It had occurred to you that there might be a more powerful monster stationed here, but seeing as how one hadn't emerged despite the deployment of so many other troops, there likely isn't such a beast here for you to worry about.

You pause for a moment, waiting to see if a previously undetected boss is going to take that as its cue to explode from the Tower of Pieces (of Junk), or at least start furiously disciplining its surviving troops for their failure and retreat in the face of certain annihilation. But when that doesn't happen even after a long pause, you decide that really isn't going to - at least not HERE.

In the end, it's the tactical considerations that sway you. Having control of the base is simply better than not having control of it, and so you order your forces in to-

Take any prisoners that surrender.

The two Dairas that survived your Freezing Sphere do not surrender.

As for the Moblins that made it through the blast, two ready themselves to fight as your forces approach - and then glance sharply over their shoulders as two of their allies turn and run, howling, for the fallen fortress wall.

The last of the bunch throws down his spear and raises his paws. "Gug gives."

"Gug?!" one of the other fighters barks.

"Gug coward!" the other adds.

"And Lok dummy!" Gug retorts, pointing sharply at your army. "Or is Lok going to fight all THAT alone?"

"Lok not alone!"

*Clatter*

Disbelievingly, Lok turns to his companion, who has just thrown down his spear. "Lug?"

Lug shrugs. "Gug have good point."

"...Lok surrounded by COWARDS AND TRAITORS!"

He doesn't get beyond raising his spear before your forces get there.

You end up with three prisoners out of the deal: Gug; Lug; and one of the two Moblins that tried to climb over the pile of wreckage and back into the compound, but was too slow to escape the Deelers. That one's partner was quicker on his feet - or paws? - and made it inside the perimeter, although whether he got inside the tower is another question.

-and then sweep the place for any stragglers.

The few enemy monsters that survived the touch of your Freezing Sphere, and which are now locked out of their base by their allies' cowardly retreat, amount to a pair of Dairas and five Moblins.

The gator-men have proven themselves tough enough in previous encounters that their survival here isn't a huge shock, though it does tell you that they're very unlikely to have a special vulnerability to intense cold, as their reptilian features might suggest.

The survival of the goblinoids, on the other hand, you have to chalk up to having a lot of warm bodies between them and the point of origin of the cold wave, and also being on the fringes of its area of effect, so that they spent less time exposed to the intense chill before the normal heat of the environmental took over.

However they pulled through your spell, the monsters are visibly badly frostbitten, a fact that when combined with how hilariously outnumbered they now are, makes dealing with them almost trivial. It might have gone worse if you, Altria, Haron, and the Stalfos weren't there to handle the two Dairas - even severely wounded, you think they could have claimed a few more spiders and goblins before going down - but as it is, they're easily handled.

The Deelers casually skitter over the broken wall in a wave of chitinous limbs, to the frantic and subsequently fleeing howls of a few Moblins. While the spiders are distracting - read, terrorizing - the larger goblinoids, the Bokoblins do their best to scale the junkheap, following their leaders, who clear the obstacle with rather less difficulty.

You lead the initial charge towards the fortress, although putting down the Dairas and dealing with your capture of the three Moblins forces you to pause and take a minute to sort out guard duty. You leave Grum in charge of his cousins, along with a squad of Bokoblins.

And then it's into the base with you, the collapsed wall providing only a brief delay. The main thing that's slowing your Bokoblins down here is their lack of armor - be it manufactured or natural - in the face of all the sharp and pointy bits of the wreckage. Those Spells of Mage Armor you cast on them before attacking Haron are still in effect, but such magic doesn't do a thing against instincts that say, "goblin grabs or steps on sharp thing, goblin gets hurt," and the Bokoblins aren't familiar enough with the spell yet to override those impulses.

It also has to be said that Mage Armor isn't a perfect defense-

"Ow, my foot!"

-and actively grabbing or stepping on something dangerous is one way to potentially breach it, the combination of user intent and low-force, long-duration pressure - at least in relation to most proper melee attacks - confusing the spell somewhat.

The courtyard of the fort isn't much to look at, being little more than a space about ten feet wide between where the front wall used to stand and the central keep, and a good part of that filled with loose scrap and stone that came crashing down after you disintegrated the lower parts of the forward towers. Very little of the fallen junk made it to the foot of the keep, and the spaces to either side seem to be clear - except for that one Moblin, who you can see running down the right-hand "alley."

The door to the keep is indeed shut and locked, but between the Deelers, the Spells of Spider Climb, and your Boots, your entire force other than Altria and Haron are capable of getting high enough to try going in some of the narrow apertures that line the tower, or just making for the top level and the door, hatch, or ladder that is up there.

You decide to make for the roof. Also-

"Yoink!"

"Wha- put me down, Alex!"

-you pick up a plus one, sweeping the Tinyknuckle into a princess-knight carry. Or maybe a plus two, given Briar... plus one-point-one, maybe, due to the fairy's current tininess?

"Going up!" you declare, doing your best to ignore the dragon's struggles.

"I can get up there myself!"

"How so?" you ask, already a couple of "steps" off the ground.

"If I went up one of the towers on the outer wall-"

"-you could jump from there to the roof?" you conclude, continuing to rise as you eyeball the distance and measuring against Altria's demonstrated speed and maneuverability while using her mana boosters. "...hm, maybe."

"What do you mean, 'maybe'?" Altria asks shortly.

"I mean, it's a two-story difference in height from the top of any of the guard towers to the top of the keep, and the angles involved won't let you build up speed in the right direction."

"I have made similar jumps in the past."

You give her a suspicious look.

"In training," she admits.

Your expression of doubt persists.

"And not to the full height of two floors," Altria concedes with a huff. "Not YET - but I am getting there!"

Uh-huh. "And if you fell?"

"The tower's construction is not exactly solid at that height," she points out. "There are hand- and footholds, however awkwardly placed some of them might be, and if all else failed, I am certain that I could jam my sword through the wall as a brake or brace, as needed."

"Sounds like an awful thing to do to a sword, Altria."

"Yes, well, needs of the battlefield..."

"But you DON'T need to..."

"That is a matter of opinion!"

By this point you're almost to the third floor, with the Deelers and the faster-climbing Bokoblins over a full level ahead of you and closing in on the roof. Scaling the building like this wouldn't be possible if it were properly monstered, at least not without taking considerable casualties from the weapons, spells, various unpleasant substances, and occasional body that the defenders would be throwing down at the invaders, but you only spotted a dozen Moblins at best fleeing back into the scrap stronghold before they slammed the gate, and they don't appear to have made it to the roof. It's entirely possible they didn't even try to, and have left the defense to the gargoyle-heads lining the upper level, which do indeed come alive with magical energy and start spitting spheres of destruction at your minions.

"Whaaaa-ahahahaha! It's fire! It's just fire!"

"You'll have to do bettAAAAHHHH!"

"That wasn't fire!" another Bokoblin screams, as his unfortunate neighbor loses his grip on the wall and starts to plummet towards the courtyard. "That wasn't fire!"

"Dodge, dodge, dodge!"

"Down, down- stop crowding me from below, you jerks!"

"Stop kicking me in the head, you creep!"

You lose a couple more troops to the intermittent force-balls, but there are only three defensive statues to each side of the tower, and as Haron noted before, their rate of fire has its limits. Nor are the projectiles impossible to dodge, in and of themselves - even the ones actually made of force behave far less like Magic Missiles than they do, say, Snowballs - though your troops' sudden scramble for safety does have the (defensive) advantage of slowing their ascent. If there WERE proper defenders, this would be the ideal time for them to hit the invading force.

Instead, it's a simple enough matter for you to "hop" into range while your minions are holding back at the edge of the statues' engagement range, and get the things to start shooting at you, giving your troops time to scramble up past the enchanted weapons.

"Still think you could have cleared it in a single bound?" you ask Altria.

"Silence, you," she replies, while obligingly swatting one of the incoming force-bolts out of the air with her sword.

Deelers skitter over the ledge first and are followed by Bokoblins scant seconds later-

"Found it!"

"Alright, who wants to go down first?"

"I volunteer you!"

"I refuse!"

-and once everybody who's coming up has done so, you finish your own climb and close the distance to the building. Altria waits patiently for you to set her down, and then stomps over to the top of the ladder where the Stalfos and the Deeler matriarch have gathered, alongside several of the Bokoblin gang leaders.

"What, no security at all?" the Tinyknuckle's voice comes back to you a moment later. "Not even a simple hatch?" Altria shakes her head in disapproval.

On the one hand, you can see where she's coming from. Between climbing spells, levitation, flight spells, and all manner of supernatural creatures capable of getting themselves and/or others aloft, ways of securing a stronghold against threats from above are something that a magical knight would need to take into account. That said...

"How often did castles on Earth get raided from above, traditionally?" you ask, honestly curious, as you come up behind her. "I mean, by something that WASN'T a dragon, or otherwise capable of just powering through most defenses."

"It was not common, to my knowledge," Altria replies, as she steps onto the ladder and starts going down. "But it DID happen, and with as magical as your Hyrule clearly is, I would expect it to be more frequent."

It's hardly YOUR Hyrule, even if a part of you really likes the sound of that...

With the numbers involved, clearing the fortress doesn't take very long. What advantage the confines of fighting indoors would normally grant is undermined by the small size of most of your troops and their ability to move along the walls and ceiling almost as easily as they do the floor, to say nothing of how scared the Moblins already were. You pick up half a dozen overt surrenders, and a couple more that are too petrified by fear to do anything but cower there and tremble. Getting the more stable ones to unlock the door is straightforward enough, and shortly thereafter, you declare the fortress officially conquered.

"Hurray!"

"For the Master!"

"Hoist the flag!"

"We don't have a flag."

"Well, whose fault is that?"

What will you do with your prisoners?

The downside of taking prisoners is that somebody has to keep an eye on them. If the keep had come with a few cells, you might have been able to get away with locking the Moblins in and leaving them, but even then, a few guards would have been a good idea, just to make sure the captives didn't have some way to stage a breakout, be it as simple as keys hidden in the wall or full-on secret doors and passages.

Since there isn't a dedicated holding area of any kind in the fort, you have to leave more of your troops to watch your captives and make sure they don't cause trouble.

You assign Grum to be in charge of that.

The Moblin looks like he's about to complain about this assignment, but then one of his ears perks up, and he turns in the direction of the caldera, just as its ongoing roar grows a little louder for a moment.

"...actually, Grum okay with this."

Smart boy.

Several of your Moblin prisoners were already cowering in their quarters in the keep, so you just have your forces escort the remainder into the other rooms and set a watch on the door. You let the Deeler matriarch decide which of her brood to leave behind, while the Bokoblins argue among themselves to work out which of them gets the same honor.

"I don't want to walk into the mouth of an active volcano!"

"It's for the Master!"

"Then you do it!"

And yes, the clever little goblins were at least as quick as Grum in working out that whoever stays behind at the scrap stronghold doesn't have to worry about the heat, lava, and likely boss monster within the caldera.

While they're working all that out, a certain squeaky comment has you climbing back up to the top of the keep. Looking around, you find a good spot, and begin a ritual casting of the Spell of Shadow Conjuration.

"What is he doing?" Altria quietly asks Briar a couple of minutes into the ritual, evidently having noticed your absence below and followed you up-ladder to see what was going on.

"Raising a flag," Briar replies, as if it were only natural.

"Ah," you hear the youngest daughter of the House of Drake say, with both realization and approval.

A couple of minutes later, a large flag hangs from atop the fort, fluttering in the volcanic breeze to display the familiar Triforce emblem, but with three symbols arranged below the golden triangles.

"What do you think?" you ask your audience.

"I think it needs work," Briar says bluntly.

"I... would have to say the same," Altria admits, trying to soften the blow.

Everybody's a critic.

"Hey, look!" a voice calls from the courtyard. "We have a flag!"

"Hurray!"

"Wait, is that the Triforce?"

"And what's with those funny marks?"

"Oooh, so many colors..."

Between battlefield casualties and the number of guards you're having to leave behind, your fighting force has been reduced from not quite fifty creatures to about twenty-five. Numerically, that's not great, but when you consider that most of your "losses" are actually just minding your captives, and that you still have the Deeler matriarch, the Stalfos, and Haron among your escort - as well as Altria - it's a lot less disappointing.

And if you're being completely honest, even with those Spells of Heroism, Mage Armor, and Resistance to Fire still going strong, you don't think your Bokoblins and Deelers are going to be huge contributors to the battle that surely lies ahead.

As your remaining force forms up and departs the base, you take a few minutes to ritually renew your Spell of Haste, which had finally lapsed while you were conjuring that flag. As you're gathering mana, it occurs to you that your reduced number of minions has a silver lining, in that you could affect a lot more of the group with a single spell than before...

Normally, you'd be able to make a Spell of Haste affect as many as sixteen or seventeen targets with a single casting. That would be enough to cover all of your remaining Bokoblins OR all of your remaining Deelers, with a few spots left over. As it is, however, you find that you would prefer to enhance your strongest combatants.

You announce your plan just before the march begins, and let the troops - under Altria's watchful eye - sort out which of them are going to get the "leftover" spots of the buff.

"Me! Me!"

"No, me!"

"It's mine!"

"Will this speed boost allow me to run so fast that I catch fire, set fire to whatever is around me, or both?"

"No to both," Briar says firmly. And then, voicing a thought that occurred to you at Boggamogg's inquiry, she adds, "Although the Master does think that sounds like a neat spell."

The Master does indeed.

Speaking of things catching fire, while Death Mountain's caldera isn't so large that you could drop Hyrule Castle into it or something similarly absurd, the ongoing volcanic activity does currently make it dangerous enough that you'll have to watch where you're going, even with that Spell of Fire Resistance. It only grants RESISTANCE, after all, not immunity. That means taking more time to navigate, which in turn means a longer-lasting Haste spell would be a good idea.

Two applications of Extend Spell Metamagic will still be more than enough, though, and with that in mind, you split your attention between performing the ritual and making your way along the path that leads into the molten mouth of the mountain.

What greets you is a lake of orange, red, and yellow, from which great plumes of dark smoke and ash rise to the sky above on jets of superheated air. The surface of the lava bubbles and shifts, and every now and then is split by the eruption of a plume of molten rock.

And of course, there are more monsters down here. The Fire Keese flocking overhead, reveling in the heat, the violence of the storm above, and the darkness it casts over the region, aren't going to be much of an issue for your warded troops. The... things of uncertain provenance swimming around in the lava could be more concerning, but most of them are small enough, slow enough, and/or far enough away from the unmelted areas where you and your troops will be moving that they shouldn't be a threat.

You might have to watch out for globs of lava being spat or flung at you, but you don't see anything that looks remotely draconic frolicking in the lava flows, much less like Volvagia about to rise from the mountain's heart in response to your trespass.

You see exactly one Moblin-

"Hey, I think that's the one that ran away!"

"He must have gone out the back while we were climbing the tower!"

-who is cowering before a pair of better-outfitted Dairas on an island near the center of the lake of fire. There's an altar just behind them-

"AWWWWOOOO-!"

"Oh, what a way to go..."

"I'm terrified, yet jealous."

"You're creeping me out here, gob."

-and as you watch, the two gator-men seize the unfortunate Moblin and fling him right over the apparently consecrated site, and into the lava below.

A nasty, suspicious corner of your mind wonders: punishment, or sacrifice?

Another part asks what kind of dumb question THAT is, because it's clearly both.

Regardless, you know where you need to go to officially slay the boss.

As for actually getting to the lava island altar, you can see two viable approaches. The shortest route in terms of distance would take you more or less straight ahead from where you are now, along a series of bridges that act as extensions to the path you've been following. They're kind of rickety-looking, and you aren't sure you'd trust them to support an army, even in stages. The other route runs along the rim of the caldera for a bit, before reaching a fairly large outcropping of intact stone that leads to the edge of the altar's island. The main issue there is that your troops would have to Spider Climb in a couple of places, and if somebody gets attacked while their hands are occupied, they'll likely end up in the red-hot drink.

The Bokoblins and Deelers acquitted themselves well against Haron, but that was when they had room to use their numbers to fullest effect, and no concern for falling into a hazard even remotely akin to a lake of lava. Going up against a boss in this sort of terrain, when the creature in question is not only apt to be stronger than the Pumpkin-Headed One, but also larger and with no compunctions about sweeping its opposition into the molten rock?

Yeah, it's pretty likely that if you bring the main body of your troops to that fight, you'd just be throwing their lives away to no real gain. And that just doesn't appeal.

"The Master is merciful!"

"The Master is wise!"

After all, you can make much better use of them!

"The Master is cruel!"

"The Master is cunning!"

"What do you want we should do, boss?"

You're going to be taking your strongest fighters to challenge the lord of this place, and when you do, there's a decent chance that the lesser monsters will either be summoned to assist their nominal leader, or else wander that way on their own volition to look for openings to strike or scraps they can snap up without trouble.

"And you want us gobs and bugs to get in their way," Cruggor concludes.

Pretty much, yes.

"But... how?"

"Yeah, fire-proofed or not, we can't reach any of them!"

"The curse of short arms and legs!"

"Spread out a bit and make some noise to get their attention," you reply. "Like you said, you're small, so you won't look threatening."

"Oh, we'll look like food!"

"That'll get their attention, easy! ...wait."

"I hate this plan."

"There's also plenty of small rocks around," you note. "Pick up a few and start throwing when the enemy gets close - or Red-Eye could stick those torches he's been carrying all this time into the lava, until they catch, and then throw them."

Boggamogg looks like he just found enlightenment. Three of his buddies immediately pounce to hold him back.

"Let me gooo!" the pyromaniac screams. "I'm so close!"

Cruggor turns to you with an air of resignation. "Did you HAVE to mention that, boss?"

"How would throwing torches at monsters swimming in lava do anything?" one goblin wonders. "They don't burn!"

"And just getting splashed with a bit of warm water doesn't do anything to you," you reply. "But do you like it when somebody spits on you?"

"...oooohhhh."

"And the wood might hit them hard enough to hurt, or get in their eyes or something," you add.

The Deelers have fewer questions; they'll just jump on any enemy that gets close, and start biting.

The route that crosses the caldera directly looks like somebody took a perfectly decent Hylian style stone bridge, broke it up into a dozen sections, and laid the pieces out between various stone islets that rise from the lava. The broken ends of each section of "road" are connected by different means: some have rickety platforms and crude stairs of scrap steel hammered into place between them; others are linked by simple suspension bridges that are held up by chains; and in a few cases, where the end of one bridge overhangs the end of its counterpart, there are ladders instead.

All in all, it's not a sight to inspire confidence, and that's without considering how there are three areas where the stone platforms aren't connected at all, and a crossing individual will have to jump. Not very far, perhaps, but when there's lava bubbling menacingly away below...

It's just as well that you're not bringing your whole force with you, because you're sure you'd lose at least one Bokoblin - and more likely two or three - to accidents along the way. Possibly more, if any of those segments of bridge turn out to be just as shoddy as they look.

As you and your chosen fighters make your way towards the altar and its guards, you spare a moment to check over your buffs. Your Ki Reinforcement ran out a couple of minutes ago, and your Ki Aura is down to the point where it'll wink out almost as soon as combat begins, so you go ahead and refresh both techniques. Your Ki Armor and Ki Enhancement have enough energy left to see you through this final fight, so you leave them be, and while your Brain Enhancement is running low, you kind of don't see the point in renewing it.

Something you've noticed over the course of this Trial is that Brain Enhancement's effects don't stack with those of Ki Enhancement - which makes sense, given the former technique is just a variation of the latter, its only difference in function being how the technique is skewed towards augmenting mental functions from the outset, rather than starting in a physically and mentally balanced state. Moreover, despite the proportionately greater boost Brain Enhancement's specialized focus offers to its favored abilities, the technique is simply too underdeveloped to register against your highly practiced Ki Enhancement.

So you leave it alone.

As everything else looks good, or at least acceptable for one more fight, you consider tactics. You've got a much better idea of how Daira fight, now-

Gained Axe Training E+

-and since there are no groups of spear-wielding Moblins around to complicate a charge-

Gained Spear Training C

-you're confident that you and Altria can rush down those two "guardian Dairas" without too much fuss.

Gained Sword Specialization (Hylian Sword) D+

The Haste Spell you cast earlier will help your three allies keep pace, and with a little luck, overcoming the gator-men will be a non-issue.

That just leaves whatever lurks in the lava, but alas, you can't exactly make plans for that until the monster shows itself.

And so, you focus on getting across these safety hazards that dare to call themselves bridges...

"But what about the rest of us, boss?" Cruggor asks. "What about OUR suffering?"

You look from the goblin gang-boss to his underling, who is still struggling against the weight and grip of his peers to reach the lava, screeching, "I will have FIRE!"

"I mean, if he finally gets a burning stick to wave around, maybe he'll calm down and shut up about it?"

Cruggor gives you a long-suffering look.

"...or not."

Hopefully, it doesn't look TOO much like you're running away from that conversation when you take your stronger fighters and head for the boss...

The questionable quality of the bridges and the fact that a bath in hot lava that awaits anyone who slips has you considering the use of the Ki Step technique, to improve your stability. On the face of it, your Boots of Air Walking should eliminate such a risk, but it does take a second to activate their magic - preferably a second while the Boots are directly underneath you, which they generally wouldn't be if you took a spill - so if you were standing on a relatively low platform or hit your head while falling, the results might be... unpleasant.

So, yeah, a little increased traction would be a good idea, especially with a fight approaching. You don't yet know whether or not the local boss can hit people hard enough to knock them off of its little island, but it IS an unpleasantly likely possibility, and one you can fortunately take steps against.

Ki steps, even. Heh.

And since the Brain Enhancement ki technique isn't useful to you right now, you opt for its psychic counterpart, Mental Enhancement, to try and make up the difference.

You convey your plan for dealing with the two guardian Dairas to your allies as you all cross the lake of fire, and the simple strategy meets with no objections.

As quickly as your Haste Spell allows you to make the approach, however, you still have a fair bit of distance to cross - some of it vertical - and the Dairas don't spend the time that trip takes you just standing around or patrolling with the sort of single-minded focus that you know many Hyrulean monsters are capable of. Instead, they face each other from opposite sides of the altar and raise their axes high above it, jaws moving as if roaring - or maybe speaking, not that you've heard a Daira make anything other than angry gator-person noises so far today.

You don't hear anything this time, either; the distance and the ongoing roar of the volcano are just too much, even for your keen hearing.

And then the rumbling intensifies, as Death Mountain's ongoing eruption kicks up a notch. Orbs of lava begin to burst from the bubbling surface, flying into the air on trails of smoke and flame: some reach their apex and then plunge straight back down into the molten cauldron; others form long arcs through the air before splashing down; and a few just explode for no apparent reason, scattering shards of superheated stone and globs of molten rock all over the place.

All of this makes your crossing a lot more dangerous, but it doesn't stop you or any of your allies; at best, it just slows you down a bit, counteracting some of the benefits of your Haste Spell.

That may have been the entire point, though, as you see something rising from the lava on the far side of the altar-island.

It's not a dragon.

It's not some kind of molten giant, either.

It's... actually kind of tiny?

"Uh-oh," Haron says.

You look at the Pumpkin-Headed One. "'Uh-oh'?" you repeat.

"I know that guy," your forcibly recruited boss minion says, nodding nervously in the direction of... what appears to be a tiny, scraggly, burnt-out husk of a... thing. "He's, uh, going to be furious with me."

This statement is proven true a moment later, as you see a pair of eyes - quite clear against the black char that either covers or IS the monster's body - look in your general direction, before locking in on the Pumpkin-Headed One.

Suddenly, there is fire. Motes and tongues and gouts of flame, gathering from the hot air, rising from the molten stone, and coming together in a cloud that engulfs the helpless-looking little thing-

*Boom!*

-which ignites with a blast that scatters the trailing embers and leaves a momentary impression in the thick, liquid surface of the caldera. The bonfire-like mass that now hovers over the island is large enough that it could engulf most of your party, and it has a face - an angry, snarling face.

GUARDIAN OF DEATH MOUNTAIN: GOUEN

"HAAAARRRROOOONNNN!" the greater Spirit of Fire thunders at his lesser counterpart. "YOU TRAITOR!"

...it seems a safe bet that you will NOT be talking your way out of this one.

The altar-island is just large enough for your entire party and your (currently) three enemies to have some room to move around and fight on, although Gouen's nature means he will not be confined to that space. You'll have more room once you've dealt with the two Dairas, but you COULD get a little more space by Air Walking in this fight. Then again, maybe it might be better to hold that capability in reserve, to try and surprise your foe if he moves out over the lava, where you wouldn't normally be able to reach?

Keeping the surprise potential of your aerial mobility under wraps, while also being able to leverage your speed to the fullest, seems like the better approach by far, and so you stay low as you literally set foot upon the altar-island.

As planned, you go for one Daira - specifically, the one on your right - while Altria goes for the other. Between your Ki Enhancement and Haste Spell, you're moving quickly enough that a Body Flicker doesn't feel necessary. There is also the consideration that the Dairas are near the back of this island, and even with your various protections against heat, slippage, and such that you're consciously aware of, there's still an instinctual part of you that just doesn't like the idea of running full-tilt at a lake of lava.

That aside, the two guardian Dairas' reaction to your high-speed charge is very similar to the ones their less fancily-dressed counterparts had-

*Scree-KOW!*

-which is to say, they try to fling Axe Beams at you and Altria, misjudge your speed and just plain miss as a result, and then find you already in close range before they can get a second ranged attack off.

To its credit, the Daira does manage to adjust to your speed sooner than the other gator-men you've fought today, bringing the glowing head of its weapon around in a strike that suggests martial skill may have been a consideration in how it got its shiny armor and special station-

*Scree-tink!*

-but once again, your Vambrace of Force Shielding no-sells the attack.

And much like that one Daira who threw a fit at seeing you stop its Axe Beam cold, this one can't keep itself from going bug-eyed or dropping its jaw with a snarl of something that's half-shock and half-fury.

And then you stab it in the throat, and the sound takes on a choked wheezing quality. That's not enough to kill the thing-

-and you're forced to adjust your shield to intercept an attack that comes from above, as the hovering Gouen spits out not a solid cone of flame, but a cone-shaped rain of fireballs. Some fly in high, slow arcs before touching down with negligible force, while others shoot almost straight ahead with greater force, and more follow short-lived trajectories to the stony ground. Some of the flames stay where they land, but others bounce almost like they're made of rubber, for reasons you just chalk up to "magical area denial" and leave at that.

You end up balancing four or five of these things on the pane of your force-field, while several others slide off in one direction or another. As you're doing that, you take another stab or three at the Daira, a task in which you're joined by Haron-

-who, if your eyes don't deceive you, is trying to hunker down behind you and your shield. It's kind of a ridiculous image, given the Pumpkin-Headed One's body is twice your height.

"THAT WILL NOT SAVE YOU, HARON!" Gouen booms, in a voice like an eruption unto itself.

Gained Ignan E

And then the Flame Spirit's entire bonfire-sized body descends your way, at speed. It's not so quick that you can't get out of the way, and even Haron's somewhat ungainly form is fast enough to dodge, thanks to your Haste Spell, but the Daira isn't quite finished...

The shield generated by your enchanted Vambrace is derived from a Wall of Force, making it pretty tough, even if's a distant second to the actual spell in a lot of ways. After all, on a purely physical level, you can't make a man-sized shield as tough as an entire WALL made of the same materials, and while magic could potentially make up the difference, the enchantments you placed on your Vambrace of Force Shielding are not NEARLY so powerful.

Even taking that into account, you're quite certain that your shield could stand up to the impact of a mass of flame as large as Gouen's body - but what ELSE is the creature made of, how might its physical or mystical composition interact with the energies of your shield, and how much does the monster weigh?

Because the thing IS coming down at you from above, and if you try to block it, you'll have to hold off that weight, as well as the momentum it's built up, however briefly.

All in all, it seems to you that avoiding the flaming aerial tackle would be a more productive use of your time and effort - and really, not taking a hit when you can help it just fits your fighting style.

Given the size of the altar-island, the number of bodies occupying it, and the proximity of all that lava, you're not keen on using any Overloaded movement-based techniques, even with Ki Step active. A regular Body Flicker would be fine, but there's another ki technique that you very much want to test while Gouen is within easy reach, and one that has a charge-up time besides, so instead of blurring back out of the spirit's attack range, you take one, two, three rapid steps while reorienting your shield before you and holding your sword down and low to your side.

This also has the advantage of allowing you to keep providing a degree of cover for Haron, rather than just abandoning the Pumpkin-Headed One to face his furious "friend" alone.

*Whump-hiss*

Gouen hits the ash-covered stone of the isle with a disconcertingly soft sound, which is quickly overtaken by the sound of his flames burning whatever flammable material is left on this rock, and scorching the stone for good measure. Some of the noise might be coming from the wounded Daira, which staggers to one side to put some distance between itself and its putative master.

"Gouen," Haron nervously greets the larger, angrier Fire Spirit. "Nice to see you."

"I'LL GIVE YOU 'NICE', YOU MISERABLE-!"

*Scree-KOW!*

At this range, and with Gouen's size, it's just about impossible for you to miss, and you don't. In fact, your Sword Beam hits the elemental right in the middle of his fiery face, where the nose would be on a person - or MOST people, you idly correct yourself, as you recall that one kid from the World Tournament who honestly seemed to be lacking a nose.

Even as your attack flies to its target, however, you can see the Beam diminishing much faster than it ever has before, as if there's something actively eroding its energized form even before it makes contact with Gouen's burning body. Certainly, the huge ball of flame is giving off a lot of heat, and your Spell of Fire Resistance wouldn't protect a projectile in flight, but mere extremes of temperature shouldn't distort something like a Sword Beam - or at least not that quickly!

You are reminded, then, that powerful spirits often possess some degree of resistance to foreign energies. Call it spell resistance, magic resistance, or in this case, ki resistance, it's just hard to affect them with powers not their own and a lack of consent.

As you've already thought a few times today, "resistance" does not equal "immunity," and the impact of your diminished Sword Beam does manage to cut Gouen off mid-tirade, turning the entity's attention to you - and bringing Haron's and even the Daira's gazes around.

"WAS THAT SUPPOSED TO HURT?" Gouen crackles.

There's one bit of good news in this development: with Gouen focused on Haron - and by extension, you - Altria, the Stalfos, and the Deeler matriarch have had time to finish off the other Daira, and are now spreading out to try and encircle the fire elemental and its sole remaining minion.

"I had to try it to be sure."

Gouen's snort, accompanied by small gouts of flame from where his nose should be, suggests that he isn't impressed by your words or by your reasoning.

"Also," you note, with a smile, as fresh energy begins to swirl around your weapon once more, "you're easily distracted."

"NOT THAT EASILY," Gouen begins, swelling up slightly in anticipation of your attack. The heat-shimmer in the air around the elemental grows more pronounced, and is shot through with swirls of flame and spiritual energy besides, as the Guardian strengthens his defenses.

The intensified aura building around Gouen might well be able to, ahem, burn out your standard Sword Beam before it could connect with the spirit beneath, and would likely shear away much of the impact from even an Overloaded shot. Just as well, then, that you weren't planning to attack from range this time.

Stepping forward-

"WHAT THE-?"

-you accelerate into a charge, bringing your powered-up blade around in a wide, sweeping strike – not quite a Spin Attack, but definitely taking some cues from the technique - that cleaves through a generous portion of Gouen's flaming form.

Judging by the shift of energies, the sound of sudden, swift footwork, and a sharp, "Ha!" that come from behind the elemental, Altria took your attack as a cue to launch one of her own.

Here's hoping!

Your Blessed Sword passes through the fire without a hint of physical resistance. If that scorched and withered thing you saw rising from the lava and then engulfed by the mass of flames before you is still in there, rather than having been consumed by or transmuted into fire, then it's either an incorporeal existence or composed of something about as substantial as a pile of ash.

You must admit, the latter would be appropriate…

But where Hyrulean steel has no direct impact, the Overcharged field of ki running around and through the blade is another story. Something resists the aura wreathing your weapon, causing it to stretch out from and trail along behind the blade like the tail of a comet, even as a gash is torn through Gouen's burning body. The elemental doesn't cry out in pain, he certainly doesn't bleed, and the ragged tear is rather small against the volume of that great ball of flame, and yet the cut - which would fill in almost as swiftly as it was made if this were a mundane fire – remains in existence for an unnaturally long moment before it knits itself shut.

At the same time, however, you note that your Overloaded Sword Beam has been reduced to a feeble fraction of its initial power. It should have taken several melee strikes to diminish the charge so far, which supports your theory that Gouen has some form of active resistance to magic and other exotic forces.

Silver linings, though; your sword doesn't appear to have picked up much heat despite having been pulled sidelong through the heart of the volcanic blaze, which is a good sign that the portion of your Spell of Fire Resistance covering it came through intact.

Gouen's eyes seem to look down at the cut along his overblown face, his overall expression more startled than anything else. You get the impression the Fire Spirit is not used to having beings of flesh and blood run up to him when he's in full volcanic fury and start cutting, much less being able to affect him even as much – or as little – as you did just now.

From the way Haron and the Daira both stare at the fleeting wound, and then at you, they're rather surprised as well.

Then Haron idly reaches out and punches the Daira in the head, knocking the beast off-balance and over the side of the island.

It roars something as it falls, which sounds a bit like the word, "Cheater-!" in a Draconic dialect, before being cut off by a goopy splash.

Gouen, meanwhile, frowns, sort of bounces into the air, and proceeds to rain down another of those scatter-shot barrages of fire.

As you shield and evade, you reflect that you have confirmed ki attacks, while potentially effective against your current foe, are not really ideal for the task at hand. If you had a full tank to spare instead of being down to less than a third of your maximum, it might be a different story, but as it is, you think you could keep hitting Gouen until you exhausted your ki reserve and not really accomplish anything. As for Altria's strike…

"Any luck?" you call.

"My sword had no effect," she reports with some annoyance.

"Did you try a Sword Beam?" you query.

"I am still having trouble with the melee application!" comes the hasty reply.

You think back.

"Are you still blowing up-?"

"Shush!" Altria demands, as she bats one of Gouen's fireballs away with her sword.

You'll take that as a yes.

On the other hand, you suppose it's just as well that Altria didn't try to use her mostly magical version of the Hylian technique here. Her mana is imbued with the essence of a red dragon, after all, Gouen is an elemental spirit of fire associated with Death Mountain, and it's said that the incarnation of the volcano is none other than the dragon Volvagia. The chances of your opponent being able to resist or even feed on Altria's unleashed power are not zero, and you would rather not see Gouen get stronger.

Still, with your Sword Beam tested both at range and up-close and found somewhat wanting, what's your next move?

You have an idea – two ideas, in fact, but ones that you can make work together.

With that in mind, you start running energy into your sword again, this time channeling only the power of your soul-

-and almost as soon as you call upon the Overloaded Spiritual Imbuement, Gouen and Haron's gazes once again lock on to you, the uncontrolled glow of intensified spiritual energy spilling through the bounds of your Mind Blank no doubt being about as obvious to them as the headlights on a car would be to you.

Maybe not the high-beams, you've had SOME practice at keeping this technique in check, but you definitely got their attention.

You half-expect the greater Fire Spirit to demand to know what you're planning, but Gouen doesn't speak – at least, not with words. His actions, on the other hand, say plenty, as when the long arc of his "bounce" finally takes a downward turn, small jets of fire burst from Gouen's sides, steering him away from your position.

It seems pretty clear that he doesn't want to risk you getting close enough to stab him with your spiritually charged-up sword, which is both a good sign for the potential utility of spiritual attacks in this fight, and also not actually a problem for you, because you were going for something else anyway.

As Altria and the Stalfos both charge in to try and stab the enemy somewhere that it hurts, you and Haron keep your distances. You know why YOU aren't getting close, but you spare the Pumpkin-Headed One a questioning look.

Haron shrugs his scarecrow-like shoulders. "He's immune to my fire-breath, and his rank as a spirit eclipses mine. There's not much I can do to him unless he's weakened first."

Inconvenient, but fair.

Gouen doesn't leave his attackers much time to strike him, leaping high into the air once more. He seems to take a deep breath, body once again swelling beyond its usual proportions, and you ready yourself for the spray of flames-

-which instead comes out as a single ball of flaming red rock, a molten mass that tumbles towards your allies like a slow-moving meteor. Sparing only a brief, protesting thought for where exactly Gouen's immaterial form was supposed to be KEEPING that solid-looking substance, you rush in, sword raised-

*Cra-spang!*

-and the lava-ball goes flying back the way it came-

-only for Gouen to make a face and BLOW, really hard, spitting enough fire, hot air, and spiritual power to send the projectile right back at you-

*Cra-spang!*

-and be returned yet again.

Gouen manages another powerful exhalation, although there is a certain amount of gasping involved, and this time he doesn't send the blazing ball right back at you, instead bouncing it off to one side-

*Cra-spang!*

"WHAT THE-?!"

-where the Stalfos intercepts it and sends it back at the Fire Spirit.

Whether too surprised by the undead swordsman's use of the secret technique or too spent to muster another attempt at defense, Gouen takes the hit. His body explodes into a dozen or more smaller flames, all of which look like scaled-down versions of his bonfire-sized self, and scatter in multiple directions like a more vertically oriented version of the elemental's original flaming breath attack. Four of the mini-Gouens come down on the island, but the rest fall into the lava and sit there on the surface, whether just "off-shore" or further out, suddenly burning brighter.

"Get the flames!" Haron shouts, rushing forward-

-and then out into the lava, which starts slowly consuming his body as he swats at the nearest of the small fires.

"HARON!" the scattered shards of Gouen roar, albeit as a chorus of much smaller voices. "YOU WRETCHED-!"

*Poof* go at least three of the things, as you, Haron, and the Stalfos strike with your weapons – or, in the Pumpkin-Headed One's case, with spiritually empowered claws.

There is some uncomplimentary language from Altria's direction as she swings her blade through one of the remaining sprites a few times, and then – since she IS protected by a Spell to Resist Fire – just drops the ineffectual weapon, sinks her abruptly mana-wreathed hands into the fire, and tears it apart.

The surviving mini-Gouens blink in unison at the display. "…DRAGOKNUCKLE?"

While you have seen with your own eyes that Haron can survive without his body – at least from the neck down – you are concerned about what might happen if he loses his gourd and is reduced to that little fiery wisp of a spirit. Yes, he's a Fire Spirit, and so being in the middle of a region dominated by the Element of Fire ought to be downright cozy for him, but he's also NOT a spirit native to this region, and more than that, he's currently on the bad side of a more powerful spirit that IS a resident of the area.

That has the potential to work out rather badly for your ally, and so you feel the need to step in – or step out and over the lava, as the case may be.

Several of the mini-Gouens do double-takes in your direction, and then start crackling in a most impolite manner.

The use of such language, particularly in front of a pair of innocent children like Altria and yourself, seems like it deserves chastisement, and as you race towards Haron's position, you sheathe your sword and take the opportunity to charge up and fire off a Spirit Blast-

"OW!"

-which proves to be enough of the right kind of force to actually hurt one of Gouen's lesser incarnations, though it's also not enough to snuff the smaller spirit-flame in one shot.

Unfortunate, but not unexpected.

You don't have time to get a second Spirit Blast ready before you've reached Haron's position.

"Pass me your head!" you call, hands raised to catch the pumpkin.

Haron gives you a startled look, starts to say something, and then looks around at the remaining number of mini-Gouens. "Curse it," he says, more to himself than anything, before reaching up with his burning arms, pulling his gourd free from its place atop his shoulders, and handing it off.

Ooof!

Fortunately, the massive pumpkin is not so heavy that you can't carry it – and even MORE fortunately, the extra weight doesn't overpower the enchantment on your Boots and cause you to start sinking towards the surface of the lava – but its volume is problematic enough to force you to deactivate your Vambrace and spend a moment adjusting your hold, to ensure that you don't drop the thing.

Then you turn and hurry back to solid ground, Haron's body going inert and sinking into the lava behind you.

"This wasn't necessary, you know?" the spirit calls to you from inside his pumpkin. "I could have thrown this thing back to the island easily enough!"

"Before or after Gouen swarmed you?" you reply.

"He doesn't attack like this," Haron returns. "It's a defensive measure for when his projected form is disrupted; his real body is hidden inside one of the flames-"
Before Haron can say more, there is a roar from behind you – from half a dozen different directions, but all the same voice, at the same volume, making the same sound, which is half call of triumph and half eruption of fire. And sure enough, when you risk a glance over your shoulder, you see that the mini-Gouens have erupted into fountains of flame, spraying fire up, outward, and down in a smaller-scale version of the elemental's scattershot breath weapon.

Haron is silent for a moment, before offering a bemused, "Huh."

"Never seen him do that before?" you ask, as your foot comes down on volcanic stone once more.

"He's definitely been practicing," the Pumpkin-Headed One admits.

You get a bit closer to the middle of the island – which your other allies have finished sweeping of mini-Gouens – before setting the gourd down and giving Haron a chance to reconstitute his humanoid form.

While he's doing that, Gouen's smaller selves stop spraying fire everywhere and hover towards one another, swirling together to re-form the original bonfire-sized body.

You could try throwing Ice Magic at Gouen. As a Fire Spirit, hitting him with his elemental opposite would be one of the more certain ways to hurt him, and if you were to charge up the spell with excess mana to overpower his demonstrated resistance… but would it be enough? You haven't actually INJURED your opponent yet, as far as you can tell, and one or two powerful spells – which is about all you have the mana left to afford – might not be sufficient to take him down, particularly here atop Death Mountain, in what is probably the most favorable environment short of the Elemental Plane of Fire for a being such as Gouen to live and fight in.

The volcano isn't suppressing your magic or anything, but you just saw Gouen's scattered fragments drawing power from the lava-lake to build up or augment their attacks. It's pretty likely they'd be able to do the same to bolster their resistance to cold-based effects, or even to recover from them faster than would normally be possible.

Then another idea comes to you.

Gouen is a Spirit, and you just hit him with a spiritual attack, which actually managed to hurt him enough to cry out – however slightly – where previous attempts by you and your allies were either wasted on decoys or, at best, got you trash-talked in return.

So why not fight one Spirit with another? Haron is also a Spirit, and while he is by his own admission not powerful enough to contest with Gouen's preferred combat form, the Pumpkin-Headed One WAS able to affect his opposite number once the enemy's energy had been scattered into the mini-Gouens.

Could a more powerful Spirit not fight the Guardian of Death Mountain directly? Are you not on close personal terms with just such a Spirit-

From within your soul, there comes a grunt of recognition.

-and have you not summoned that Spirit to your aid in combat before?

Now, there is a cry of eagerness.

Your mana is low, but not so low that you couldn't muster a powerful Summoning Spell-

"Bweeee!"

-but you have another idea.

The Raging Boar makes a noise of confusion, as if asking why you got its hopes up.

Even accounting for the limitations of your youth, you are a master-ranked practitioner of the Art of Summoning, and have a strong grasp of the principles required to evoke entities such as your animal totem into the physical world.

The Boar rumbles, following you so far.

You have ALSO spent the last year and more trying to adapt your knowledge of arcane magic to work from a more divine perspective, that you might utilize your considerable reserves of spiritual energy to supplement your casting of at least some of your extensive catalogue of spells. There are, of course, some individual spells and even whole subcategories of magic that won't transfer well between styles, if they can be "translated" at all – there are just some things that arcanists are better at than priests, and vice-versa – but Summoning Magic is one field where both sorcerers and clerics stand on equal ground.

The Boar makes a sound of understanding and renewed anticipation.

And like you said, you are a MASTER of Summoning.

As the eager grunting in your soulscape intensifies-

"Oh, boy," a certain fairy partner sighs.

-you delve DEEP into your reserve of spirit energy, such that Haron and Gouen both pause in the midst of their forms re-constituting to stare at you with some alarm, as does the Stalfos. Even Altria and the Deeler do double-takes – or at least you're assuming that's what the spider's motion is – as your aura intensifies to the point where it briefly escapes your Spell of Mind Blank.

"BRING FORTH THE BEAST OF BACON!" you declare thunderously. "AND UNLEASH THE HAM!"

And then with a flare of power, the Boar arrives-

"BWEEEE-bweeee?!"

-in a form that stands about three feet tall at the shoulder. Which is not SMALL for a pig, by any means, but is hardly the towering titan of porcine fury you've called up and faced down in the past. Heck, Hinana was bigger than this!

The Raging Boar looks around in confusion at how BIG everything around it appears to be, then down at itself – as best it can, given how pig's necks work – and then up at you, its expression demanding to know what the heck just happened.

From out over the lava, there comes a fiery snort, and then a volcanic chuckle.

"BWAHAHAHAHA!"

And then Gouen starts to laugh.

"A-ALL THAT, F-FOR A P-PIG!"

You frown at the Spirit, and then trade speaking glances with your totem.

The prospect of riding into battle on Boar-back tempts you, but your experience in that area is limited, and also comes mainly from horses, which are different beasts on several levels. Throw in the presence of all this lava, as well as what happened the LAST time you tried to climb on the Raging Boar's back, and you figure it's best not to make the attempt.

At least, not today. Maybe when you have more – and more diverse – experience as a rider, and have worked things out with the Boar in advance… but that's for the future.

For now, you re-draw your sword, and say flatly, "Let's get him."

The Boar nods and grunts agreement.

Then the two of you turn and charge at Gouen.

Behind you, some of your allies yell in alarm and confusion as the solid-looking Boar rushes towards its seeming volcanic doom, only to be even further startled when your manifest (and small) totem's hooves step off of the hot but solid stone of the island and out over the lava, appearing to run on air just as you are via the mechanism of your Boots of Air Walking.

That isn't QUITE what's happening, or rather, it's not the method that's involved. Even when it's incarnated like this, the Boar is still a spiritual being, and hence operating on spiritual laws as much as it is physical ones, if not more so – and while not all spirits can fly, per se, neither are they as limited in where they can go as their mortal counterparts are.

And so the two of you race over the surface of the lava lake – well over it; even the Boar doesn't want to touch the molten rock, partly for the damage it would do to the temporary vessel you've provided, but also because this IS the domain of another spirit, as well as a major site of spiritual power besides, meaning that the lava is a bit more than "just" lava.

Gouen isn't so lost in his laughter that he fails to see you coming, but this time, he doesn't try to rise into the air to get out of your striking range. Maybe it's the presence of a fellow spirit that would be able to chase him that convinces the Guardian not to bother with such a move, or maybe after seeing and feeling your attacks to this point, he's confident that you, personally, can't really hurt him in his main combat form.

Though you suppose it's also possible that he just spent too long guffawing at the Boar's cut-down appearance to have time to take off, but you're not going to mention that aloud.

Your spiritual techniques have had the most effect thus far, and your aerial charge lasts long enough for you to charge up one of them. Since your regular-strength Spirit Blast didn't do more than make Gouen yelp, and that in one of his smaller forms, an Overloaded technique is probably called for.

You never did get a chance to try stabbing Gouen with your spiritually-overcharged sword. You'll try that now.

Since you've already got your offense handled, you use the opportunity to shore up your spiritual defense, shrouding yourself with Spiritual Armor in case Gouen gets off another attack. While your Spell to Resist Fire would ward off most purely thermal effects short of actually getting dunked in the lava – or having a significant amount of it dumped on you – the spiritual charge behind the Guardian's attacks is another matter.

Best to be prepared.

The Raging Boar, as per its nature, charges straight at the enemy it can see, smell, and otherwise sense directly in front of it. Not wanting to get trampled – or to get stuck full of bristles again – you give your totem plenty of space, using your superior speed to circle around to the right, forcing Gouen to split his attention somewhat and, hopefully, improving the Boar's odds of catching the Fire Spirit on its tusks.

"HA!" Gouen declares, and this time it's not a laugh, but rather a sharp exhalation that accompanies a gout of flame, aimed straight at the Boar.

Your spirit animal makes no attempt to dodge the attack; indeed, it doesn't even slow down, but rather seems to pick up speed, charging into the incendiary cloud with a roar of defiant anger, and then bursting out the other side. The Boar is visibly singed all over, and some of its bristles actually appear to be on fire, but it's lost no speed.

Gouen has barely a second to recover from his failed attack and brace for impact, producing two great hands of flame from his bonfire form-

*Crash!*

-which succeed in catching the tusks of the Raging Boar and keeping them at a relatively safe distance from wherever Gouen's core currently lies, even as they completely fail to halt the Boar's momentum. The result is Gouen being driven back, and back, and BACK by the force of your totem's charge, while the Boar just keeps pouring on the pig-power.

You're able to keep up, and make a point of keeping your shield-arm between you and the pair in case Gouen gets any ideas about spitting flames at you, but getting into position to take a swing at the Fire Spirit without risking hitting or being hit by your ally takes a little more work.

Due to the nature of your target, playing things safe and limiting yourself to light attacks is, to borrow a phrase, not likely to cut it. You could whittle a flesh-and-blood opponent down that way, but you've seen that Gouen's bonfire form is not only malleable, but ultimately just a projection – damage done to it isn't really hurting its maker.

It MIGHT be making Gouen use up energy to restore his battle-body, but he's a Fire Spirit quite literally in the middle of the caldera of the volcano that is his domain. He is NOT going to run out of gas, especially not from trivial scratches.

No, if you want to have a real effect here, you can't limit yourself to shaving away bits of Gouen's fake body – you need to hit him hard enough that he feels it. Ideally, this would involve going for the Guardian's core, but you aren't sure exactly where, in all that fire, the burnt-looking entity can be found. That makes the prospect of striking it unlikely, even with a wide, sweeping attack that cleaves through as much of the flaming façade as possible – and such a move would not only leave you open to reprisals, it would require you to move into the Boar's path, however slightly, putting you at some risk of getting caught up in its ongoing charge.

As you previously mused, you would rather not get trampled by your totem. Once was more than enough.

With that in mind, you focus on the nearer of Gouen's blazing limbs. A good solid hit from your spiritually enhanced sword is likely to disrupt the projected mass of flame, causing it to stop behaving like part of a spiritual body and start behaving like ordinary fire. Gouen could restore the limb, of course, but it would take a moment – and he's barely holding the Raging Boar's tusks at bay with two hands as it is. The sudden loss of one arm could be all it takes for your totem to close the distance and start digging into your opponent's false body to find the real one.

Plus, the arm is a lot smaller and rather closer to you than Gouen's main body. It'll be much easier for you to cut through, and you won't need to venture into the Boar's projected path.

For a moment, you consider trying to channel energy through that spot in your crowded soul where the essence of the Heart of Water has long since settled, to see if you can add something of its power to this attack – but you hesitate. You've never tried to ACTIVELY tap into one of your Elemental Hearts before, and you aren't sure that it's even possible, let alone safe for you or the Goddess-given relic.

It strikes you as the sort of thing you should REALLY talk to the priests about before attempting it – and so you make a mental note to do that, once the Trial is over.

That shouldn't take too much longer, anyway…

Focusing on the spiritual energy already running through your weapon, you grip the Blessed Blade with both hands, raise it high, and bring it down with a cry-

Gained Disarm F++

-and your weapon slashes through Gouen's limb, severing it just above the swirling suggestion of an elbow. There is a definite sense of resistance, if not so much as when you've struck at creatures of monstrous flesh in the past – and certainly nothing like when you've hit bony undead, metallic armor, or stone constructs – but considerably more than the hot gasses around the elemental.

Gouen has enough time to register the amputation and roar in surprise and perhaps pain-

-but then the Boar is ploughing through the fleeting cloud of embers that used to be an arm, exposed tusk shining with an aura of eager, violent energy.

Even as your spirit beast drives into the mass of Gouen's main form, the elemental retains the presence of mind to summon up another limb-

-which ends in a massive, flaming FOOT that tries to kick you right in the face!

You lean back sharply, torched tootsies flashing past your face and a hot heel clipping the very tip of your nose – and encountering something more than just the resistance of cartilage – as it follows after them. Your Spell to Resist Energy absorbs the fire-related damage, but as you expected, there's another sort of force bound up in the attack besides thermal energy.

If not for that Spiritual Armor technique you activated a moment ago, you might have just gotten a broken nose. As it is, you release the two-handed grip on your Blessed Sword so that you've got a hand free to check your nose for burns, blood, or bruising.

Defensive wards or no, that stung!

The Raging Boar appears to suffer no such nasal trauma as it drives, bellowing, into the center of Gouen's body. The Fire Spirit has time enough to form an expression of astonished outrage and roar in protest, before your totem smashes right through the shell and out the other side. Flames scatter in all directions, and for a moment you wonder if Gouen is about to re-form all those scattered smaller selves-

"Put me DOWN, you walking roast!" a smaller but still fiery and furious voice demands.

-but then you see that the Boar has caught Gouen's true form between its tusks.

The lift provided by your Boots becomes ever so slightly unsteady as you hurry to not only catch up and keep up with the Boar, but to get enough of a lead to be able to attack the enemy trapped on its tusks.

In the time it takes you to cross the distance, Gouen has grown another, much smaller pair of arms and started pounding on the Boar's head. This doesn't accomplish much – you would not have named a technique involving a headbutt after the Raging Boar if its skull were fragile! – but it does keep the enemy spirit occupied, which allows you to get close without interference.

*Swish-CHOP!*

"Ow!"

This time, it's rather like hitting a rock with your weapon, although not something with the sheer solidity of a stone golem or major Earth Elemental. The magical nature of your sword affords it some protection from potential blunting or chipping regardless, but a "softer" enemy is always appreciated – easier to kill and less maintenance in the aftermath – and this one has the additional benefit that nothing happening here will actually carry over to the real world, sparing your weapon some wear.

So you take another swing, once again angling your sword so that when the blow connects-

*Swish-THWOCK!*

"Stop that!"

-it doesn't threaten to dislodge your target from between the Boar's tusks.

You ready a third strike-

*Swi-whoosh!*

"HA! You missed- oh, Ganon damn it."

*CRASH!*

-only to deliberately pull it when you notice that the Boar is running out of lava to race over, and giving no sign of stopping. So it is that, when your totem rams Gouen into the wall of the caldera a moment later, you're well back from the crash site.

The Boar staggers backwards from the rock face, grunting in confusion as it stumbles across the beach-like scattering of ash and rock that lines the edges of the lava pool.

"Urrrrghhhh…" Gouen groans from where he's fallen to the ground. "Did somebody get the name of that Goron…?"

You can hear and sense your other allies hurrying along the rock outcropping that connects the central island to the edge of the caldera, in the hope of getting to your location in time to help out. Right now, though, it's just you and a dazed Gouen.

Now that you're dealing with Gouen's true body, rather than a projected fake, landing as many strikes as possible as quickly as possible would be a more valid approach, if not for the stony sturdiness of the spirit's burnt-black form. Even with the damage the Raging Boar no doubt inflicted by ramming Gouen into the rim of the volcano, continuing to chip away at that rocky shell doesn't appeal; you need to strike HARD, even if it means only getting in one or two shots before the Fire Spirit recovers from his daze.

As you raise your sword above Gouen's prone, groaning form, you idly wonder if elementals can suffer concussions, or some comparable state. They don't have organic brains, so the mechanism would have to be entirely different…

Right on the heels of that thought comes another, of attempting to emulate the wild, overwhelming energies of another spiritual entity you've faced – namely, Shinigami Captain Zaraki Kenpachi – but you immediately discard that notion on several grounds.

For one thing, you might have a powerful soul by human standards, but it IS still a human soul. As long as you don't turn into a demon again, anyway… regardless, there is a limit to how much spiritual energy you can dish out, and it doesn't come close to the ridiculous power you witnessed the Captain of the Eleventh Division throwing around.

There's a REASON why your Shadow had to layer a couple dozen buffs on himself and his weapon to face that guy on anything like an even footing, and that was when Zaraki was still sealed.

For another, you don't want to risk overstressing your sword, or more correctly, the spirit within it. Yes, there wouldn't be any lasting damage due to this being a Trial and all, but the MEMORY of the event would persist, which would be counterproductive. You don't want to traumatize the sword-spirit or give it a reason to distrust you, much less before it's fully woken up.

For a third, you've spent years trying to control your spiritual energy – and other power sources – as finely as possible, in order to avoid attracting unwanted attention of a spectral or unholy nature. In addition to that, your training over the last year has involved learning how to weave that energy into the divine form of spellcasting, which rewards precision and efficiency much as the arcane style does. Those efforts and the habits they've built up aren't easily discarded, much less thrown into reverse, and you'd need time to focus to make the attempt.

You don't have that time right now.

You already have an Overloaded Spiritual Imbuement on your blade, and the last gasp of an Overloaded Spiritual Enhancement on yourself. Those will just have to do.

Channeling your ki, you Strike-

*CRUNCH*

"GAAAAH!"

-at Flickering speeds, landing a mighty blow that sends cracks spiderwebbing across and through Gouen's rocky core.

The spirit's eyes bulge, gaining clarity even as he roars in pain, and turn to you. "You-!"

Gouen chokes as you raise your weapon again. Your ki hasn't quite finished cycling, and you don't want to wait and risk your target rolling clear or exploding in a defensive counter – so you don't wait.

*Crunch*

"Guh!"

The second blow isn't as fast and forceful as the first, but it connects, worsening some of the visible cracks.

You ready for a third blow, your ki at the ready-

*Fwoosh!*

-and with your Vambrace out of position, you reflexively shield your face with your raised arms as Gouen blasts a cone of ash and cinders at you. The heat is nothing, easily fended off by your Spell to Resist Fire, and the Necklace of Adaptation helps prevent you from choking on the spray – though even with that, you can suddenly smell and taste unpleasant amounts of smoke – but instinct is a powerful thing all the same.

Besides, there's something gritty and nasty in your mouth, and you definitely didn't want any of it in your eyes!

That doesn't happen, thankfully, but in the moment that you're forced onto the defensive – and subsequently spitting out a bitter-tasting lump of spit-soaked char – Gouen rolls away from the wall, going for the lava-!

You don't want the injured Elemental Spirit of Fire taking a dip in a lava pool mid-battle. That's just a no-brainer. Getting in one more strike with your sword wouldn't stop Gouen from rolling the rest of the way into the molten mass, not unless you hit him hard enough to finish him off or hammer him about a foot into the ground – and being perfectly honest with yourself, you can't see how you'd muster enough force to achieve either result, at least not in the time you have available.

If you were adult-sized and then turned into a giant, with your current set of buffs, it might well be doable. As things stand, however…

For a moment, you consider diving on Gouen and wrestling him to a stop, but then you see a flicker of blue out of the corner of one eye – Altria's armor, you recognize – and a most amusing and actually fairly practical idea comes to mind.

Before Gouen has a chance to cover any more ground, you take one, two, three Hastened steps forward and slightly to your right, focus your multiple layers of ki buffs – especially the defensive boosts – upon your right foot, and then bring that leg around in a kick.

"PASS!" you call, speaking mostly to Altria and your other incoming allies, as you put Boot to rocky head.

"Wha-AAAAAAaarrrrgh!" Gouen starts to say, before screaming in surprise as he goes sailing away through the air, driven by a power not his own.

Altria's helmed head snapped up at your shout, and now she deliberately drops her sword as she measures the trajectory of the incoming, screaming "ball," runs forward, and leaps into its flight path, catching Gouen and trapping him against her chest with both arms and a *clang* of stone against metal. The entire sequence makes you think of American football for a moment – her armor definitely speaks to that impression – before it occurs to you that Altria more likely learned that sort of catch from playing rugby.

Whatever the source, it worked, so you're not going to quibble about details.

"Let me go!" the spirit roars, thrashing about. "Let me go!"

"Hold him! Hold him!" Haron yells, as he catches up.

"YOU-!"

Two fiery auras flare and clash as Altria slams the Fire Spirit to the ground and struggles to hold him in place. Neither of them is particularly large in physical terms, so it's as much or more of a spiritual contest as anything else, which is going-

"Unhand me at once!"

"Know when you're beaten!"

"Meddling whelp!"

"Stubborn hothead!"

-well, it's going.

And then everybody else starts arriving. Haron quickly takes over the business of actually holding Gouen down-

"Remove your hands, traitor!"

"Make me, loudmouth!"

"Oooohhhh, when I get loose-!"

-leveraging his size and the fact that if anybody accidentally hits his body while taking a swing at Gouen, it'll be a lot less inconvenient for your side than if one of your other allies got injured. The Stalfos takes advantage of that almost immediately, chopping away at the pint-sized Guardian of Death Mountain with its sword, while Altria scrambles to fetch her blade.

Then you get there, and then Altria comes back, and very shortly you have a good rhythm going, three swords falling in a swift but steady sequence of heavy blows.

*Chop*

*Crunch*

*Clang*

"ENOUGH!" Gouen explodes, literally as well as vocally, anger and desperation giving him enough extra oomph to spontaneously re-assume his bonfire form and send the lot of you staggering back a few paces in the process. Rising back into the air overhead, the raging elemental roars, "I WILL BURN YOU ALL TO-!"

"BWEEEEE!"

"OH, FOR-"

This time, when the Raging Boar slams into Gouen's combat form, it doesn't come running out the other side with the spirit's coal-like body trapped on its tusks. Maybe Gouen managed to dodge just enough to only take the hit on the end of one tusk, rather than getting caught in between them, or perhaps the Boar is still dazed enough from slamming headfirst into a rock wall that its aim was a little off; whatever the reason, Gouen's bonfire body explodes into another rain of those mini-Gouens, most of which come down on or within easy reach of the rocky, ash-covered shore of the lake.

Haron immediately dives back into the lava, going for those small flames that are out of reach of most of the rest of the group. Everybody else scrambles for targets on the "beach," and as for yourself-

You assist Haron.

While there aren't very many mini-Gouens sitting out of reach of the shore atop the lava, there are enough of them that you're uncertain if Haron will be able to disperse all of them before his body is destroyed again, or before they start raining fire all over the place once more.

Since you're the only other one here who can navigate the molten lake safely, it just makes sense for you to back the Pumpkin-Headed One up, and so you hurry forth, your Boots once again carrying you across the hot air rising off the surface of the bubbling lava.

Your sword leads the way-

*Whoosh!*

"OW!"

-its rapidly fading Overloaded Spiritual Imbuement still carrying enough bite for these slivers of Gouen's power to really feel its bite!

*Poof*

As you move to your second target, you spare a moment to glance at your landlocked allies. Altria and the Stalfos are busily slashing and smashing at two more of the burning faces, while the Deeler matriarch plunges the sharp-looking tips of her legs into a third and then sinks her mandibles into it.

"Stop slobbering on me!" the flaming visage protests. "That's disgusting!"

You can't REALLY disagree with him…

As for the Boar-

-it looks around for a moment, sniffs the air with distinctive snorts, and then locks in on one of the "unclaimed" plumes of fire.

That mini-Gouen seems to flinch. "No."

The Boar stomps the ground beneath its hooves, kicking up ash.

"No!" the fireball cries, turning and starting to bounce away-

"Bweeee!"

"NNNNOOOO-!"

-but all too late, as your totem, having locked on to the strongest source of your enemy's spiritual power, once again charges right into Gouen's true self. This time, the Boar's aim is true, and Gouen's rocky body emerges caught on the gleaming tusks.

You aren't the only one to notice this, not the least because all of the other mini-Gouens abruptly poof out of existence, and there is a sudden scramble as everyone hurries to be in place-

*Crash!*

-when the Boar once again slams Gouen headfirst into the rim of the caldera.

"…starting… to hate… pigs," the Fire Spirit groans.

And then you and your allies bury him under weight of numbers.

You aren't sure who scores the final hit, but somebody does, because Gouen's spiritual signature suddenly gives off a feeling like a balloon that's just been introduced to a pin-

"IF I'M GOING OUT, I'M TAKING YOU WITH ME!"

-and then an intense light starts to shine from the many cracks in his shell.

Once more, your reinforced foot connects with a sphere of stone-

-and you can't quite repress a flinch and yelp of shock as flame spills out of the cracked and increasingly brightly-glowing mass of Gouen's body, billowing over and around your lower leg. He doesn't explode from the sudden application of force, thankfully, and your Spell to Resist Fire handles the heat – though your foot feels uncomfortably hot for a moment – but your startled reaction means your kick isn't quite as strong as it might have been.

Just as well, then, that this wasn't the entirety of your defensive strategy!

With your allies already clustered around you, you don't have to waste time moving around; instead, you call out, "Down!" as you reach into your depleted well of magical power and cast one final spell.

The Emergency Force Sphere that flickers into being around you accommodates Altria, the Deeler matriarch, and even the Raging Boar and the Stalfos without issue, though if the latter two weren't dazed and crouching, respectively, there might have been some problems. Haron is rather taller and more massive than your other allies, however, and for a moment-

"What the-!?"

"Watch it!"

"Bwee!?"

"Mind your hand!"

"Get your leg out of my eye!"

You suddenly smell cooking pumpkin, and are reminded that you've missed lunch.

-things are very crowded and uncertain within the half-globe.

Then everybody falls silent, as Gouen goes off like a rather large Bomb, with all the light and noise and fury that implies. It's not just a blast of fire, although there is certainly flame involved; you can also see fragments of stone shrapnel flying about, and then there's the report of the detonation.

It isn't enough to breach your barrier, of course – that would take a rather larger explosion, such as Death Mountain erupting or Ambrose throwing a purely Force-based, high-end Fireball-equivalent at you – but it does enough damage that you're glad you threw the extra defense up, rather than relying on your existing ones.

As the sound and fury die down, you dismiss the half-sphere, allowing your companions to spread out a bit.

The only remaining sign of Gouen's presence is a large, fresh scorch mark centered on a point about fifteen feet away from you, which extends some twenty feet in either direction down the stony and no longer ash-choked beach. The rim of the caldera seems to have turned some of the blast back upon itself, and the lava looks unsurprisingly unbothered.

Haron looks around for a moment, and then throws back his pumpkin head, laughs heartily – if with an eerie echo – and starts to do a strange dance on the volcanic shore.

You trade wordless glances with Altria and the Boar.

You're a devotee of the Goddess of Fire and Dancing – and Fire-Dancing, at that – you're standing in the (simulated) mouth of the volcano that is sacred to Din, and you've just beaten a powerful monster.

Yeah, Haron has the right idea.

Gained Dancing C+

"Hahahaha!" the Pumpkin-Headed One laughs, as you join in on his somewhat peculiar gyrations, followed a moment – and a magical command later – by the Stalfos.

Now Altria and the Boar trade glances, with the Deeler matriarch joining in.

"Do you have any idea…?"

The Boar grunts, shaking its head, then gives her an inquisitive look.

"Nor I," Altria replies. "Briar?"

"He's just being Alex."

This seems to, if not reassure Altria, then at least enlighten her.

Then again, she has prior experience with Ambrose being Ambrose. Perhaps she's grown accustomed to arcanists being unfathomable, or just numb to it…

"Does this dance have any sort of meaning?" you ask of Haron a few moves into the groove.

"None at all!" the spirit replies cheerfully. "It's just that I got to beat up someone who would normally have been able to smash my pumpkin and roast the seeds, no matter what I did to try and stop him! I'm in a REALLY good mood after that!"

Well, you're happy for him, and glad that you thought to include him in your Emergency Force Sphere. But you should probably be getting on with things, you've got a large audience waiting on you.

You can feel the edges of the Trial beginning to come undone, as the magic of the Ring prepares to send all those who have entered it back to their places of origin, so there really isn't time left for you to go back to your army of Bokoblins and Deelers and thank them all for their assistance in your conquest of the (fake) Lost Woods and (simulated) Death Mountain.

You can still acknowledge them, however, and you do so, facing the far side of the caldera and raising your sword in a dramatic and very obvious salute.

From the change in the hooting and hollering that you can make out across the distance and over the ongoing eruption-

"-the Master-!"

"-hear it for goblins-!"

"-we won, we-!"

"-we're still alive-!"

-they noticed.

"AHAHAHAHA!"

Also, from the one Bokoblin running around on the far shore, waving a pair of burning torches about, Boggamogg finally got his fire.

You feel a little bad that he's about to lose it, but he likely won't remember any of this except as a vague dream, so… that's probably for the best? Maybe?

Anyway, having saluted the main body of your troops, you turn and repeat the gesture to your commanders, who bow, nod (Altria), or return the salute by raising forelegs and waving them back and forth.

You momentarily regret that Grum is back minding the prisoners, and won't know how things turned out, and then the Trial grows hazy and bright around you-!

And the next thing you know, you're back in the Ring on Bali Ha'i, being greeted by the applause of the audience, and the roar of a rather more distant volcano. Almost immediately, you note that the majority of your suite of enhancements have disappeared – which makes sense, since most of them were only cast on your self within the Trial, as opposed to the real you – and the two that remain are noticeably less run down than their in-Trial versions got.

"How long was I in there?" you ask Elder Terok.

"I'd say half, maybe three-quarters of an hour, from the outside perspective," the Goron priest replies.

Huh.

"So what did it look like from this side?" you wonder. Because the Goddesses were quite clearly doing more of that mystical editing to compress your entire multi-hour trek through the forest and up the volcano into that short a span of time.

"I'd say we saw most of your demonstration in the graveyard and race with the old Gravekeeper as they happened," Terok answers. "As for the Lost Woods and Death Mountain, we saw the fights and some of your 'negotiations'-"

Heh.

"-not sure how I feel about you recruiting an army of monsters, by the by-"

That's entirely fair.

"-but most of the walking and climbing was replaced by an image of ink running across a map?" Terok concludes, with obvious puzzlement. "A lot of your guests laughed at that the first time, so I'm guessing it's a local reference I'm missing."

Yeah, that sounds like the long-distance travel scenes from the Indiana Jones movies… which begs of the question of when, where, and WHY the Goddesses saw any of those, or the other films and TV programs you've seen use the trick. It's entirely possible they were just looking over your shoulder, so to speak, when you watched one show, but that's the boring answer – it's much more fun to speculate about these things.

Anyway, with your Trial concluded-

"No prize?" somebody asks.

"I already cleared this Ring," you reply.

"Besides, the REAL prize is getting to show off," Briar notes.

"Hush, you."

-you have a few questions to field about things that happened in the course of it. In particular, there is a certain amount of curiosity, as well as concern, about how easy it was for you to recruit all those monsters to your banner, as it were.

You aren't going to bring up your connection to Ganondorf in this company, of course, but…

From your interactions with the Shuzens, the Hayashis, and other non-human residents of the supernatural side, your historical readings, and various conversations with informed individuals, you can confirm that it's not unusual in Earth's history for monsters to seek employment of a violent nature, or for those who are anticipating trouble – or intending to cause it – to recruit monsters to their cause.

Some of that is just down to biology, as monsters as a whole tend to have a lot more advantages in and inclinations towards the use of violence than your average human, and some of it is strategic.

Like, what's going to be more effective on the field: half a dozen peasant militia, poorly trained, ill-equipped, and wondering what they're even doing on the field of battle; or an ogre with a big stick, who's perfectly happy to be where he is and could likely take on all those troops all by his lonesome? Which is going to scare the guys on the other side of the field more: a bunch of poor dumb bastards like themselves; or something that looks like it came out of their grandmothers' fairy tales, and has come to gobble them up?

Sure, the right sort of martial or mystical training or the proper tools can level the playing field, even tilt it in the other direction, but absent those things, a monster is a concentration of force that your average human being just doesn't have a good answer to, and leaders throughout history have recognized and utilized that fact to their advantage any number of times.

That said, it doesn't happen as often on Earth these days as it used to. A lot of the reason for that is the separation of the supernatural and the mundane, with the accompanying withdrawal of so many monsters into hidden realms like the Shuzen domain or that demiplane where Youkai Academy is supposed to be, but there's other factors, too: the advancement of human technology making battlefields more lethal; job competition from demons – which are often even more powerful individually than monsters; historical accounts of ancestors fighting other people's wars and getting cheated or killed off in the aftermath; lots of reasons.

You also point out that Hyrulean monsters are different from most Earthly varieties, in that the majority of them are directly spawned by evil magic rather than merely having descended from demonic, fey, or other otherworldly progenitors. Combine that lack of naturalization with a long history of warlike sorcerers tapping into the same sort of power, and it's almost natural for Hyrulean creatures to flock to a magic-user who handles them in the right way.

"…so, you beat them, and they serve you until something worse comes along," one of the masters concludes.

"In the short term, anyway," you agree. "Keeping that lot under control in the long term would have been… difficult."

Giant spiders looking for places to lair, and others to hunt.

Goblins being goblins, with everything that entails – and at least one overt pyromaniac among their number, besides.

And one boss monster, that would have wanted to set up a territory of his own sooner rather than later.

You are going to miss Grum, though.

As the questions trail off, you declare the Trials finished for the day.

You'll be asking the priests about the possibility of channeling energy through Elemental Hearts in a moment, but do you have anything else you wish to discuss with them today?

While there is a certain portion of the audience that would prefer to be on their way back to Taiwan – partly because they've missed lunch, partly because they're uneasy about having left their students and juniors unsupervised this long, and in a few cases with wary glances directed at the volcanic eruption ongoing in the background – enough of them, particularly among the masters with seniority, express an interest in looking around at Bali Ha'i for a while longer that you don't feel too guilty about agreeing to give them some time to take in the sights.

You make a few recommendations about spots worth seeing – the lagoon and the hot springs both come to mind, even if nobody's brought bathing supplies to properly avail themselves of the latter – mention that Kahine knows the island much better than you do, and then let the teachers decide where to go from there.

They're adults, after all, they can make their own choices.

As it happens, there are a few things you'd like to talk to your spiritual instructors about, so since you've got some time, you do so.

The first question on your mind, once you've gathered the trio up and grabbed seats in the largely emptied-out Ring, is the notion that occurred to you in mid-Trial, of running energy through an Elemental Heart Container to empower otherwise mundane attacks or defenses with the Heart's essence.

"Of course!" Koron exclaims. "The Hearts are already doing that on a very basic level – that's part of the reason why your body becomes more tolerant of the related energies, even when you aren't using any magic to shield yourself. Adding more energy just makes the effect stronger, at least up to a point."

"That said," Madam Lanora adds, "due to the fact that people don't normally go around shooting fire or lightning or the like from their pores, the boost provided by channeling additional power into an Elemental Heart tends to manifest as a single, short-lived burst of elemental energy, and not an overly strong one. Most people who are capable of directing mana or spiritual energy in that manner have much more efficient options, like casting spells that last for several minutes to several hours at a time."

"But if you NEED an elemental shield or an extra bit of punch all of a sudden," Elder Terok finishes, "then it's always better to have the technique available."

Good to know.

Gained Elemental Burst F

"I'm surprised you didn't just do it," Koron adds.

"I was worried that it might damage the Heart Container."

"That shouldn't happen…" The Kokiri druid trails off and looks at you with a rather particular expression, and then says aloud, "But then again, this is YOU we're talking about, so I suppose that IS a valid concern."

"Use no more energy than is necessary to activate the skill," Madam Lanora says firmly. "You could very easily harm yourself if you express too much elemental energy too quickly. And do NOT channel that Power of yours through a Heart Container."

"Aren't I already doing that whenever I use Power, though?" you ask, seeking clarification.

The Hearts ARE lodged in your soul, after all, and that tends to get fired up when you invoke the golden energy, even if you aren't going straight to Maximum Power.

"Not as such," the Zora woman replies. "A significant amount of your Power comes FROM your soul, but your soul isn't MADE of your Power, any more than your mind or body are. You generate the energy and then express it outward, not inward. It's like… if I understand your internal combustion engines correctly, it would be like generating all that force, and then instead of using it to make the vehicle move, you'd be keeping it all inside the engine."

…

That's… not so much an "engine" as it is a "bomb," though?

And now you have the image of an Alex-shaped car going "BOOM" stuck in your head.

Thanks for that, Lanora.

Two hours is time enough for the masters and teachers to wander the nearer portions of the island without having to exert themselves overmuch, whether that's in terms of pure physical effort or ki usage. It would also give you a chance to take a breather and meditate to recover some mana and ki…

Once the priests confirm the existence of the Elemental Burst technique, you naturally have questions about what it can and can't be used for, both at the introductory level that you'll be at for a while, and later on.

As they've already said, the skill is mostly limited to bursts of elemental power, catalyzed by the essence of whichever Heart you channel energy through. This does impose some limits on non-combat utility-

"You could start a fire with a Heart of Fire easily enough," Terok notes, "provided you had a supply of flammable material, but using a Heart of Earth to shape stone in any way more precise than pounding rocks with a sledgehammer is something I've never heard of being done."

-but as your Goron tutor already noted, being able to throw around explosions of elemental energy more or less at will is a perfectly useful skill for battle. Flaming punches, thundering kicks, acidic spit-

"Seriously?" Briar exclaims.

"Not a STRONG acid," Lanora clarifies.

"But still!"

-and various other energized attacks are possible, depending on your personal training, inclinations, and supply of Elemental Hearts.

"Also whether or not you spit on people, apparently," Briar notes.

Defensively, the ability is a little less helpful, as it's difficult for unpracticed users to focus the energy enough to deflect attacks with significant force behind them.

Wreathing your forearm in a layer of conjured earth to reinforce a block against an unarmed strike from a Hylian? Entirely doable.

Using the same trick to block the claws of a Wolfos? Not so doable.

And blocking multiple attacks with just one use of the ability is quite unlikely in either event. Whatever's conjured via the Heart just doesn't last that long.

With practice, it becomes possible to extend the effect to weapons and armor the Heart's owner is using, and then to project it in the form of projectiles or barriers somewhat akin to a Shield Spell (if only good for warding off a single hit). There are stories of longer-ranged or larger-scale effects, but the clerical trio have never seen such applications themselves, nor spoken to any eyewitnesses.

It's more one of those "in myth and legend" things, apparently, a status not helped along by the relative rarity of Elemental Hearts.

It also occurs to you to ask whether or not those of your collected Hearts with more than one affinity are capable of releasing multiple kinds of energy. The answer turns out to be yes, with the caveat that a Heart's primary elemental affinity is much easier to express than any secondaries.

You're advised that you aren't going to be doing the latter any time soon.

While you want to practice with the basics of Elemental Burst here shortly, you do have another question about the use of spiritual power. During your latest Trials, you briefly considered trying to make one of your offensively-oriented spiritual techniques more potent by forcing the energy to run wild, as a certain Shinigami seems to do; you let the idea go then for a number of reasons, but since you've got access to the experts now, you might as well inquire of them if it's an idea worth pursuing.

"Nope," Koron says simply.

"No," Lanora adds.

Terok just harrumphs.

…a little more detail, maybe?

As the priests explain, allowing your energy to run wild is an entirely sub-optimal approach to spiritual combat. All that accomplishes for most people is wasting power by allowing it to spread out in every direction – including all the places where your opponent ISN'T – reducing both their stamina and the effectiveness of individual techniques. It also tends to draw the attention of any spiritual sensitives within detection range, doubly so for spiritual predators, and greatly increases both the size and duration of the spectral "footprint" of your fight, making it more likely someone or something will stumble over the residue in the aftermath, and be able to make use of it.

You have some rather pressing reasons NOT to want that to happen, many of them involving soul-piercing arrows, and others involving soul-cutting swords.

It's only in the case of powerful spiritual entities like the Shinigami that such uncontrolled spillover becomes anything like an asset, as their auras force out other manifestations, overwhelm the senses, and crush the wills of their opponents. At very high levels, it's supposedly possible for one to crumble inanimate objects and force other entities to pass out from sheer strain, but even then, it's vastly more effective – not to mention far less aggravating to one's allies – if the user can focus their power well enough to hit only their intended targets, or at least minimize the collateral damage.

Another way of putting it is that trying to fight like Zaraki Kenpachi is an absolutely TERRIBLE idea for anyone who isn't Zaraki Kenpachi, and it's really not that great even for him.

Considering how much the man clearly enjoys fighting and his disappointment when your Shadow had to concede their match after just a few minutes, that's probably the whole point.

With no other outstanding questions, you move on to testing the Elemental Burst. You were considering doing some environmentally-related exercises, to see how that influenced the outcome, but the priests advise you to save that until you've got the hang of using the fundamental form of the skill.

"Training to use a Water Burst while in the water can make you overly reliant on the presence of water to perform the technique," Lanora explains. "The same goes for the other elemental variations and their respective natural environments. It's better for beginners to practice in more neutral surroundings; that makes it easier to adapt a given version of the Burst to more extreme environments later."

Fair enough. You might as well just stay in the Ring, then. Maybe duck into the shadows when you're practicing the Fire Burst, to minimize how much the sun influences things – Kahine's volcano isn't putting out so much smoke as to block the light…

Since you're going to be working with spiritual energy, you decide to start by channeling some of that power into the Heart of Spirit, and then boosting a punch. It just seems like not having to worry about converting spiritual energy into elemental energy would make things easier.

With the priests giving some advice-

"Quiet your mind, still your other energies, and then picture your objective and clench-!"

-you adopt a stance in the center of the deactivated Ring, visualize the Heart Container in question, and imagine a tiny mote of your essence passing into it as you throw a punch-

-whoops, channeled some ki into that. Must be all the residual energy from the dozens of master- and near-master-class martial artists that spent the last couple of hours cheering in the stands.

You try again, keeping a firmer grip on your non-spiritual energies-!

…

Hm. You won't say that nothing happened, because you did feel a bit of something, there. A mild shift in your soul, and faint swelling of spiritual pressure, like a single raindrop against the torrential downpours or crashing waves you've felt from the Shinigami and the Quincy. No visible or audible expression, though.

Perhaps you need to use a little more energy than that?

You ready yourself for a second time, increasing the output ever so slightly-

-and for a second, your fist, along with most of your forearm, seems to waver at the edges as a sheen of spiritual energy crawls along it. You doubt that would be strong enough to deter a spectral housefly or mosquito, even if you swatted them in the process, you need to focus the power more-

-and again-

-one more time, and THERE were go, that looks more like… well, no, it's nothing like a proper gauntlet, not even a real glove, more like a bunch of spiritual energy packed into the vague suggestion of the shape of a glove, and one that was plenty torn up along the edges for all of the split-second it held together.

Still, progress!

Gained Elemental Burst F+

You fire off a few more punches, alternating hands to make sure you can do this with either, and throw in a couple of kicks for good measure – learning quickly that socks and shoes are not helpful, particularly not at this stage.

Just as well you weren't going to try throwing fire with your feet, then-

Briar clears her throat.

-not that you were planning to immediately jump to shooting fire, when you have a gentler element like Water to test out first. Also Shadow, although whether that can be considered "gentle" as opposed to "less physically damaging than some" is another question…

As you start testing the Heart of Water, and throwing short-lived clouds and droplets of water about, it occurs to you to wonder what might happen if you channeled spiritual energy through some of your non-Elemental Hearts in this manner.

You can't test the Heart of Courage that way just now – as weary as Shadow Alex is, you ARE going to need his help for taxi duty later on – but what about your ordinary Heart Container? Isn't that technically an Elemental Heart of Life?

Might as well.

As you're testing the Water-based version of the Elemental Burst, it occurs to you that the move might have some synergy with your ki-powered Water Fist. Not that you're about to try mixing the techniques when you've only just started working on the one, and aren't that much farther along with the other(s), but it's a thought worth sharing with your teachers.

"On the surface, yes, it might seem that way," Lanora replies. "In actuality, it's probably not viable."

Why not?

"The water-" She pauses, eyeing the small cloud of mist falling away from your arm. "-or vapor that you're throwing around right now isn't a true physical substance, only a spiritual impression of it. I'm not an expert on the mechanisms of ki, admittedly, but I do know that substances produced by the Elemental Burst technique are too short-lived, unstable, and 'unreal' to be compatible with magic, whether arcane or divine in origin. Trying to combine them just disrupts the Burst."

And if divine magic, which is wrought from spiritual energy, has that effect, then trying to blend ki with the elementally-attuned spiritual power might have the same effect.

"It'd probably be best to think of these Elemental Fists and the Elemental Burst as two different approaches to the same basic idea," the Zoran priestess says. "Like spear-fishing or rod-fishing. Both let you catch fish, but you can't do both at the same time."

Practicing the Water Burst yields no surprises, unless it's how damp you AREN'T by the time you feel you have it down. As Lanora said, the "water" doesn't behave like water for very long, dissipating back into the ether as quickly as it came forth.

Shaking your head, you move on to the Heart of Shadow-

-with your first attempt giving you the expected faint chill, as that essence of that element which is most directly linked to the undead momentarily intensifies around, upon, and even within your person. It's nowhere near strong enough to be painful, let alone damaging, but it's unpleasant enough that you need to throw three attempted enhanced punches before you finally work out how to resist the sensation enough to actually punch with Shadow.

And when you do pull it off, there is very little to see. Your arm looks a bit duller where the Shadow-energy covers it, as if a cloud had momentarily passed overhead and obscured the sunlight – you actually look up to see if that's the case, but no, the wisps of smoke and ash rising from Kahine's volcano are at best streaking across the face of the sun, not nearly thickly enough to block it.

This Shadow Burst is probably not going to be much help against threats of a purely physical nature, not unless they originate from an undead entity or a spirit of Light.

Perhaps because of the uneasy feeling yielded by the Heart of Shadow, you test out the standard Heart Container next.

Koron frowns at your first punch. "What was-?"

Your second strike gets a faint glow of reddish, vital energy.

"…huh," the druid says.

"Huh," the two fairy companions in attendance echo.

"Huh?" the other priests echo.

Huh.

Hu-

You're no more surprised than I am.

Spoil my fun, why don't you…

Apparently, it hadn't occurred to them that you could use the Elemental Burst with a "Heart of Life" - not that doing so has DONE much, admittedly. No discharge of Life energy, no warm surge of supernatural healing upon your person, just a brief aura of light, as if the blood in your arm had momentarily turned radiant.

Once again, you don't think you'd care to try blocking a sword with that. Then again…

True, you could call up Shadow Alex and hand a fishing rod off to him while you tried your luck with a spear, but for all that your Shadow is a projection of a part of yourself, he's also his own discrete entity, which kind of misses the point of the exercise.

As for the option of growing an extra set of arms, you'd still have only the one head to try and coordinate two different courses of action. You aren't sure how practical that would be, and you can't call any two-headed, four-armed entities to mind just now anyway, let alone ones that you'd be able to transform into with your current magical repertoire.

Plenty of things with four arms, if not more – thank you, Assistant – and a good number with two or more heads – such as Gleeoks – but none that combine those two particular traits.

You suppose even Hyrule's vast selection of monstrosities has to come up short every now and then.

Besides, you actually DO understand what Madam Lanora was getting at with that fishy metaphor, so the whole point is moot.

"Oh! Oh!" Briar says, shooting up. "I volu-!"

"Me!" Koron offers eagerly. "Pick me!"

"No, me!"

"Pick him!" Vert says, pointing at his partner.

"No fair! He's my partner, I should get to do it!"

The green fairy pauses and looks at his own partner in a considering manner.

"You wouldn't," Koron gasps.

"Most of the time, no, but if I could get the kid to spot me a giant-size spell…"

…

You look at Lanora and Terok.

"You literally asked for it," the Zora points out reasonably.

"And you probably don't want ME hitting you for this experiment," the old Goron adds, clenching one fist with a grind of rocky knuckles to emphasize his words.

He's not wrong.

While you are tempted to give Koron a chance, you have to agree that Briar, by dint of being your partner, has dibs.

"Yeah, fair," the Kokiri sighs. Then he waves in your general direction. "Go on, then."

"Don't mind if I do," Briar replies-

*Poof*

-before assuming her human form and taking a stance. You do the same-

-and are interrupted by your partner noting that she should hit you once with no Heart Container interference.

You give her a flat look.

"It's for Science!" Briar claims.

Your expression doesn't improve.

Koron and Vert laugh.

Still, she has a point about having an unmodified result to compare to, so while you remain in a guard stance, you don't channel any energy as Briar takes her first, normal-strength shot to your arm.

Ow.

Once that's done, the two of you ready for a second strike, leaning on your connection as familiar and partner so that you've successfully triggered the "Heart Burst" or "Life Burst" just as Briar's punch lands.

Once again, ow – although shortly after registering the blow, you note that the pain, such as it was, is diminishing faster than for the first hit. Also, that minor ache faded rather quicker than usual as well, although investigation by the healing experts at hand shows that it's more along the lines of you getting a dose of a mild mystical painkiller than the "injuries" being healed any faster.

After poking at the results a few times, and firing off a couple more Life Bursts for analysis, everybody except Terok backs up a few steps as you prepare to test out the Heart of Fire.

*Whoosh*

There are no real surprises with THIS element. Punches that project short-lived gouts of flame directly ahead of themselves, blocks that radiate arm-shaped arcs of fire, and – after removing your shoe and sock – one barefooted stomp that leaves a singed and smoking print in the sand.

Still, it's good to know that Spiritual Fire works with you just as well as Magical Fire, and just as comforting to know that you won't accidentally burn yourself when using this form of Elemental Burst – though as the bit with your footwear shows, you've got some work to do before your gear will be safe.

Gained Elemental Burst F++
Gained Science D++

It doesn't take very long for you to run through all of your available Heart Containers, Elemental and not, and once you've done that, you decide to spend the next little while meditating to recover some of your energy. It won't make a big difference, but there are worse places than Bali Ha'i to take a two-hour break, even with that volcanic eruption in progress in the background.

Actually, letting your exotic senses register the energies being moved around over there, without starting to analyze them, makes for a good exercise…

Gained Meditation B

When your internal clock informs you that two hours have gone by, more or less, you check your reserves. As expected, your mana pool is still in the pits, although you DID manage to scrounge up enough energy that you could cast a couple of non-ritual Gates, should the need arise. Considering you would have only been able to manage the one beforehand, you'll take the boost.

Looking around at the Ring, you see that a few other members of the School of Five Elements decided that you had a good idea, and claimed various seats about the miniature arena to get in touch with their inner selves. There's not quite twenty of you in all, and the seating area of the Ring of Trials is large enough for there to be plenty of space between any two of you – though even with that, a few of your fellow meditators opted not to use the seats, instead grabbing a spot down on the sands, atop the rim of the fighting pit, or even up on top of the three not-exactly-towers that encircle the structure.

You've used the latter yourself, so you can hardly comment.

Also, you think that one old master may legitimately just be taking a late afternoon nap, but given his age and the tropical conditions, that seems fine.

Whether they sense your awakening and the quick series of exercises you do to loosen up after sitting down for an extended period of time, or if they all managed to synchronize their personal timekeeping to within a couple of minutes of each other, folks start exiting their trance state without you having to do anything.

Other guests are returning to the Ring from wherever they'd wandered off to, and when you run up to the top of the stands and look around, you can see more on their way back.

Did you want to go look for somebody for a quick chat before leaving Bali Ha'i?

You look around to see if Kahine is anywhere nearby, but there's no sign of the volcano's avatar near the Ring. Reaching out a bit with your enhanced senses-

-ah, she's over by the lagoon, and headed in your general direction at an easy walk.

Since all you really want to say to the volcano-spirit is another thank-you for the use of her island, you don't really see the need to rush off and express your gratitude. Instead, you start counting heads and checking auras to get an idea of how many of your guests have returned and where your co-ritualist has gotten to.

Shadow Alex turns out to have been taking a nap. Due to being a construct of Shadow and an extension of yourself rather than a truly independent entity, he can't recover spent energy by resting the way you or any other properly living being can, but rest does help him get accustomed to operating on low reserves.

"I did try using that Ki Filtration technique for a bit, but it didn't work out like I was hoping."

"It doesn't convert ki to mana, tho-oh," you begin, before you realize where he was going with that idea.

While your Shadow does technically possess reserves of mana, ki, and other energies like you do, for him it's all actually just Shadow-energy playing at being something else, as Shadow so often does. By that logic, then, it should be possible for him to convert Shadow-ki into Shadow-mana, or even switch the other "energies" around.

That said, your Ki Filtration technique is rudimentary at best, so it wouldn't be terribly useful for such an endeavor. It's also entirely possible that it just isn't doable: your Dark Self is an inherently temporary creation rather than a permanent one – let alone one made out of actual physical materials, as opposed to being elemental energy masquerading as matter; so it could be that trying to shift some of his substance from mimicking one thing to emulating another could disrupt the spell maintaining his existence.

Still, it might be worth looking into at some point. Not today, though.

As it stands, Shadow Alex thinks he might be able to open one Gate off his own energy, but isn't terribly confident in his ability to keep it open or stay in existence beyond that. A ritual would make it entirely manageable, though, and as long as he got a chance to take a breather afterwards, he could handle one more.

"But I'm definitely done for the day after that," he adds firmly.

Yeah, no worries on that account.

Although that said, even going into conservation mode, your mana reserves are going to be low for the next couple of days, and you DO have one more magic class scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.

While you won't have regained your full strength by the time of tomorrow's lecture, doubling that pool with your Shadow's assistance and then making use of rituals to do your set-up should be plenty to handle your lecture. On that note, you broach the subject of getting your Dark Self's help.

"Yeah, yeah," Shadow Alex replies sleepily. "That's… wait, why am I the 'junior' assistant?"

"I mean, I already have the Octorok…"

"Yeah, but I've been 'assisting' you with things for months, now!"

"But I've already given two of these lectures, and you weren't involved either time. Assistant was."

"Man, I don't want to be a junior to an Octorok…"

"He's been a perfectly well-behaved monstrous cephalopod, I'm sure he won't go mad with power or anything like that…"

Your Dark Self grumbles a bit more, complaining for the sake of complaining more than because he means to refuse to assist you.

Kahine returns a few minutes after that, and accepts your thanks for hosting the Trials again. You also check with her to see if there are any stragglers who have yet to make their way back to the Ring; it turns out that there are another thirty or so people scattered across the nearer parts of Bali Ha'i, most of them already moving to rejoin the main party.

Since you aren't sure who's absent, sending out a Mass Message Spell informing the latecomers to get it in gear is out; instead, once you've confirmed that their relative positions are close enough, you tap into the remaining ambient energies of the area around the Ring and ritually set off a Sound Burst to try and get their attention.

After a moment, Kahine confirms that it worked.

"The only other thing on the island that SHOULD explode is the volcano, after all," she notes with a grin.

And the report of a Sound Burst really doesn't sound like an eruption of molten rock. It's more like a car backfire than the ongoing rumble and periodic roar…

Leaving Lu-sensei to wrangle the crowd and the stragglers-

"Thank you for that."

-you and your Shadow head back down to the part of the beach where you arrived earlier, and start your rituals to open the Gates to your demiplane. Some of your guests start coming along after a few minutes, and from there, you gradually convey everybody off the island.

"Is that everybody?" you ask Kahine one last time, as the final few martial artists pass through the twin portals.

"That's the last of them," the volcano spirit confirms. "Well, almost," she adds, glancing at Batreaux and the priests – mostly Terok.

Your Dark Master chuckles. "And we can handle our own travel arrangements, unless of course, some of us wish to remain for a time…?"

"Don't push it, Old Bat," Terok mutters.

Another fifteen minutes' work sees everybody back to Taiwan, specifically in that section of the hills you placed under a Private Sanctum.

"And with that," your Shadow announces, after closing his Gate, "I am DONE."

*Poof*

"See you tomorrow!" Shadow Briar adds.

*Poof*

Dinner that night sees you NOT telling a story. Rather, the masters take it in turns to recount each others' Trials for the entertainment and education of their students.

More than one of your fellow students was hopeful of seeing a magical animation to go along with the teachers' narration of the day's events on Bali Ha'i, but you beg off, explaining that you need to recover after spending so much magical energy, particularly when you have another lecture to give tomorrow.

On that note, you forego any spellcasting for the evening, instead taking the opportunity to sort out your situation with the library. Amy is just about finished reading Roots of the Volcano, so you'll be able to turn that book back in tomorrow, and you already returned Foot of the Volcano; that just leaves the matter of the Ki and You pamphlets, specifically, the copies you've made of all but the second, fifth, and possibly seventh booklets.

Did you want to try and find those?

You also check with the main office, to see if there's been any word from Jia, She of the recently-awakened Watery Sorcery and accidental offender of cats. Turns out that yes, there was a call from her this afternoon, confirming that she was free to attend tomorrow's lecture and that she had permission from the School – already arranged through Lu-sensei and Master Vincent – to be there. So that's a minor concern addressed.

It occurs to you to ask permission to see and examine some of the School's collection of ki-empowered weapons, but you decide to place that request through Lu-sensei and leave it for after tomorrow's lecture, or maybe the day following.

Your teacher cautions you that you probably won't be allowed to examine more than a few of the School's minor keepsakes, but that is fine. Being able to run an analysis of even one ki weapon would give you more of an idea of how they can be made than you have right now.

With nothing else on your plate, you spend the late hours of the night reading some of the information you copied into your Leatherbound Books, before going to bed and getting another night's Restful sleep.

By the time lunch rolls around the following day, your mana pool is somewhere past half its maximum capacity. Everything else is at full, except for a bit of ki you burned during morning training.

Gained Ki Recovery D++

By this point, you've noticed certain patterns in how conditioning your various energy pools seems to work. You'd been cautious about drawing conclusions before, as there was the possibility that the different forms of power you have access to might obey different rules, but this latest bit of exertion would seem to indicate that the broad details, at least, are consistent. Could be a case of magical sympathy in action, or something to do with how human biology works – whatever the reason, you believe you've finally got a firm idea of the thresholds you need to hit to properly train your recovery rate. Such information would be very helpful in working out a long-term training plan to maximize your gains in those areas, as doing that sort of thing spontaneously really hasn't been working out that well for you.

On a related note, finally getting the hang of divine magic will also be a helpful skill for that sort of training, since it'll effectively give you a second source of magical energy that you can access without hampering the recovery of the other overmuch. Granted, not all of your spells can be cast using spiritual power, but a fair few are viable, enough so that your personal security and the safety of your family and friends won't take such a big hit if your magic ends up low for a couple days on a recurring basis.

After a light lunch on Thursday, you excuse yourself and head to the lecture hall to make your preparations.

First, you summon Your junior assistant.

*Poof*

"See, you even summoned me first this time! I'm totally not the junior assistant, here!"

"Get over it, man…"

When you complete the ritual to summon Assistant a few minutes later, the Octorok spends a minute looking back and forth between you and your Shadow, and then carefully poking each of you with one tentacle a couple of times, as if to make sure he isn't seeing things and then the other, and then you get on with boosting yourself for the presentation and setting up the display and faux items you used before. Having a whole second pool of mana to tap into allows you to get things done rather quicker, albeit with the caveat that your Shadow's magic will cease to function when he disappears.

You're most of the way through setting up when the intercom goes off.

"Octo?!"

"I got it," human-sized Briar says, walking over to the panel and studying it for a moment. "I… think it's… this one. Hello?"

"Hello?"

"Hello!"

Jia's arrived.

You take a swing by the library that evening to see if you can find the missing pamphlets, but all you find is a couple of copies of Part Four.

Given the introductory nature of the information Ki and You tries to convey, you can only assume that the junior students check them out a lot – although if they're THAT popular, or just that frequently required reading, you have to wonder why the School hasn't gone ahead and had a few bound collections printed. Given how much easier it is to damage or lose a few stapled-together sheets of paper as opposed to a book with proper bindings and a cover, it seems like they'd go through fewer copies that way…

Anyway, Miss Mei is back on duty at the check-out counter, so you ask her if there's a copy of Part Two and/or Part Five of the series available, or if she could reserve one or both of them for you or something.

"You're in luck," she replies. "A copy of Part Five was returned a little while ago, I just hadn't gotten around to putting it back on the shelf."

You go ahead and sign that out.

Gained Ki and You, Part Five: Control

"As to the other part, library policy is to count reserved titles against your number of books checked out, so unless you've got that Volcano book on you to hand in…"

Not yet, but you'll have it back to her some time tomorrow.

You briefly consider sending Assistant to lead Jia to the classroom, but as they've never met – and because you aren't sure how the rest of the School would react to seeing an Octorok wander around – you discard that idea and opt to send your Shadow-

-who is in the middle of a ritual at the moment.

"I'll take care of it," Briar says.

"You sure?"

"It's fine." She tells whoever's on the other end of the line to let Jia know to expect a guide shortly, and then leaves the room.

You get on with your preparations.

Some minutes later, with your work largely done and several eager-looking students having shown up ahead of schedule-

"Giant octopus?!"

"Rok!"

"Maybe we need to get a sign or something?" Shadow Alex wonders.

"Yeah, may- there are TWO of you?!"

-Briar returns with Jia, who seems oddly wary.

"Problems?" you ask your partner.

"Not really," Briar replies, shrugging. "She just finds it a little weird to be in a school during what should be her break."

Huh. You hadn't been bothered by it, likely because you've been thinking of the School of Five Elements as more like Lu-sensei's dojo writ large than as an equivalent to Sunnydale Elementary – the permitted and even mandated displays of physical violence make a big difference in the feel of the place, to say nothing of the absence of that distinctive Hellmouth taint on everything – but you suppose somebody with a more normal educational history could take it differently.

In any case, Jia greets a couple of the girls and one of the guys that have turned up, and spends the remainder of the lunch break before your lecture begins chatting with them.

Once the room has filled up and the bell rung, you begin.

Eh, it's just a few pieces of paper. If the School wants to be a little wasteful and pay a little extra money every year, that's their affair. All you want to do is get a complete copy of Ki and You for your personal use and possible subsequent distribution, and you're just about done with that – Miss Mei did confirm that there are only six Parts to the series.

Once again, that lines up almost exactly with the contents of the Illusion of Separation, and leads you to think that there's some shared background between the two works.

Moving on, there is your last lecture of the week. The content doesn't meaningfully differ from your previous classes, but the fact that you're dealing with a bunch of kids this time around definitely changes things. There's a lot fewer knowing nods and expressions of abrupt recognition when you make a point, and a lot more oohing and aahing-

"Awesome!"

"Make it do that again!"

"It's. Looking. At. Me."

"To-rok?" Assistant asks innocently, wiggling his tentacles at the guy in question.

-not to mention a few other kinds of outburst.

Also, one of your conjured items ends up getting broken.

"I wanted to see how tough it was!" the offender protests, while about half the class looks on, some of them in annoyance at not having gotten to see the example wand for themselves, others in general disapproval.

"It was a wooden stick," someone says flatly. "Pretty sure we've all snapped a few of those."

"It was a wooden stick created by MAGIC!" comes the response. "Tell me you've ever even SEEN one of those before, and I'll call you a liar."

From the expressions of the audience, he's not WRONG about that, but people are still kind of annoyed at him.

Anyway, the class ends without any vandalizers of props being lynched and you'd had Briar tell Jia while picking her up from the office that she should stay behind after the lecture, so that you could follow up with her about your previous conversation. Doing it that way avoided most of the students making a fuss about Jia being called out, although from the look of things, the people she was speaking to earlier are still giving her some good-natured ribbing.

You kind of have your hands full dealing with excited follow-up questions, so you don't hear exactly what's being said there; still, Jia's reaction seems more amused and mock-offended than anything else, so it seems fine if you ignore it.

You give the vandal a look of disappointment while muttering a few words of magic. Given the distance between you and him, it probably comes across as just disapproving grumbling, but most of the kids seated in the front row of the lecture hall regard you with a mix of surprise, concern, and anticipation.

"Is he-?"

"I think he is."

"What do you suppose-?"

"No idea, but it's going to be cool!"

"Heck yeah!"

The troublemaker hears enough of that to start looking worried, and when you raise a hand to point at him, he immediately dives for cover. Unfortunately for him, he's just a bit too slow, and your unleashed Spell of Levitation is able to catch him by the proverbial scruff of the neck – or maybe by his spiky hairstyle – and drag him up from behind the desk.

"Whoa, what, whoa-!"

Normally, this particular disciplinary action wouldn't work, as the standard Spell of Levitation is only viable against willing targets. However, by voluntarily coming to a class on magic, with full knowledge that the lecturer was a spellcaster and would be actively using some of said spells for demonstrative purposes, your vict- er, target technically subordinated himself to you and accepted the prospect, leaving a slight crack in his defenses, which his act of damaging your property without permission wedged further open. Combine that with your overall arcane power and personal expertise in Augmentation Magic, and it's enough for you to catch him.

Up he goes, off the floor, above the tabletop – and then the guy grabs at the top of his chair and manages to halt his ascent for a moment.

"Ah-ha!"

Also, from the look on his face, your problem student is kind of enjoying this, which would indicate another degree of "willingness."

Regardless of that, the student sitting in the next seat looks up at the boy for a moment with a thoughtful expression, then reaches over and swats his hands away from the chair.

"What?! No! Trai-"

You nod to that one in gratitude and resume levitating the problem child to a point about halfway between the tops of the desks and the ceiling.

"-torrrr!"

Your victim struggles to find purchase on something, even emitting some ki. A master, you know, would be able to propel themselves on a burst of ki, kick off the air, or potentially float higher under their own power – and students of the Crane School could evidently fly outright – but it's quickly apparent that this boy is a long way from obtaining any such prowess. All his struggles achieve is to start slowly spinning him about.

"Keep that up and you'll get airsick," you warn him. "And if you DO, you'll be cleaning it up AND dealing with your classmates afterwards."

The hovering boy makes a sound roughly akin to, "Erk," at that, looking down at his fellows, who meet his suddenly nervous gaze with expressions of menacing promise – though a few of them are also changing seats.

You let that go, instead saying, "Now, stay there for a while and think about what you've done. I'll talk to you after class – and don't disrupt the lecture further, because I have more spells where that came from, starting with Silence and working up from there."

The boy stays quiet for the rest of the lecture, and once the crowd has thinned out, you let him down.

In light of the fact that the broken "wand" was just a temporary conjuration, you feel that further punishment is not really required. A little intimidation, sure – and as you make the usual teacherly statements about respecting others' property, not disrupting class, and how you'll let him off with a warning but had better not see or hear of him doing something like this again, the energy channeled through your eyes (making them glow) and your voice (making it echo ominously), your troublemaker is definitely paying attention rather than shrugging the warning off, as you've seen kids with similar attitudes do in school.

Whether he HEEDS the warning is another question, but you'll leave that up to Future Him and his Future Teachers.

Once he's out of the way, you shoo the last couple of stragglers away, leave the door open, and then take a seat across the aisle from Jia while ritually casting the Spell of the Silent Table.

"What's he doing?" the girl asks Briar, who's been sitting next to her, chatting, for the last few minutes while you dealt with your departing students.

"Giving us a little protecting against eavesdroppers," your partner replies, "without giving us so MUCH privacy that they start telling stories."

"Ah."

Once the spell is in place, you turn to the older girl. "So…"

Shadow Alex grabs a seat in the next row towards the front of the room, which puts him to your left, and just inside the edge of your Silent Table.

Assistant, meanwhile, settles down on the floor a little closer to the center, folding some of his tentacles under himself make an improvised chair.

"…isn't that uncomfortable?" you ask. You've tried sitting seiza a time or two, and it gets pretty rough, especially when you try to stand up afterwards.

"Rok, rok," Assistant replies, shaking his head slightly.

…maybe it's because he's smaller than you? Or maybe sitting on four limbs spreads out the weight better, and puts less pressure on each one?

Well, whatever. If the Octorok says he's fine, you'll take him at his word.

"So, what did you think about the lecture?" you ask.

"Well, it was a lot more informative than our meeting the other night," Jia admits. "And not just because you had more time to talk. A couple of times there, I actually felt like I was in class… which honestly makes being in a school when I'm on break feel that much weirder…"

You nod.

Jia shakes her head, setting aside her issues about summer school. "I have to ask, though: is it normal for magic-users to just… hang people in mid-air for disrupting a lecture?"

"That depends on the magic-user and the disruption," you reply. "I did consider making that guy stand in the hall or go to the office, but the thing he broke WAS just a bit of magic in the shape of a wand rather than anything actually valuable, so getting the masters involved seemed like too much. Beyond that, the point of the lecture WAS to give people more information about magic, so having our troublemaker make amends by taking part in a demonstration that would benefit the whole class seemed like a more productive use of everybody's time. On the whole, though," you add, "using magic to punish misbehavior during a magic class is pretty standard, yes."

You have plenty of evidence to support that, from your memories of learning Gerudo witchcraft at Koume and Kotake's knobbly old knees, to Ganondorf's own efforts to hammer some magical threat-recognition into his troops, to fleeting glimpses of Wizzrobes hexing screw-ups in training.

Based on the sources, some people might ask if that isn't just an EVIL magic-user thing, but it really isn't: Briar has told you a few stories about some of the things her mother has done to keep her kids' attention on a lecture; Batreaux and the priests have shared tales of their own; and Altria and Dave have both muttered imprecations about their respective tutors of the arcane, which suggests that Balthazar's teaching style takes after his old master's in some regards.

It's not that surprising, when you think about it. Magic can be seriously dangerous even when it's working exactly as intended, but in the hands of individuals who don't fully understand or appreciate the attendant risks of what they're actually doing, it just gets more so. Much as the saying goes among martial artists about sweating more in training to bleed less in battle, a little judicious jinxing in the arcane classroom can help to instill the respect and focus that will spare some otherwise wayward student from eating their own Fireball down the road.

You, of course, have always been perfectly well-behaved in your magical studies and never required any disciplinary action whatsoever. That's your story and you're sticking to it.

After a few minutes of discussing what Jia thought about and learned from the lecture-

"Aside from why disrupting class is a bad idea, you mean?"

"In addition to that, anyway…"

-you spring a different question on her, asking if she's told her parents about her magic and related experiences yet.

The grimace, pause, and sidelong glance tell you what you need to know.

"I get that it's only been a couple of days… or more like it hasn't YET been two days," you add after a moment's thought, "but you really should get on that."

"I know," Jia sighs.

"Because it is important, life-changing, and potentially dangerous information, and all that."

"I know."

"Did you want to hear how I explained things to my parents?"

"I kno-wait, what?" Jia asks, doing a double-take in mid-repeat.

You shrug. "I mean, I thought it might help if you had an idea of how somebody else who'd been faced with the same sort of problem went through all the secret-keeping and reluctance to tell their parents that they had magic that you're in the middle of, and then went ahead and talked with the family anyway."

The girl considers that. "You wouldn't mind?"

"I wouldn't have offered if I did."

"Then, please. I'm…" She sighs, frustrated. "I could really use some advice, or… something."

You nod. "Okay. So, some backstory. My hometown is, unfortunately, built on a center of mystical convergence known as a 'Hellmouth'…"

You give the standard explanation about Sunnydale's general nastiness, and how keeping knowledge of your capabilities from getting around became a safety measure early on in your studies-

"You have demons in your school!?"

"Kids with demonic lineage, anyway; they're more human than not, and some of the humans are honestly just as bad. But there was that one test administrator for sure."

"They give TES-! Wait, no, that makes perfect sense…"

"It does, doesn't it?"

-and how THAT provided an additional barrier to telling your folks, in addition to the simple urge to keep something special and amazing to yourself.

You go on to recount how you originally started taking lessons at Lu-sensei's as part of a "health and safety in Demon Central" kick, and how the old master guided you into unlocking your ki without actually bringing it up until you'd managed to manifest a basic ki blast.

You ALSO tell Jia how you told your closest friends about your magic, to try and encourage them to look out for themselves after dark and take their martial arts lessons seriously.

"Though one of them was the daughter of a witch, and already knew the basics," you add.

And then you recount the events of the World Tournament, and how everything that went down there resulted in your Dad having to make an overseas flight to pick you up.

Jia winces at that. "So you had some explaining to do?" she guesses.

"Actually, Dad was pretty cool about my getting caught on the edges of a… 'terrorist bombing,' I think was the official explanation. No, the thing that finally forced my hand was when Dad caught me talking to an imp in the backyard."

Jia blinks. "An imp."

"Yeah, snarky little thing in a t-shirt, about so tall." You hold a hand out at the appropriate low height. "She was delivering a message from one of the Tournament fighters that I'd made a point of staying in contact with, and Dad was… closer than I like to think about to freaking out when he saw her."

Which led to your actual explanation of magic and magic-adjacent events to both parents, using the uncensored footage of the Tournament as supporting evidence.

Should you mention the politely threatening ninja letter?

No. You haven't seen any ninjas locally.

It's probably better not to derail the conversation with talk of ninjas. If there'd been another ninja attack at the convention the other day, or even if you'd spotted one or two attendees you thought might be ninja, that would a different story, but as it stands, they don't seem like the sort of thing Jia really needs to worry about.

You continue your explanation, making a point of including the part where it turned out that your parents ALREADY knew about the supernatural-

"Say what!?"

-thanks to their own experiences living on the Hellmouth, and the main reason the imp spooked your Dad so much was that she'd turned up in his fenced-in backyard around twilight, rather than lurking in a dark alley or something.

Kind of like a certain colony of cats, now that you think of it, and while you don't make that comparison aloud – because really, as much as Briar dislikes felines, Sir Fluffy and his followers are nowhere near as bad as Sunnydale's demonic infestation – the expression on Jia's face makes you think she's already reached it on her own, no doubt because of how and where she met you, the two masters, and your five-tom escort the other evening.

"So your parents knew about magic and monsters in general," Jia says instead.

You nod. "Yes."

"But not about YOU having magic in particular."

"No."

"And also not about him having a live-in fairy partner," Shadow Alex notes.

"Rok?"

"Fairies are invisible to most people on Earth," you Dark Self explains to Assistant.

The concept seems baffling to the Octorok.

You suppose that Hyrulean monsters have never doubted the existence of fairies, and between that and Hyrule's higher ambient magic levels, never had trouble seeing them. That's… kind of sad, now that you think about it.

Jia is no doubt thinking about her attempts to get a magical talking cat familiar, because she asks, "How much trouble were you in at that point?"

"Surprisingly little, actually," you reply. "Mom told me to stop casting spells on people to take my dog to school, but she was willing to let me just take the dog as long as nobody raised any objections."

"Huh?"

"Her grandmother had some kind of magical dog, so that probably made her more open to the idea," you offer. "It definitely helped that Briar hadn't done anything except help, and I was able to call in Lu-sensei for some support, besides."

"Oh."

"Of course," you go on, "when they found out a bit later on that I'd been teleporting between home and a part-time job without permission, I got grounded for a couple of weeks. And some of that probably WAS carryover from the whole 'shock of revelation' and 'why didn't you tell us sooner' thing."

"Yeah," Jia agrees, in a slightly absent tone which suggests her thoughts are elsewhere, "I can see how- wait, did you just say you could teleport casually enough to hold down a part-time job on the other side of the Pacific from where you live!?"

You nod. "I did."

"He did," Briar agrees.

"It's not quite as big a deal as it sounds, though," Shadow Alex adds.

Jia stares at him for a moment in complete bafflement, before demanding, "How?"

"I mean, sure, it took casting a fifth-circle spell-"

Jia makes a funny noise.

"-several times in succession-"

There is another strangled sound.

"-but once you're able to perform the standard Spell of Teleportation at all, you're capable of covering almost a thousand miles in one go. At that point, the main issue is just charting, scrying, and knowing your destinations well enough so that you don't end up several hundred miles off-course and over the middle of the ocean."

Or inside of a wall or something, although your Dark Self doesn't mention that, to your relief. Not only are you quite sure it would disturb Jia, it's getting rather away from the point of this conversation.

With that in mind, you give Jia a moment to get over the revelation of your phenomenal magical power, and then bring the discussion back to the topic of Why It's a Good Idea to Tell Your Parents About Magic, Before They Find Out on Their Own.

Whether because she's still stunned from your casual admittance of long-range teleportation or was leaning that way to begin with, Jia quickly agrees that talking to her folks before something or someone forces the issue would be for the best.

After all, if that can happen to somebody like YOU, it could happen to her, too.

You consider broaching the subject of instruction, but after a moment's thought, you put that on the back-burner. Not because you think Jia would object to it – rather the contrary, given the effort she put into trying to find "her" familiar and her willingness to attend today's lecture – but because given her age and circumstances, proper payment for the tutor would probably have to be worked out with her folks' approval and assistance. Dropping that sort of thing on them right after giving them the "Magic Is Real" speech might not go over well, depending on how they react, and it's the sort of offer that should be made in person – which Jia has already indicated she's not comfortable with.

Instead, you repeat that previous suggestion about having one of the masters of the School of Five Elements go with her. If she agrees to that, you could ask whoever goes to judge the audience and make the offer for "a member of the School" to look for a suitable instructor, if they feel the girl's parents are or would eventually be open to the idea.

Jia says she'll think about it some more, and in a way that makes you think she's genuinely considering it now.

You'll leave it at that for now.

After seeing Jia out of the classroom, you finish the clean-up and head to the front office to let them know you're done with the room.

Since you're here, you also ask if it would be possible to arrange a viewing and magical analysis of the School's collection of believed-to-be-magical items, which was mentioned in your lecture with the masters. The guy at the desk tells you he can pass that one up the chain, though he adds that nothing is likely to come of it until tomorrow or Sunday.

That's fine by you.

Before you go, you also ask the secretary if he knows where Master Vincent is; shortly thereafter, you're speaking with the man in question about Jia's impending decision to tell her parents about her magic and the supernatural in general, and how you'd like to extend an offer for arcane instruction to the girl through the School, provided that the circumstances allow for it.

Master Vincent is visibly relieved to hear this, both that Jia seems to be seriously considering to open up to her folks, and that you're willing to lend her a hand.

"There are people we could approach," the instructor says, more or less repeating the statement he made the other night, "but they do have other commitments, most aren't local, and none specialize in water magic like the young lady seems to. If you can find her a tutor that does share her particular affinity-"

You almost certainly can. At the very least, Madam Lanora must know a few Zora sorcerers.

"-it would be a bit more convenient, and probably better for her in the long run."

Yeah, specialized training is usually more productive for cases like Jia's, where the caster's initial powerset is inherently limited to working with certain forces.

When a more generalist caster like yourself runs into a situation where one type of magic isn't really effective, you have the option to switch to something else, so a deep understanding of the nature of any one type of magic and greater flexibility and creativity in its use isn't truly essential – although it's grasping those very factors that tends to set a wizard on the road to becoming an archmage someday, rather than languishing in mediocrity for the remainder of their careers.

Someone like Jia can't do that. That desiccating touch and the aquatically-attuned and currently very short-lived Summoning Spell that she demonstrated the other night are both perfect examples of how strongly Water-aligned magic, despite being an excellent asset while on or in the water, can be rather less useful when the caster is on dry land. Neither of those abilities is likely to carry Jia through a dangerous situation on their own, not unless she knows exactly when, where, and how to employ them – and maybe also studies up on aquatic creatures to find something a little more useful than a landed fish – and those details are exactly the sort of thing that a typical generalist caster might not know or think of, but which an experienced specialist in Water Magic would be well aware of.

However and whenever Jia's chat with her folks goes, and whether the School's involvement in it is direct or after the fact, they've got your number for the follow-up.

With that out of the way, you go about the remainder of your day. While you engage with one class of training and burn a bit of your ki in the process, you make a point of leaving your magic alone, so that it can finish recharging. You've still got a fair bit of recovery left to go by dinner time, but when you call it a day around midnight, your reserves are at the point where a normal night's sleep would see them topped off, making the addition of your Restful Blanket entirely overkill.

After a hearty breakfast, you spend Saturday morning hanging out with your Sunnydale friends and some of the students you've all gotten reasonably close to. There is a bit of sparring, some magical demonstrations, a bit more storytelling – not entirely from you, though; with all the Tales From the Ring going around, Cordy, Amy, and Larry all take the opportunity to recount their experiences with the Trials – and some old-fashioned goofing off. When lunch rolls around, one of the masters lets you know that they'll need a little time to finish sorting out the after-effects of the sudden rescheduling of classes to accommodate the Trials, before somebody will be free to escort you into the low-security item storage, but that it should happen later tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest.

Since you've got a whole afternoon free, you decide to catch the bus into town to visit that pirate museum.

"…magic pirates?" Amy says with some surprise.

"Magic items that once belonged to pirates, anyway," you clarify, "or so I am informed by a local with access to the Spell to Detect Magic and no reason to lie about it."

"What was that about pirates?" Larry asks with some interest.

"What he said," Cordelia says, sounding rather less eager.

You repeat what little you've heard about the pirate museum, both from Jia and from others – not naming any names, of course, although you have your doubts as to how long that will keep anybody from connecting the "local with magic" to the local girl who doesn't practice martial arts and yet turned up at the School for today's lecture on magic. And that's assuming that Jia didn't already reveal her abilities to those other kids she was chatting with before and after the class.

Anyway, Larry is quite interested in this outing, and while Amy is less enthusiastic about pirates, the chance to get a look at a different regional and historical take on magical craftsmanship – possibly not the local form, given pirates and all, but almost certainly not the sort of stuff she'd find back in Sunnydale – is not without its appeal.

Cordy looks like she's thinking about begging off, at least until Amy suggests she could use the outing as a chance to pick up a souvenir or something.

"What, pick up some tacky museum gift shop merchandise? Amy, please."

"You never know where you're going to find a bargain, right?" Amy replies.

Cordy huffs, but is smiling as she adds, "Using my own advice against me? I'm so proud."

Checking with your chaperones, you find that they're both up for a trip.

"I still have those cookies to bake," Lily Blaisdell reminds you all. "If we can make a swing by the local stores on the way back, I'll have enough time to finish enough for everybody before we leave."

""For the cookies!""

It's a few minutes later that you're all down by the School's bus stop, waiting for your transportation to arrive. You aren't the only ones headed into town, and you learn from idle conversation that, unlike the rides to the recent exhibition, this weekend shuttle service to Changdu is a long-standing routine, arranged decades ago.

"Even the most dedicated martial artist needs a break from their routine now and then," the instructor keeping one watchful eye on a gaggle of energetic students around your age says to Lily. "And the less-dedicated are easier to manage in the long run when they don't feel they're being unfairly denied the opportunity to visit the arcade, movie theater, and other centers of entertainment in the next town over."

"The nearer town doesn't have any?" Lily asks.

"Xiang has a few hangouts worthy of the name, but it's also smaller than Changdu in pretty much every respect," comes the answer. "We'd be poor neighbors if we flooded their streets with all our bored and wound-up students every weekend."

Yeah, that could get very annoying, very quickly. Hence the bus service, which keeps those kids who haven't yet gained sufficient proficiency in the Body Flicker to reach Changdu in a reasonable span of time from feeling cheated or confined.

The bus arrives shortly thereafter, and about fifteen minutes later, you disembark in Changdu and make your way to the museum.

As it turns out, the Changdu Museum of Maritime History is not, strictly speaking, a "pirate museum." It has a whole bunch of displays that show everything from ancient fishing techniques and boats – they have one of the latter behind glass, next to a newly-built copy – to modern-day trawlers, private yachts, and military vessels – models only, with vessels and figures of importance from intervening eras to round things out.

But the section dedicated to piracy IS one of the larger and more detailed. It's also one of the more crowded, a mix of locals and tourist-types of most ages moving about. There doesn't appear to be a formal line or anything like that, but…

You don't recall that Ganondorf ever had much experience with pirates, even in that one lifetime with all the ocean views and sailing ships – or at least, you're assuming that those dreams all came from the one lifetime; given the Thief-King was born in a desert and the Demon King typically broke out of a seal or the afterlife, the ocean kind of sticks out in memory.

Anyway, Ganondorf may not have known pirates, but he knew bandits down to his bones, and that includes the many forms of plunder they'd secure beyond the obvious things like water, Rupees, weapons, gemstones, and gold, or the lengths they might go to in order to conceal their prizes from unworthy eyes or would-be reclaimers.

And what are pirates, in the end, but ocean-going bandits?

Quite aside from that, while he was no craftsman himself, Ganondorf knew magic items well enough to appreciate the vast range of forms they might take – knowledge that you have only built upon with your own industrious efforts.

So whether it's because of those distant and at best half-recalled Hyrulean memories, the rather more recent experience gained in your workshop and studies, or the even more recent experience of going through the many items filched from Silbern before its destruction, you bring up your passive Mage Sight and take a look around at all the displays, not just the ones that have old weapons and bits of jewelry on display.

A number of auras blur into view. Hmm…

There are a few pieces of the collection that draw your interest over the rest – the contents of that sheet of parchment or whatever material it is particularly catches your eye, as does that small magical box – but after a moment's thought, you head to the part of the gallery where the weapons and armor are set up. The sign over the door indicates that the museum has dubbed this place as "the Armory," and they've gone to some lengths to make it look like a room on a wooden sailing ship, but you suspect that a few liberties were taken in the process.

At least, you have some trouble seeing a room THIS big on most ships of the period, unless it was a cargo hold. And as far as places to stow your weaponry go, something that low-security just seems unwise.

In any event, you palm your ruby lens, wait for a moment when there aren't so any strangers in earshot, and then cast the Spell to Analyze Dweomers and give the enchanted display cases and their contents a quick sweep.

…

As far as the equipment itself goes, you don't see anything that's truly new: spells for increased durability, of course; the blades all have the expected enhanced sharpness and accuracy; and so on. There are a few guns in the collection, but most of them showed no signs of magic, and the one exception – a rather fancy-looking piece that apparently belonged to a captain – is only warded against rust, rot, and fouling, with nothing that would enhance aim or striking power. Even the wards feel a bit off, kind of like… well, the first example that comes to mind is a shirt that wasn't the best fit at first, but which has been stretched and worn and possibly had a seam or two popped over time, until it's at least familiar and broken in, if still not the most comfortable thing ever.

Considering that modern magic still has a lot of trouble applying "basic" offensive enhancements to guns and ammunition, it's no wonder that a weapon over three centuries old would lack that sort of thing entirely, or cause issues for more general-purpose spells. And it is instructive for you to see an older example of gun-related magic, even if it doesn't provide you any breakthroughs in and of itself.

But if none of the techniques you're seeing are revolutionary, some of the ways in which they've been applied are at least interesting. The durability enhancements, for example, lean much more strongly towards resisting corrosion than you normally see, a consequence of and attempt to counter the sort of damage that water, wind, and salt can do to wood and metal if given time. There's also a variation on the cleaning application of the Spell of Prestidigitation worked into several of the blades, which gives you a moment's pause when you realize it's been attuned specifically to make blood and various other bodily fluids that might be shed in combat more likely to slide off the weapon, or at least much easier to scrub off in the aftermath.

Was somebody just obsessed with keeping their weapons neat, or is there another reason for that? Nothing in the descriptive panels attached to those displays suggests the former or offers an explanation, and unfortunately, there are enough potential eyewitnesses around that you don't want to risk the Spell of Literary Vision.

Man, that's going to bug you…

Aside from the spells on the arms and armor, you also give the wards on the display cases themselves a glance. They're nothing special, either, and obviously not the work of the same person or persons who enchanted the gear, or even someone from the same tradition(s). The former might seem a little obvious, but it's always better to be certain about these things, because you never know when a five-hundred-year-old demon sorcerer or lich might pop up.

…and now you're picturing a pirate necromancer turned major undead, haunting the seas with a ship of the damned.

After you've given all the martial equipment a once over and found it more or less average – leaning towards "less," by and large – you lower your ruby lens for a bit as you exit the Armory, doubling back to that mannequin with the… hang on a moment.

…

Huh. It's a scroll, and one that's either made with some of the finest paper you've ever seen or some kind of fabric – and the sign on the display says it's silk, which, uh, wow. That's a thing you did not realize they used to do.

Anyway, it's clear at a glance that the scroll is not a map – you spare a moment to mentally grieve the loss of a chance to go treasure-hunting – just a collection of characters in Chinese, written by… multiple hands, you think, some of them very practiced, others crude, and several seeming as though they weren't the steadiest at the time of taking brush to silk. Most of those appear to be… personal names? Zhao, Wei, at least four different Li's…

That's a pretty good clue that this isn't the kind of scroll you're used to thinking of when that term normally comes up in regards to magic items, but just to be sure, you take another quick look around and then get your empowered Divination focus out again. After briefly confirming that the security wards on this display are the same as those back in the Armory, you determine that you are indeed not looking at a spell-scroll; the magic is too attached to its physical vessel for something with a single-use nature.

One part of the magical matrix is Abjuration-based, a mix of environmental protection spells not too different from those on the weapons and armor you just looked at. Those are running normally, but there's also a more intent-based form of Abjuration, woven through with Divination, Enchantment, and Illusion Magic and focused on the writing, which is currently inactive. As you look at it, you realize quickly that this is a good thing, because bits of the array that your Spell to Analyze Dweomers has revealed remind you of the various Symbol and Rune spells you've studied, in that "activate when read or looked directly at by unauthorized individuals" way.

That could have gotten awkward, given the thing's been out on display in a public venue for a while. Not as bad as if it had been imbued with Explosive Runes or a Symbol of Pain or something, but still…

A moment later, the steady workings of the Spell to Analyze Dweomers have finished chewing through the available data and offer you a conclusion on its functions: the scroll is enchanted to disguise the information recorded in it, so that unauthorized readers cannot determine the true contents. The effect ignores those who have written their names in the scroll – ink or blood are both permissible, and the latter need not be the signatory's own – and spoken… a vow of fealty and brotherhood?

Beyond that, the scroll doesn't appear to do anything in and of itself; rather, your spell has turned up evidence that it was meant to serve as a focus for spellcasting. Most likely, it uses the names of the signatories and their mutual vow to help direct and amplify certain magical effects, such as the Spell to Locate a Person or the Spell of Scrying.

Lowering your magical lens when it stops telling you stuff, you read the display more carefully, learning that the scroll was recovered from the personal possessions of "Sharktooth" Xhiang, the captain of the pirate crew that you'd heard were based in this area centuries back, and who are the main focus of these particular exhibits. It is a crew roster, and one whose contents have at least partially been verified against local records of births, deaths, wanted posters, and arrests.

The exhibit also notes that the roster wasn't recovered until after Captain Xhiang's death of old age. He's believed to have passed in his late seventies – his exact age having been uncertain – pre-deceased by his wife of some fifty years, and it was only when his descendants went through his things afterwards that they realized he'd been THAT Xhiang.

Some people might question how anybody could go for so long without realizing their old man was a locally (in)famous pirate, but with magic involved, it makes a lot more sense.

With the current circumstances being such that an in-depth investigation is not in the cards, you make a mental note to let somebody at the School know about your findings regarding Captain Sharktooth's crew roster, as well as any other interesting details you pick up on this outing.

Odds are quite good that the masters are already aware that a lot of this stuff is magical – Lu-sensei has demonstrated that ki-based mana-detection technique, and you doubt he's the only one who has such a skill – but they might not be aware of what it's all supposed to do, in which case your testimony would probably ease a few concerns, confirm existing suspicions, or both. And they'll know that you know, and that they can get in touch with you if that closer look turns out to be required.

Anyway, leaving the pirate scroll and the mannequin that you're assuming is based on the appearance of its former owner – slightly above-average height, reasonably strong build, pretty ordinary features, and nothing to immediately indicate where the name "Sharktooth" came from – you turn your attention to that magical box you spotted on your way in.

Because there's just something about mystery boxes, and you did have that interesting encounter with the old man living near the Hakuba Shrine who was – and still is – taking care of one such thing, though the "box" you've found this time is quite a bit larger than the previous one.

It's actually a sea chest, big enough that a normal man would likely need both hands to carry it about when it was full, though the handles on either side would make dragging it along a ship's deck easy enough. The lid and sides of the box are covered with carvings in the shape of coral formations and seashells, some of which are made out of actual shells, as well as small pieces of a reddish material that looks like it might be real coral. A good part of the magic woven into the chest has been bound to the shells and stones, which suggests they're of fair value and mystical potency in and of themselves.

As for the nature of that magic, it's once again primarily Abjuration-based, and seems to be borrowing the nature of its adornments to enhance the chest's resistance to the natural forces of the sea. The "Coral Chest," as you've decided to call it, is likely watertight, corrosion-resistant, and buffered against physical impacts to a degree that exceeds some of the items in the Armory. It's not enhanced to hit things any harder, of course, but you suppose if somebody were to swing it around by the handle or just throw it at an oncoming opponent, they could do some decent damage from the mundane weight and hardness of the thing…

Your Spell to Analyze Dweomers also detects a locking spell, long since deactivated, which would seem to involve some of the fragments of coral "growing" from the lid to the walls and back again, physically securing the lid rather than just magically sealing it. Interesting approach, that. There's also a Spell to Make Whole worked into the Chest, one that's been modified to work on the container and its contents at the same time, albeit at a much slower rate than normal. That, too, seems to be tied to the fragments of coral, tapping into their original nature as living, growing things and adapting it to repair non-living things.

Come to think of it, that might also be why the repair effect is so slow. You don't know exactly how fast live coral grows, but it's definitely nowhere near as fast as the ten minutes or so the ritual takes to put things back together.

In any case, the auto-repair function is almost certainly the reason why the Coral Chest and its contents "were found perfectly preserved," as the placard notes, and also why it's been put on display with the lid shut. People might ask questions if a box of stuff from centuries past looked too neat and new.

Once again, a part of you is a bit dismayed by the lack of opportunity for a treasure hunt, but a much greater part is relieved that there's no ominous portents associated with this particular box!

After hearing the Captain's pseudonym, it's occurred to you that the mystically empowered set of shark's teeth might be connected, and so after you're done looking over the Coral Chest, you head for that display.

"Kind of wandering, aren't you?" Briar questions from your shoulder.

"Some things are just more eye-catching than others," you reply.

"It was a pretty box, wasn't it?"

"Yeah. Think your brother might be interested in seeing it?"

"You mean Robin?"

"Yeah."

Briar considers that. "…maybe. I mean, there's obviously no coral in the Lost Woods, but if he could find a friendly Zora or ocean sprite, or make a deal with a Hylian who knew some sailors, he could probably lay in a source. Might be neat for him to work with a new material for a bit."

That had been part of your thinking.

The Shark's Teeth come into range then, and you focus your attention and your spell on them.

…

Huh. That's not an artificial enchantment, not even of the druidic variety. Those teeth are inherently magical all on their own.

"Wait, what?" Briar exclaims. "You're sure?"

You take the ruby lens off of your eye for a moment, scrub it, give it a slight shake, and then put it back on and squint at the cartilaginous jaws. "…yup, same readings."

"Hoo-boy…"

"Glad that shark is long dead, huh?"

"And how."

While you're not as schooled in druidic lore as you are in other fields, Briar has passed on a few things over the years, and Koron and Vert added to that during your lessons in converting sorcerous spells to their theurgic counterparts. As a result, you know that it's not unusual for particularly impressive animal specimens that reside in areas of strong natural energies to become more over time. Not in the sense of turning into youkai or gods, that involves influence from humanoid belief, and not in the sense of animal spirits, that involves… well, spirits. It's just the animals improving in every physical, vital respect, from simple size and strength to the resilience of their fur or scales to the bite of their natural weapons, whether metaphorically or literally.

Hinana was fairly close to what you'd expect from a boar that went through this process, albeit with a bit more of a spiritual influence due to the nature of Bali Ha'i. Khamsin's from a herd that wanders the planes, so he doesn't qualify, and most of the various beasts you encountered on your trips into Faerie don't count, either, as they were more Fae than they were animals.

Maybe the fish…? No, they were smart enough to sing along with Briar's conducting, and in key, at that.

Anyway, big, tough animals – and in the case of sharks or other predators, ones that would have killed and eaten a lot of things. You look at the teeth for a moment, considering their simple size and the aura of blood that hangs about them, and then check the card. Sure enough, "researchers estimate" that the creature which originally owned these fearsome fangs was larger than any specimen of its kind than has ever been verifiably caught or recorded. Not big enough to be a threat to a great white – not unless it was a young one, anyway – but plenty big enough to be a threat to humans.

And yes, as you suspected, Captain Sharktooth owes his name to a run-in with this predator. Popular legend has it that Xhiang worked on a fishing boat as a young boy, and one day, when he went to help haul in the catch, the "Demon Shark"-

It wasn't actually a demon, as you're not picking up any sort of corruption from the teeth, just their innate natural energy, but the title does suggest things about the size and fearsomeness of the beast.

-lunged out of the water in an attempt to steal the fish for itself, and possibly take a bite out of young fisherman as well! Fortunately for the future pirate, he reacted fast enough to keep all his bits firmly attached, and while he lost his catch, the shark left one of its teeth embedded in the side of the boat. Young Xhiang took it as a memento of the experience and eventually had it made into a necklace.

You did not see a shark-tooth necklace on the mannequin, but that's soon explained by the placard, which states that Captain Sharktooth lost it years later, in his final encounter with the Demon Shark. Apparently, after a series of run-ins over most of a decade and increasing levels of damage to his village's fishing industry – and its fishermen – Xhiang declared he'd had enough, gathered up his crew and any willing volunteers, and set out to hunt the beast down. There's a poem about it, but long story short, after years of enduring the Demon Shark's periodic attempts to eat him and his neighbors, Xhiang was able to return the favor, with interest.

He did so with one arm bandaged and bound in a sling, though, as the shark hadn't gone down without getting one last taste of pirate flesh.

The wooden carving that catches your attention next is that of a Chinese-style dragon, which is most noteworthy for the fact that its long-ago carver thought to make his creation look like a pirate. There's a patch pulled across the left eye, and a wide-brimmed hat perched jauntily atop its horned head, while beads appear to have been woven into the beast's mane, as you've seen some takes on pirates do with their hair and beards. The dragon's flanks are covered by tattoo-like markings, quite finely detailed and colorful despite their age – something you can doubtlessly attribute to the protective and preservative effects of the magic woven into the figurehead – and it's even got a ring dangling from the bottom of the fin on the right side of its head.

No hook-hand or peg-leg, but then, anything capable of dismembering something as well-armored as a dragon would probably end up killing the creature anyway.

The serpentine sea rover is presented at a much lower angle than most figureheads you've seen, as if it were being depicted in flight or – more likely, given the theme – in the middle of a swim.

The display notes that the carving is believed to be an accurate replica of the figurehead from Captain Sharktooth's second ship, the Dashing Dragon, which served him and his crew well for six years before a nasty storm drove the ship aground and cracked the keel. The story has it that as the pirates abandoned ship, they took steps to remove any obvious signs of their vessel's identity, to try and confuse the authorities that would come to investigate the beached wreck as soon as the weather cleared, and thus delay pursuit. This involved a certain amount of hacking at parts of the ship with boarding axes and hammers, but when it came to the distinctive figurehead, the crew couldn't bear to part with their lucky emblem, and carefully cut it free of the bow instead of smashing it to splinters. They then carried the thing inland with them and eventually had it mounted on a new ship, called Storm's Child, which was ultimately lost to fire some eight years later.

"The original" dragon statue is thought to have been lost at that time, but sufficient accounts and pictures of it have survived down through the years to allow this "recreation" to be made.

Nice cover story.

As to the magic worked into the figurehead, it's got a few functions. The core of them is a modestly potent piece of Air and Water Magic, similar to the Spell of Fog Cloud, would cause the dragon to "breathe" a great cloud of mist. It's got several levels of output: the lowest would just produce a couple of short-lived gouts of vapor from the dragon's nostrils, as if it were puffing smoke – or rather, steam, since it's an Eastern dragon and they're usually associated with water rather than fire; the next level would create a misty haze around a ship, sufficient to make it look eerie and otherworldly; and the third setting would surround the vessel with a proper fog, obscuring it from sight altogether. Additional spells are woven into the array for shaping that mist and projecting light and shadow through it, whether to just make the whole thing glow or to create reasonably detailed optical illusions.

It's nothing overly powerful or dangerous, but it would make a pirate ship look a great deal more fearsome to the unknowing, or even to some who did know better.

Aside from that fog-based array, the figurehead also had a very basic and generic blessing for good fortune worked into it. As it is now, it can't affect anything but the dragon itself – which might explain how the thing survived the fire that claimed its second home – but a skilled crafter could extend the effect to an entire ship. It wouldn't be doable on a permanent basis, at least not without rather more power than you're sensing bound to this item, but a brief burst of good fortune for ship and crew in the middle of a battle or a pursuit would be valuable all the same.

Leaving the dragon figurehead behind, you start looking at the jewelry. There's close to thirty separate pieces, if you count pairs of earrings or sets of bracelets as one unit, and while they aren't all enchanted, enough are that you have to re-cast your Spell to Analyze Dweomers.

Now that you're paying attention to the shiniest stuff, you notice that there's very little gold on display, and none of the high-end gemstones you usually think of – diamonds, rubies, emeralds, that sort of thing. Whatever is lacking in material rarity is made up for with craftsmanship, including quite a lot of silver, more polished pieces of coral (usually mounted in silver settings), a couple of necklaces made from colorful stones carefully bored through and strung together, and a few pieces incorporating seashells.

Once again, the magical effects bound to most of these items aren't anything to write home about. You spot a few minor Amulets of Natural Armor, once again using the hardness and organic nature of shells or coral to anchor the effect, one Headband of Alluring Charisma, and a set of five bracelets and anklets that function as an interesting take on Bracers of Armor. A single band can be worn on a limb, providing a degree of protection to that quadrant of the body, and when worn in combination on different limbs, the defended area grows accordingly; since they were all made and enchanted as part of a set, it's also possible to intensify the protection in one area by wearing two or more 'lets on one limb, with the level of protection maxing out at four (and still falling short of what you know a proper pair of Bracers could manage).

The odd number of pieces makes you think that there must be at least one missing piece to that set, and probably more like three, but your spell doesn't tell you if you're right or not.

One pair of earrings is empowered to augment the wearer's hearing in such a way as to catch mutterings of discontent among a crew; another is actually a set of disguised lockpicks; and several of the necklaces work like lesser versions of the Necklace of Adaptation you picked up in Silbern, only allowing the wearer to move from an airy environment into a watery one or the reverse, with no real accommodations made for smoke, toxic fumes, or vacuum.

And then there are the rings, most of which are entry-level Rings of Protection or basic Rings of Swimming. The former are not unexpected – even models this weak enjoy pretty high demand, because of how convenient an unobtrusive full-body personal forcefield is – but the latter has you momentarily wondering why the pirates didn't just learn to swim if it was that big of an issue.

Then Briar reminds you that sharks exist, both mundane and giant mystical varieties, as do evil tentacled things, great crashing waves, and storms, any and all of which might make even a strong and experienced swimmer want to shore up his aquatic mobility.

You abruptly recall Arisawa Akkiko trying, and failing, to outswim Morpheel in her last Trial.

All in all, there's nothing particularly eye-catching in the collection of jewelry, although from what the plaques have to say, this isn't the whole of what was found in Captain Sharktooth's personal cache. Some other pieces have been returned to their owners – either at the time or in the generations since – several more are noted to have been stolen, and when you check with one of the attendants, you learn that more are either on-loan to another, bigger museum that's putting on a big expo about Taiwanese traditional jewelry, or else in storage.

The discovery of a few Rings of Protection in the jewelry display has you revising your estimates of the wealth and success of the Sharktooth Pirates in a distinctly upward direction. While those rings aren't particularly powerful as far as magic items go, they are rather complicated to make, and thus quite expensive for their size and effect. Sure, three of them had various limitations on their performance that would have simplified their creation and knocked down their overall value – and the similarities between two of those and several of those Rings of Swimming make you think that the pirates must have known a specialist in ring-forging, or at least robbed one – but the other two pieces were full-fledged and unrestricted Rings of Protection.

It would cost you about thirty grand to make one of those, to say nothing of the time involved, and at your current skill level, you have your doubts that the work would turn out quite so well.

You also have to wonder why Captain Xhiang didn't sell one of the greater rings off. You could certainly see him keeping one for himself, but the magic of such items isn't compatible, with more potent or better-crafted models overriding lesser ones if they're worn by the same individual. Trying to don two rings of identical effect isn't a good idea, either, as it creates a zone of interference where the two defensive fields come into contact, each struggling to overcome the other; while this can potentially wear on the items in the long term, the real danger in most peoples' minds is that the border between the fields is unstable, constantly fluctuating in strength and thereby compromising the protection. It basically creates a massive weak-spot – or maybe "fracture" is the better term, considering it runs all the way along the barrier – and while said flaw shifts about a bit in response to the movements of the one using the rings, it generally runs right down the center of the wearer's body.

That's a REALLY bad place to have a gap in your defenses, magical or otherwise, particularly when anyone or anything with any sort of magical perception would be able to sense and target it. Even wholly mundane combatants would pick up on such a weakness eventually, when they noticed that blows there weren't encountering the same level of resistance from unseen armor found over other parts of the body.

You communicate your puzzlement over the "greater" Rings of Protection to Briar.

"…well, he WAS married," the fairy reminds you. "Maybe he gave one of the rings to his wife?"

You suppose that's a possibility, but then why keep the other three? The tab on that one display made it sound like Xhiang's children were grown adults with kids of their own – and possibly grandkids of their own – by the time he died, so they probably weren't wearing the things…

"Your guess is as good as mine there, partner."

You suppose so – and that's not even getting into the question of how the rings are still here, if they've been on display like this for months or years or however long this museum has been around. Sure, it's a small town that doesn't seem to see a huge amount of magical traffic, and has a guardian cat-spirit in residence and a school of mystical martial artists within ki-boosted sprinting distance besides, but still, has nobody come by that was capable of recognizing those Rings of Protection for what they are, and had the will and the means to acquire them, whether legally or otherwise?

Shaking your head, you move on to another exhibit, this time the one with-

"The oars?" Briar exclaims in confusion. "Really?"

You're curious, alright? Sure, they're probably just enchanted to increase the power of each stroke and help the boat they're driving move faster, or to boost the stamina of the oarsman, or something similarly boring but practical, but there could be more interesting effects as well!

"Wanna bet?" Briar says.

"I accept your terms," Briar declares confidently.

You raise your left arm across your body, extending your index finger towards Briar's perch on your right shoulder, she reaches out and grabs the tip of your finger with both hands, and the two of you shake on it.

Then you turn your ruby lens on the oars and investigate their magical signature.

…

As predicted, they are enchanted to work as better oars-

"Ah-ha!"

-magnifying the efforts of the rower and allowing a boat to achieve greater speed. There is no stamina-affecting enhancement.

"So," Bria begins, "about those bragging rights-"

Hang on, you weren't finished.

"But my rights!"

The oars are also enchanted-

"Eh?!"

-for some protection from the elements, mostly water and fire, as well as against rot or warping.

"Mm… I think I can still claim a win…"

But their physical hardness and durability have been considerably increased, rather disproportionately so compared to the other protective boosts, and on top of that-

"There's more?!"

-they've been enchanted to… discharge electricity?

"…wha?"

Wha, indeed. It's not like they can fire off lightning bolts or constantly wreathe themselves in a crackling energy field like a Shocking weapon, but when the command word is uttered, either oar is independently capable of releasing a nasty little jolt.

"What's the command? Briar wonders.

You stare at the word that the Spell to Analyze Dweomers is projecting before your ruby-covered eye. Surely, you can't be reading or translating that from the original Chinese correctly, right?

"Alex?"

"…it roughly translates as, 'bite this.'"

…

"What do you think, the giant shark?" Briar suggests.

"…I mean, it attacked fishing boats, Captain Sharktooth apparently ran into it several more times before finally hunting it down, and we know it wasn't a normal shark anymore, so it could have been smart enough to break the oars of a boat to cripple its mobility before going in for the kill."

…

"Am I the only one picturing the good captain sitting in a rowboat at sea, fending off a giant shark with nothing but a pair of broken oars?" Briar asks.

No, you were picturing something of the sort yourself. True, you haven't seen anything in the exhibit that CONFIRMS such an encounter happened, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty compelling, and some manner of one-on-one "duel" feels like a natural evolution of Captain Sharktooth's relationship with his rival or nemesis, going from "the one that got away/almost ate me" to "the one that keeps getting away/trying to eat me" to "this ocean isn't big enough for the both of us," with scars, misshapen or missing body parts, and other damage gradually accumulating on both sides as time went on.

In any case, there's a more important issue to attend to, and that is the matter of claiming your bragging rights.

"What?! No!"

Yes!

"But the enchantments were mostly boring but practical!"

But the electrical discharge was neither!

"But it would have stopped sea monsters from chewing or grappling the oars! That's practical!"

There aren't as many sea monsters on Earth as there are in Hyrule!

"…are you sure about that?"

…okay, many if you count the whole PLANET, but per square mile or per capita or whatever, definitely not! Probably! And in any case, being able to zap things with electricity isn't BORING!

"I hate it when you use logic!"

Your little argument continues, quietly, as you head over to the next enchanted item to catch your eye. Although the jug is certainly of a different style than the pots which occupy so many niches, shelves, and suspiciously-tiled spaces in your inherited memories, and is considerably smaller than most of them besides – you could pick it up with one hand as you are now, though it might be a little heavy if it were full – there is still a certain similarity.

Even the fact that this jug is enchanted doesn't distinguish it THAT much from its Hyrulean counterparts; you can vaguely recall Ganondorf seeing a few magical jars, some of them being part of a temple's soul-destroying trials, others being proper magic tools.

This jug is one of the latter sorts, thankfully, and the Water-based aura it gives off makes you momentarily wonder if you're looking at one of the famous Decanters of Endless Water. Such a treasure would be as valuable to men at sea as it would to a desert-dwelling tribe, worth more in terms of a crew's survival than any other item you've seen today… but as your Spell to Analyze Dweomers works through the energies involved, you see that the jug is not so potent or priceless.

Instead of producing an endless stream, bubbling fountain, or blasting geyser of water from nothing, this jug is meant to work with pre-existing water. If potable water is placed into the container, the magic will ensure that the liquid remains fresh, clear, and even mildly cool indefinitely. If filled with water that is not safe to drink, whether by dirt or disease or some other contaminant, the jug will gradually purify it; even salt water can be rendered fit to quench a man's thirst in this manner, although the effect takes time, and more of it the more fouled the water was to begin with. This puts a limit on just how many people the jar can keep alive, particularly when they will be crewing a sailing vessel under the hot sun!

Still, even if it comes in a distinct second to the endless bounty of the Decanter of Endless Water, this Jug of Pure Water remains a very valuable tool for survival.

Seeing as how you've checked out everything else that caught your eye and still have a little charge leftover in your last casting of the Spell to Analyze Dweomers, you decide to go ahead and check out that rope.

"Don't you have half a dozen ropes already?" Briar wonders.

"You can never have too much rope," you reply. "But also, this stuff looks different from the other coils we've picked up."

It's rather thicker, for one thing, enough so that you aren't sure you'd be able to close your hand all the way around the line, and the material looks a lot more solid besides; combined with the volume of the piled-up coil, you find yourself wondering how much trouble you'd have lifting the thing.

This probably wasn't intended as a climbing rope, or any sort of rope that a person would be carrying around for any length of time. Far more likely it was meant to be stored in a ship's locker, working as part of the rigging, or wound around one of those… big… turning things.

…

"Why are you looking at me?" Briar wonders.

"Do you not know what they're called?" you inquire.

"How should I? I've never been sailing on one of those big ships!"

Huh.

One end of the length of rope is rather badly burnt, and when you get within scanning range, you find that the magical matrix woven into the threads was disrupted by whatever flame was responsible for the physical damage. In point of fact, the most severely blackened portions of the rope are no longer magical at all, having been "purified" of the enchantment's arcane energies by the fire. Some of the adjacent areas are likewise registering as devoid of magic – really, the whole last foot or so of the coil is like that – but further up, a dull haze of residual energies becomes apparent, and then broken but still-visible lines of power, and then a proper array. The far end of the rope looks almost perfectly functional, except for a faintness to the enchantment that hints at the energy that's been lost over the years since the damage was inflicted.

Thanks to that section, your own spell is able to work out the intended function of the item. Your guess turns out to have been accurate; this rope was meant to be used in the ship's rigging, and aside from the by-now familiar durability boosters – adapted for the material in question, of course – the enchantment's main purpose seems to have been to make it do its job better. It doesn't have the self-operating functions of the Ropes of Binding or the Ropes of Climbing – the operation of a ship is complex enough that such an enchantment would take rather more power than what you're seeing here – it's just better at performing its intended tasks than any mundane rope would be.

Or at least, it WAS, before that fire ruined it. Going off of the placard, the rope was recovered from the fire-gutted hulk of the Storm's Child, and then kept by Captain Sharktooth. Entries from his log made in the days and weeks following the loss of his ship imply that the rope was hastily repurposed to help evacuate men and cargo from the burning vessel, and that this section of it ended up spilling into one of the lifeboats when the fire finally burned through the other end. The only explanation offered for why the ruined rope was still in Xhiang's keeping decades later is a speculative one, that the man considered the object to be good luck after it saved the lives of his crew.

You frown at that, and wonder if there wasn't a more magical answer. Repairing the whole original rope wouldn't be possible with a piece of it burned up, but the remaining length could certainly be salvaged, whether to be remade into a smaller rope or used as a sacrificial reagent to craft something else.

Regardless, you won't find the answers to that today. Letting your Spell to Analyze Dweomers fade, you pocket the ruby lens and spend some time just looking at and reading about the displays in the mundane manner.

The Changdu Museum of Maritime History isn't that big, so after about an hour, you've pretty much seen what there is to see and feel ready to leave.

"I mean, I went for a ride aboard some of those tour ferries in San Francisco a few times, but the ones that use sails aren't that big, and the motorized ones don't use rope except to tie stuff down."

When was she in San Francisco?

"That was my fourth visit to Earth," Briar recounts. She pauses for a moment, muttering numbers to herself. "So, yeah, about twenty-four years ago, now. I found this tour group visiting the mountains near the portal and hitched a ride on their bus, which ended up in the city a few days later."

Made a few stops along the way, huh?

"There were a lot of tacky tourist traps in California in the mid-Seventies," Briar agrees.

How'd she make her way back to the portal after that?

"Invisibly hitchhiking in the opposite direction, a lot of flying, and some help from friendly animals or ones that I provided some healing in exchange for a lift," comes the answer. "It took a couple of months."

Although you do want to be on your way, it occurs to you that you haven't picked up any souvenirs of this trip yet, and that a certain little sister might be disappointed if you came back empty-handed.

Like, the first time you went on an extended trans-Pacific trip without any of your family accompanying you, you brought back a World Tournament Division Championship Belt. That kind of thing sets expectations in the eyes of younger siblings, and you would hate to disappoint.

And you might find something that would appeal to your parents, or even Moblin.

And so, you wander into the Museum gift shop and have a look around. Cordy and Amy have already beaten you to it, with Lu-sensei accompanying them and shaking his head at some of the stuff he sees on display, while Larry is still lingering over the exhibits, his grandmother patiently going along with his obvious enthusiasm on the subject.

You wonder what he'll make of it when you tell him these were MAGIC pirates? Should be fun.

As you start inspecting the offerings yourself – a mix of pirate merchandise, more generally oceanic-themed gifts, and some educational stuff – you notice that most of them bear multiple price tags, each for a different form of currency. One of those is the American dollar, and while the rate of conversion seems a little higher than you were expecting, it's only by about five percent or so.

You wonder if that's a surcharge for the small inconvenience that the Museum will have to go through to change the money later, or just an attempt to get a little more cash out of the tourists…?

Well, whatever. It saves you the hassle, and there's not much here that costs more than twenty-five bucks.

Did she enjoy herself? That's the most important thing.

Briar cocks her head to one side for a moment, thinking before she answers your question.

"On the whole, I would say yes," she finally tells you. "I mean, there were some individual moments and incidents along the way that weren't much fun, like when I started to figure out just how FAR I'd ended up from the portal-"

You can see how that would have been disheartening, for somebody without teleportation.

"-or when that cat tried to eat me."

…

…do you need to track down and chastise a feline?

"I appreciate the sentiment, but it was a quarter of a century ago, and the cat looked completely mundane."

Probably passed of old age, then; if you're remembering some of your biology reading correctly, cats average ten to fifteen years or so, and that if they're dedicated housecats, as opposed to more outdoorsy sorts. Then again, just like humans, even perfectly ordinary animals can occasionally live a surprisingly long time for their species, not to mention that just because this cat was normal when Briar encountered it doesn't mean it stayed that way.

You just got done looking at an exhibit dedicated to a supernatural shark, after all. Considering how mixed up in magic cats are to begin with, you wouldn't bet against any of them managing a similar feat, or even pulling off something like Sir Fluffy's backstory.

Obviously, good little sisters deserve only the best presents. True, Zelda's birthday is coming up, and you have already promised her an enchanted training outfit for when she starts at Lu-sensei's, so getting her another present so close to that might be seen as over-indulgent, but what's the point of having phenomenal magical power and piles of loot if you can't use them to give your adorable younger sibling nice things?

With that settled, it's a no-brainer that Zelda would prefer a pirate-themed toy of some sort, and you eventually pick out a few likely candidates, before making your choice.

For your father, something meant to be used feels best, although you waver a bit about the price and the nature of the gift. In the end, since this IS just a small-time gift shop, you think going "expensive" should be fine, since the prices really aren't that high, and it'll be in keeping with what you got Zelda.

Your mother, meanwhile, would probably prefer a little statue or other knick-knack she could put up somewhere.

As for yourself, you're set on getting a book of Taiwanese pirate history, but while you're looking through the selection, you wonder if you should get something for your friends.

On the one hand, you have more ready funds on hand than any of them, unless Cordy borrowed or "borrowed" some cash or a card from her folks.

On the other hand, the prices for most of the stuff here are well within the range of saved-up allowances and vacation spending money, which you know the others have brought along for just such occasions.

There are undoubtedly more productive ways to spend your already highly-constrained free time than trying to track down a cat Briar met once over twenty years ago, and which could be either dead or alive.

You'd still DO it, if there was a need, but if Briar thinks things are fine the way they are, then you will let the matter – and possibly the feline offender – rest.

Although there is something to be said for the entertainment value of the tiny floating pirate ship, it does need a fairly large amount of water to reach its full potential, which is a distinct mark against it. Dolls and such can be played with a lot more often, and you've previously found success in gifting plush animals to friends and family, even having a long-term "lend/borrow" arrangement going with Zelda regarding a few examples of your own collection of things stuffed and squeezable – by which you mean that you lend her the toys, and she borrows them.

With that in mind, it's little wonder that you settle on the plush parrot, with its beautiful plumage – bright green in the body, running to blue along the wingtips and yellow about the head and tailfeathers – and the tiny captain's hat and eyepatch to make it very clear that this is a pirate bird.

Although while the top edge of the eyepatch is sewed to the rest of the doll's head, it can be flipped up to reveal a perfectly intact eye. You aren't sure whether that's a case of false advertising or piratical cunning…

Gained Plush Pirate Parrot
Spent $25

The pirate-y mug with the word "grog" seemingly carved into its faux wooden side is a tempting purchase, but your Dad already has a perfectly serviceable coffee mug, and when he drinks beer – which is something of a rarity these days, at least when your supernatural adventures aren't being discussed – he usually sticks with the bottle or can it came out of.

With that in mind, you figure he'd get the most use out of a t-shirt, even if it's just around the house on his days off, and end up buying a men's large that shows a cartoony image of a pirate you presume is intended to be Captain Sharktooth, sword and pistol out as he faces off against-

-wait, why is there a ninja on this shirt? Did you miss something in the exhibit?

Checking with the guy at the register, and "admitting" that you were "distracted" by some of the other displays, you learn that you didn't actually miss anything. While the Sharktooth Pirates are known to have raided the nearer parts of Japan, there is no historical evidence of them ever fighting ninjas; that said, when the shirts were being designed, the opportunity to make a joke about "the eternal struggle" was considered too good to pass up.

Gained Pirate vs. Ninja T-Shirt
Spent $25

You wonder what Kasumi or Ayane would have to say about this…?

Perhaps it's because the tale of Captain Sharktooth and his aquatic nemesis is still fresh in your mind, but this piece just commands your attention in a way none of the other options do. It IS a bit more expensive than what you got for Zelda and Dad, but you're hardly breaking the bank.

Gained Coral Shark
Spent $40

In the end, you decide to split the difference and offer to loan your friends some money if they want to purchase something for themselves.

Amy takes you up on that, having come up a little short for getting the things she was hoping to.

Cordelia says that she's covered, adding that she only left about half the spending money her parents gave her with the ninja-woman you called in to pose as her.

When he finally stops geeking out over the pirate displays and comes over, Larry thanks you for the offer, but says he's good, too.

You pay for your new history book-

Gained A History of Taiwanese Piracy
Spent $24

-and for Amy's coverage-

Spent $19

-which she promises to pay back after she gets her next allowance. Or maybe the one after that.

Once everybody has their purchases, you ask the cashier for directions to the nearest grocery that's likely to have what Mrs. Blaisdell needs to work her culinary magic – there is, incidentally, no need for you to offer to pay for that, the masters having provided some funds – after which you're off.

Nothing of note happens on the way to the store or while you're there. It takes a little searching and comparing against a list of brand names – assembled over the course of the week with some experimental baking and help from the cooks at the School, you're informed – but Lily Blaisdell finds most of what she needs to bake a very, VERY large batch of her special cookies, and at pretty reasonable prices.

While she didn't need any financial assistance, Larry's grandmother cheerfully avails herself of your aid when it comes to carrying things. As your expanded pocket is getting kind of crowded, you instead throw together a ritual casting of the Spell to Lighten Objects, making the bags more manageable – and less likely to tear, come to that.

It turns out that you do have to make one more stop to get the right sort of chocolate, but that is a sacrifice you and everybody else are perfectly willing to make-

"Nya?"

-at least until you start running into the cats.

"Is this going to happen with EVERY cat you run into from now on?" Cordelia asks, looking at the dozen-strong and slowly growing clowder padding along behind your group.

"Oh, Goddesses, I hope not," Briar exclaims.

"No, it's not," you reply firmly. "I didn't get any sort of blessing or mark from Sir Fluffy, and even if I did, I doubt its effects would mean much beyond Changdu. Maybe in the nearby villages, but not beyond that."

"Then why are they following you?"

"Well, I DID feed them a lot of delicious fish…"

Larry's grandmother finds the chocolate she wants at the second store, and from there it's back to the bus stop. While you wait for your ride to arrive, and seeing that there's nobody else waiting with your group, you go ahead and cast the Spell to Shrink Items on the chocolate; not only does this make them even easier to carry than Lighten Objects, it will also keep them from melting.

Upon your return to the School, Grandma Lily vanishes into the kitchen with the reagents for her own craft. Under different circumstances, you might be tempted to ask to assist or observe the process, but her recipe is apparently either a Blaisdell Family Secret or For Grannies Only – given how a few of the younger members of the kitchen staff are booted from the oven that Lily and her chosen assistants have claimed, you're leaning towards the latter.

You're also getting a bit of a coven vibe off of that lot, even if not all of Lily's helpers are old, women, or both…

On the one hand, you are tempted to continue living up to your titles of Good Humyan and Bringer of Fish.

On the other paw, you know that feeding strays isn't a great idea, and moreover, that Sir Fluffy isn't present to partake in your generosity.

And on the tail end, you're kind of out in the open right now, which puts certain limits on what you're willing to use magic for, particularly when it comes to spells that have such obvious after-effects as large quantities of fish appearing out of nowhere.

In the end, you decide to refrain.

This does lead to a later scene where the bus stop is being staked out by some two dozen street cats, all of them looking hopeful – or just demanding – that fish will soon be theirs, although a few expressions become simply curious when they see you shrinking the bags of chocolate chips. Still, when they notice the sound of the bus's engine rumbling nearer, the animals quickly scatter with sounds of disappointment.

Despite initial hopes, there are no cookies with dinner that evening. You suspect that's due to there not being enough ovens available to make enough for everybody to share, at least not when the meal also needs to be prepared, but it may also be a consequence of Mrs. Blaisdell wanting to do a quick test batch to make sure the local ingredients are up to snuff.

If so, those experimental cookies never leave the kitchen. You aren't sure if that's a good sign, a bad one, or just an indication that Lily is brib- paying the cooks in chocolatey goodness.

When you get up to go to Sunday morning's six o'clock breakfast, Larry's grandmother doesn't make an appearance, and a quick check on the girls' room by Briar confirms that the woman is already gone. When you arrive at the dining hall, everything seems to be the same as it's been for the rest of the week, but as the meal progresses, you start to detect the aroma of baking chocolate cookies coming from the kitchen once more. The scent draws the interest of the other early risers, and while there are still no cookies at this meal, you find yourself with high hopes for lunch!

Before that, however, you have part of a collection of ki-powered and more conventional magic items to look through. Lu-sensei joins you, partly because underage students aren't allowed into the storage building without an escort, partly to lend his fellow masters the benefit of his greater familiarity with your magic, and partly because he's curious to see what changes have been made to the collection in the decades since he departed the School of Five Elements.

As you approach the building where the items are kept – which looks like just like any other support building on the School grounds, which is to say, mundane and kind of boring – you consider the spells you'll be using. The Spell to Analyze Dweomers is a given; while its power is such that it would normally trip the School's wards, you can reduce the potency to an acceptable level by cutting down on the number of targets and using ritual-casting to muffle the signature. You'll have to re-cast it a number of times, of course, but that's a minor hassle for the sake of being a good guest.

As for the question of what other spells to cast, between your investigation of the Silbern loot and now the Changdu Museum, you've noticed that magic meant to boost your visual perception or mental faculties doesn't really accomplish anything when you're using Analyze Dweomer. That's almost certainly because the spell doesn't rely on your senses or knowledge – indeed, half the point of the magic is that it reveals information which you explicitly didn't know, specifically the intended functions, command words, and remaining charges of unfamiliar magic items – and as such, enhancing those abilities is a waste of time and energy.

That said, boosting your magical power is still beneficial, since it reduces the chances of an item's inherent power managing to resist your probes – although said odds are pretty strongly in your favor to start with, given your mastery of Divination Magic. With that in mind, did you want to cast the Spell of Eagle's Splendor before you start?

"This again?" Lu-sensei wonders, as you conjure up a Private Sanctum next to the storehouse.

"The spell that I'm going to use to look at these items isn't one hundred percent guaranteed to work, Lu-sensei," you explain, as the foggy barrier takes form. "Empowered items always have some chance to resist foreign energies, just like people do, even if it's a very small chance. I just want to perform a short ritual to focus my magic, to make sure that chance is as small as possible."

"Are you that worried about it?"

"It's more that I'm probably not going to get another chance to examine anything from this collection any time soon," you reply. "So I might as well take the extra step to ensure I get as much information as I can."

Your master considers that, and then nods. "Fair enough, just don't be in there too long. You ARE expected, after all."

Yes, it wouldn't do to keep your hosts waiting.

Stepping into the Sanctum, you begin a ritual based on the Spell of Eagle's Splendor-

"May the light of my burning will cast back the darkness of ignorance, revealing the truth to my sight!"

-pushing the magic higher in pursuit of a greater boost. Ideally, you'd double the magic's normal effectiveness, but as the ritual takes form, you realize that you aren't going to get that much of an improvement – it's closer to a fifty percent increase. Certainly better than what the normal spell could provide, and it does save you some time and energy in the casting, but still, not quite what you were hoping for.

You wonder what happened there. Limitations of a freeform ritual versus a fixed spell? Unexpected difficulty in using your own magic to boost itself? Something else?

Regardless, you apply the buff, slotting the Extend Spell Metamagic into the rite to ensure its effects last as long as you need them.

Once the spell is in place, you fire up a Ki Enhancement, adjusting the energy flow as much towards enhancing your willpower as you can. You consider using an Overload for further power, but decide to hold back there, if only to avoid contaminating the readings of your soon-to-be-cast Divination Spell with the cast-off traces of energy.

With that done, you exit your Sanctum-

"Done already?" Lu-sensei wonders.

"It was just the one spell," you reply, dismissing the short-lived fog-bank at your back.

-and enter the School's repository of items.

The front room of the storehouse isn't too large, perhaps the size of one of the offices scattered about the campus. It feels somewhat larger than that, however, due to the relative lack of furniture and decorations; aside from a counter that extends out to the sides of the front door and runs along the walls to the security door at the back of the room, there doesn't appear to be anything that's kept in here on a regular basis.

At the moment, Master Vincent is present along with one his peers and two of the instructors, and spread out on the counter-top around them are perhaps twenty different items of varying appearances: some weapons; several pieces of clothing; a few tools of mundane or arcane purpose; and odder things. Perhaps a third of these items give off the familiar signatures of arcane or divine magic, easily apparent to your Mage Sense, but the rest appear odd to your arcane awareness; it's only through the filter of your ki-based senses that you can clearly discern the energy imbued into them.

You also note that each item has a small folder set next to it, some of which look older than others.

"Records?" you ask, as you get out your scrying lens.

Master Vincent nods. "Full accounts of how- er, is that ruby?"

His counterpart and their two assistants do double-takes and join him in staring at the small device in your hand.

"Yes," you reply frankly. "You were saying?"

"…right. Full accounts of how the items were acquired, whenever possible from the individuals responsible for obtaining them, as well as whatever we've managed to learn since then, and any subsequent use made of the items themselves."

Oh? "You let people 'check things out' from the collection?" you ask.

The other master clears his throat. "Masters and senior instructors are permitted to request use of items, under various circumstances. Regular instructors and senior students are SOMETIMES granted similar clearance, but only by vote of the masters."

Ah. So in other words, you will probably not be allowed to take anything here with you when you leave.

Eh, fair enough. You'll have enough information to occupy yourself for a while as it is.

Did you want to read the existing records before scanning the associated items, or would you rather go for an unbiased approach?

You state your preference to come at this investigation with as few preconceptions as possible, and the adults in the room nod, with both of the instructors getting out notepads and pencils.

Turning your attention to the nearest item, which happens to be a knife, you ritually cast the Spell to Analyze Dweomers, Marking down its effectiveness as planned. This will enable you to inspect just four items per casting, a fraction of your usual limit, but enough to handle this entire selection in five uses of the spell. It also leaves enough freed-up arcane space for you to Extend the spell by a step, giving you sufficient time to recount your findings aloud for posterity, and even to discuss them a bit with your audience.

With that cleared up, you hold the ruby lens before your eye and get to work.

…

It takes you about half an hour to inspect the low-security portion of the School's collection. For the first few items – that dagger, a robe with some carefully mended puncture marks, a… tea service? – you alternate between using the empowered ruby lens and your Ki Sight, but it soon becomes apparent that even if the Spell to Analyze Dweomers wasn't created with the study and breakdown of ki-based effects in mind, it's good enough at the job that your own sensory skills can't really compete. You'd had some previous evidence to that effect, thanks to your examination of the Hurricane Quarterstaff from the Silbern loot, but this at least confirms those findings, and indicates that past a certain level, it doesn't really matter if you're dealing with the arcane, the divine, or ki power – energy is energy, and tends to behave in similar ways.

Gained Knowledge (Ki) C

Most of the martial gear in the room offers no special surprises, beyond the subtle differences that go along with being empowered by ki: increased accuracy; increased striking force; greater physical resilience; the usual sort of thing. There is a pair of escrima sticks that have been modified in an interesting way, one that would make them much more natural conduits for a ki adept's energies and allow the use of various techniques through the sticks, with little or no loss of energy or effectiveness. A useful thing, considering how dangerous some creatures can be to touch with one's bare hands.

"No brass knuckles?" you wonder at one point.

"Those are illegal to own in Taiwan," Master Vincent replies. "Actually," he adds, gesturing around and at the closed door behind him, "a fair amount of the weapons we keep here would be illegal for us to have, if they weren't part of the School's traditional training, and thus grandfathered in as historical and cultural artifacts. And even then, we have to get the permits renewed periodically."

"And brass knuckles weren't part of the curriculum?"

Vincent shakes his head. "Not really. They work well enough against human opponents, but against most other threats, you're better served using something with actual reach or a cutting edge, if not both."

"And their advantage of concealability is kind of moot once you figure out the Hidden Weapons trick," Lu-sensei adds.

Or when you have an expanded pocket, you think.

As for the other stuff…