The Nexus Tavern (O//A)

[Kovahl Norzaar Amadan]

Hriob blinks in mild surprise, then grins sheepishly. The pillar reforms as he comments lightly: "I could have just taken the dust off you if that was all... I suppose it would be a good idea for you to practice a bit here though, if only to work on your force output."

He shakes his head lightly at his own weakness, and uses TK to hand her a glass of chilled water from the kitchen. "I'd help you more actively, but I'm still recovering a bit; overexerted myself on a new spell of my own." He sighs, bringing a pot of blackberry sage tea to boil in the background with his TK.

I might be a bit longer here then... I hope Diane doesn't think ill of me for this...

[Astra_Kyste]

Lily looks at Hriob. "I guess your right. But I didn't want it falling on me." She says and tries again. This time it doesn't crack as much. So she moves to a new spot and tries again finally not breaking it at all. "I'm glad you're here. And I'm glad your spells go well. I think that wizard left a detail out of the spell. That's where I've been. I thought some people don't notice me when I'm tiny. So I commissioned a spell that allows me to switch." She wasn't breaking the pillars anymore but she was still lifting them. "Can we switch to something easier to break than these pillars?"

[Kovahl Norzaar Amadan]

"Sure... concrete is one thing, but depending on the type bedrock, I might have a better idea." Using his power to float over to the room, he focuses, and changes the room with his Key. Each pillar ripples, turned from concrete to pure Sandstone, same as some of the crypts he had been in and ruins he had seen. "This might be a better challenge... they won't be quite as heavy, but much easier to break. Sandstone is very brittle in the wrong hands, too much pressure and they turn back into the sand they once were." He smiles warmly, then addresses her earlier comment on his spell. "As for my new technique... I may be wrong in calling it a 'Spell'... it honestly seems more inborn than that, but..." He sighs "I'm not really sure what to make of it still. The cost isn't any real energy, but it strains my mind, body, and soul to use like that."

[Astra_Kyste]

Lily nods to Hriob. "I don't really know about those kinds of things. Even that spell was just writing it into my body as an ability to tell the truth. Soul?" She asks lingering on that word. "Soul." She repeated and moved to the first block turning it to sand followed by turning the next one mostly to sand. "With these large objects it's easy to learn major control. I guess I'll get it fine tuned later."

[Kovahl Norzaar Amadan]

Hriob nods. "Glad I could help..." He keeps himself from frowning at a thought that accompanies the comment: last time I tried to help, I got turned away with a badly wounded leg for my troubles... at least that's almost fully healed now.

Instead, he keeps her company as she works on controlling her new-found colossal strength. "I'm sure you know that almost all users of magic, living, dead, and everything in-between, have one or more elemental aspects they embody or use better than others. I think yours might be Wind, possibly Lightning as a secondary, given how you teleport and how you used that spell... and in that we have great similarities. However, I only gained Wind and Lightning recently for my own, in part thanks to my swords and a regimen of tonics and potions at Caleb's and Ran's behest. Can you guess my original Element, perhaps?"

He smiles as he talks: this is not only a good way to keep her company, but multitasking is something she needs to learn to manage her strength with... and he was curious how intuitive and insightful she was. She obviously is smart... but that alone doesn't mean she's good at everything...

[Astra_Kyste]

"I didn't learn magic. The tele-porting is written into me. I was built with it. I've never looked through a magic book." Lily confessed. She went to the now reformed block and lifted it without most of turning to sand. A fourth time and it was lifted without even a grain of sand falling. "That spell ripped me open and wrote it into me. I doesn't take much power to change. I guess. I haven't thought much about learning magic. It was always placed into me. I guess I wouldn't hurt to try something new." She smiled and sat the block down gently and turned towards him.

[Kovahl Norzaar Amadan]

Hriob smiles, but nods apologetically. "Sorry... I keep forgetting not to assume the little details like that. I can teach you what I know... but I don't presume to be an expert. I know a lot about a few unique and unconnected disciplines; some magical, some not so much. However, most of that is self-taught, so you'd probably be best with a more seasoned teacher. Magic in general, though... I can help with the basics better than most." A ripple appears over his hand, and when it fades after a split second he has a small crystal floating over it: much like quartz, but with a purplish-blue hue and a sense of luminescence about it. "Your abilities, from what I've seen," here he taps the side of his head by his brow as his eyes glow again disconcertingly Indigo for a split second, "are basically pre-set spells... you handle magic just like any other sorcerer, but the efficiency and effect is amplified by it being enchanted into your being at the cost of limiting what you can do with it severely. That doesn't mean you can't learn magic normally on the side, it just will be, probably, much more difficult and less efficient than your pre-set abilities... worst case you will need a new 'general enchantment' to allow for that properly without hurting yourself, but I don't think that will be necessary for you. Even then, though... those spells can probably be translated into new abilities enchanted into your being if you wish. It will take a lot of research on my part to translate them over properly, and I may want to meet the wizards who helped you to do it properly enough to be safe for certain, but I see no reason why you can't try out a spell as a spell first, to see if it would serve as an ability you want to embed in your body."

He puts the crystal in the air in front of him, as if setting it on a table, and pulls his Tome from his room with another ripple. "I can tell you what my original element is, if you want. It might help explain a few things about me you might have been curious about."

[Astra_Kyste]

Lily thinks it over for a few moments to let everything sink in. "Hmm. The basics you're good at. Sure. I'd like to learn the basics from you. I can take things from there if you don't mind. As for you writing some spell into me or learning how to do it. Well. It's embarrassing and you probably don't have the time. I went to a homunculi builder and had him help me." It wasn't that she didn't mind him wanting to learn how to write into her or she didn't trust his ability. It was what was needed for some one beyond the creator to be able that embarrassed her. She wouldn't see the builder again so she didn't mind him. But living with Hriob do that is just too much.

[Kovahl Norzaar Amadan]

Hriob cocks his head to the side as he takes this in. "Well, time is something I can manage well enough... but if it's uncomfortable for you I won't push that. This is all at your pace anyways." He floats the crystal over to her telekinetically, as it starts to glow perceptibly with energy. "This crystal is a good starter: mages in many worlds use items like this 'soulgem' to store excess power for spells outside their body, and can tap into them when needed for that extra boost when they need it. If you can tap into it, that's one good step, since this is pure energy... no elements to worry about, no spells or enchantments to muck around with yet."

Using the button for the room, he makes a larger column of the same kind of crystal in front of the other pillars of sandstone. Other preparations drift through his head as he begins doing something he never thought he'd ever do in his lifetime: teach.

[Astra_Kyste]

Lily looks at the gem. "So I need to draw in the power from this. Or put power into?" She asked and then touched the gem while trying to focus power to do the later of the two. Nothing. Then she thought about the tele-porting how it felt right before she did so. "So just do that without doing it but instead put that feeling of energy into the crystal." As she said she let it all into the crystal and just watched it. "Hmm. Well I think I did it. Let me see about reverse." She said taking energy from the crystal. All the energy she gave it and more than enough for it dim but not go out. "Did it work both ways?" She asked uncertain of the feeling. She felt more energy around her but that was all.

[Kovahl Norzaar Amadan]

"You have the gist of it... you've figured out how to move energy in and out of the crystal just fine, at least." Hriob's eyes are glowing Indigo, but by now the sun had just barely started to rise outside, so it isn't as striking as it was a few minutes ago. "I would warn you not to completely drain that crystal if you can help it, however... a dry soul gem of this sort tends to act like a power vacuum when completely devoid of energy, and something of that size might not kill you, but it would seriously hurt your spirit and weaken your innate reserves of energy until you recover. Any smaller and it wouldn't have enough capacity to be a good demonstration tool, but any larger and it could have been strong enough to suck your soul out of your body had you drawn too much from it... any 'convenience' in magic tends to have costs or risks involved that make things less a matter of amassing as many useful trinkets as possible, and more a case of putting self-improvement and hard work first."

He speaks from much experience... maybe not enough years to suit a true master mage's requirements, but what years he had spent of his life had been almost nothing but taking in experiences of all kinds, learning as much as he could about his skills and the worlds around him, and diligent self-application of his time and effort to honestly better himself. A grin cracks on his face as he remembers a very young Hriob, no older than five, being taught by a not-yet bearded Herr Adalbert about what magic Truly was.

I wonder what you would say, you who I thought of as my favorite teacher way back before that world was taken from me. I wonder what you would say to me now, in the presence of such exotic people and powers, and so very different than anything you might have thought possible...

An emotion very alien to his spirit appears in Hriob's heart: the pride of someone who has reached the level of his predecessor... perhaps it was premature of him to feel that way, but this was a milestone of his life he thought was out of reach since he lost his home.

[Astra_Kyste]

"Hm. So don't drain it huh. OK." Lily said and went to the large crystal and did about the same only without focusing on tele-porting. It began to shine brightly before Lily fell backwards from using too much of her energy. She wasn't dead just too weak to continue for the moment. Her eyes were unresponsive and she didn't move. Her arms were still out stretched as if holding onto the crystal. Though her skin was still warm and she did have plenty of life. It was just a matter of time before she came to.

[Kovahl Norzaar Amadan]

"Oh dear... I hope this is a good example for her in the future. I hadn't expected her to try that all at once, the maximum capacity on that is roughly three times her typical amount." Muttering absent-mindedly, he puts his hand on her forehead for a moment, and then through that contact pushes a great deal of energy into her directly, enough to restore her to her maximum in the span of five seconds. He then stands back up, eyes closed and taking steady, controlled breaths. The air around him seems to perceptibly darken and chill as he does so... hinting at his true nature ever so slightly.

[Astra_Kyste]

The energy from Hriob enters her body and then is released. She gained consciousness enough to deflect it away from him. Her body rejected some of it. The excess shooting into the sandstone in the form of lightning that was dark as obsidian. "Thank you. But you didn't have to." Some of the sand was molten while in the center of the strike there was nothing but a clean hole. "I was just resting." She said not paying attention to the slowly cooling molten droplets of sand. "Please don't take it the wrong way. It was just an overflow so the rest went." She said and looked at the sandstone.

[Kovahl Norzaar Amadan]

Within another minute the air stabilized back to normal, and Hriob opens his eyes with an apologetic smile. "Sorry about that, I hadn't expected you to go that far... I would have taken that lightning bolt in harmlessly had you not re-directed it. I had to absorb a fair deal of energy from the magic supporting the Tavern to make up for that. Maybe now you can guess...? But if you don't that's fine too."

He walks over to the fire and sits down again, bringing a cup of blackberry sage tea to his hand with TK as he does, now that it had steeped properly. A necklace setting appears in front of Lily in mid-air, along with the now brightly-glowing crystal. "I added some more power to that crystal for you, so I think it is near half capacity. Since you regenerate at a set pace I suggest you only fill it up a little more every so often so you don't over-exert yourself again, and keep it on your person or nearby. It should effectively expand your energy limits a few times over once its fully charged... when it is, hopefully I'll be back and I or Caleb can take you to the next step."

He returns to waiting for Caleb, or for his leg to finish recovering so he can rejoin Diane. The fire seems to flicker near him more than elsewhere; embers seeming to fly out of it only to get drawn to his skin where they fade into nothingness.

Almost as if energy wanted to be drawn to him, fall into him.