Warrior of the Void Book 1, Chapter 37

Once her breakfast was finished, Muur was left without much to do. No one came to her with a list of chores, nor did any of the various members of the priesthood that she knew asked her to come with them, or for her help.

Which meant it was as good a time as any to go get her hands on some tea and scones and track down the Warden for a talk. The whole meditation business had ended up a bust given what happened with it every single time, so she needed to look into other ways to protect her soul and mind.

With that goal in mind, she made for the Ossuary’s entrance– taking care to check that she wouldn’t disturb any sort of ongoing prayer as she entered. Only to find that today was apparently one of the try-out days, with a small crowd of a dozen or so adventurers waiting for their chance to show off their skills at spell-slinging under the bored, disinterested gaze of one of the Coco-brothers.

Before she could catch his attention, it was hers that was caught. Quite pleasantly so, courtesy of the cute catgirl she was now tentatively dating waving at her excitedly from the sides. Muur nearly hollered her name happily, before remembering the kind of retribution Mamane would bring on her head if she did.

“Hey,” Her girlfriend called out as Muur approached, “How was your night? Not the best I'm guessing?”

“More funky nightmares. Walk and talk?” The lizard wizard asked with a tilt of her head.

“Walking's good, because I came to find you to–” Just as she was pushing herself off of the wall she had been leaning on, Kofle glanced at the newest would-be wizard and winced, “–Oh, that's just gonna–” A quiet pop, followed by a loud yelp of pain happened before she could even finish her sentence, “–Blow up in their face.”

More evidence that Kofle had been a spellcaster in the past, but they had promised not to pry into each other’s backgrounds, so Muur just got on with the walking, “I don’t think you’re about to sweep me off my feet for a date in return for yesterday, so… picking up the staff, then?”

“Hm? Yes, but also not really? Was gonna drag you to a few quests so we could practice working together,” Kofle told her as she crossed into the shaded city streets, “But a runner dropped the staff off in the Quicksands just as I was leaving, how’d you know?”

“Gut feeling, plus it has been a fair few days since we placed the commission.” Muur replied with an easy shrug.

“It's been three days, Muur,” Her friend said incredulously, “Usually this sort of work takes a week at the very least. Heck, I wasn't expecting it for at least another week and a half!”

“...Gods, it feels like three weeks instead of three days.” The lizard woman groaned in despair, looking back at all the nonsense piled up on her plate in that tiny period of time.

“Tell me about it,” Her friend complained, patting Muur’s shoulder while her eyes stared off into space, “Sometimes, a single week feels like it’s lasted for years.” 

Pushing open the doors to the Quicksands, her tail gripped her girlfriend’s own. Using it as a lead, the cat woman quickly guided her horny companion up a small flight of stairs in the back and through a few corridors before unlocking a door and waving her inside.

“Your room?” Muur asked with a teasing curl of her lips as she obliged.

“Yep! Best place a hundred and fifty gil a night can rent you.” Sure enough, the room was quite spacious, more so than Muur’s own at the Ossuary, and it actually enjoyed the presence of natural light thanks to three glassless windows set into an alcove opposite to the door.

They not only allowed light in, but also the cool morning air, making standing in the room quite refreshing. Off to the right of the windows, Kofle’s entire kit - sword, shield, armour and all - was leaning against the rounded section of the walls that connected the alcove to the wider perimeter. Interestingly, the entire place was nearly devoid of any sort of furniture. There was, of course, a bed. But Muur only saw three others: a dresser and a small chest-high armoire off to the right, as well as a small desk that looked to be more meant for Lalafels than any other race.

At least until a quick glance to the walls on both sides of the entrance revealed a much larger dresser and a surprisingly well stocked bookshelf on the right and left respectively. Both were worked into the walls themselves. 

“Anyway, make yourself at home,” stepping in the dresser’s direction, Kofle yanked its heavy wooden doors open, “Gimme a moment to bring the staff out. Hid it in there, just in case.”

“Appreciated.” Muur said as she took a seat at the edge of the bed for lack of any chairs that could properly fit her fat ass, her tail idly smoothing out the sheets.

Speaking of asses… She had a magnificent view of her friend’s as she leaned into the dresser, which made up for last night’s visions all on its own. “There’s a few jobs that I’ve put aside so you can test your whacking stick. Nothing major though,” Stepping back into view, Kofle closed one door with a free hand, before closing the other with a small hip check, “And there it is.”

On her other hand was the staff– or so Muur guessed, seeing as it was wrapped in a heavy, black woolen blanket with both ends tied close with some yellow string. Giving it a little spin, she handed it over to the lizard wizard.

Just by grabbing it, Muur could tell that it was one hell of a kneecapping stick. The fabric it was wrapped in wasn't light– in fact it was heavy and high quality enough it'd probably make for a good blanket by itself. But the package had a weight to it that only metal could have. All in all, she would probably put it at about five kilos, easy.

She really couldn’t help her toothy grin as she unwrapped it.

The first thing that greeted her as she undid the string was a large violet gem, framed by numerous flanges as thick as her pinkies. The metal looked like blue tinted steel, but for a reason she couldn't quite figure out seemed to almost shimmer in the sunlight. Some quirk of mythril, she’d bet.

What got the most scrutiny from her was the crystal, her nails rap-tap-tapping against it and the metal holding it in place, getting a feel for how solid it was. She would rather the core of the focusing apparatus that was a staff like this didn’t crack on her, for all she was pretty sure that the artisans who made this would rather throw themselves off of Ul’dah’s ravine than make something so shoddy.

The gem gave her a little zap for her trouble. As if it was warning her not to mess with it, or else. It startled a chuckle out of Muur, nothing but delighted her weapon had some bite to it.

“Oh, that's a… I don't actually know that cut for a crystal. It's way rounder than anything I've seen before…” Her comment got Muur to look a bit closer at the amethyst coloured foci. Sure enough, rather than a proper sphere, it was faceted. But each facet was small enough that it lost itself in the larger whole, making it look smooth at a distance.

The other thing she realised was that in spite of its looks and how it tasted like fresh ozone on her tongue, it didn't actually have that much Lightning aspected aether in it. That first shock was probably the best it could deliver, and it'd been about on the level of an electric fence, which wasn't exactly going to win her a fight.

Gently, she let her aether flow from her hand to the metal to the crystal, unaspected at first. As if she was trying to cast Scathe. Only to find that the process was sluggish, like she was trying to push a hand through some kind of underbrush, or half a dozen heavy curtains. When her aether did reach the gem though, the mock up spell snapped into place quickly and grey, or maybe just colourless, strands of stuff formed within the crystal.

“Ah, right, the electrum core.” Muur muttered to herself, sliding her hands down the shaft until she found a section covered in tiny bumps for better grip, the distinctive burnished gold of electrum peeking through the mythril. This time, when she fed in her aether, it surged upwards. If she were to keep in with the previous analogy, rather than going through an underbrush, she'd taken two steps to the side and found a narrow path that cut through the foliage with no issues.

It did still feel a smidge sluggish, a quarter of a second off compared to what she knew her aether should be moving like, “You’ll get used to it,” Kofle must have read her face, because she sat down next to her and patted her shoulder, “Getting a new staff always takes a bit of getting used to it. Almost lost my tail to a cure that was juuuuuust that tiny bit too slow because our healer upgraded her staff. It's a thing called… spiritbond? I think. In Miqo’te culture it's called ‘Communing with the soul of the inanimate’.”

“Not too far from ‘conquering the Yol’, I suppose. Just way less blood and wrestling.” Muur commented as she flipped through the memories of this body and came up empty beyond that and some horse stuff that Eorzeans wouldn’t really get.

“I’ve no idea what those are,” Kofle quickly said in response before pushing off the bed. 

“Imagine a Chocobo thrice the usual size, with big strong wings and the temperament of a pissed off Voidsent. The best of the Au’Ra use them as war-mounts instead of horses.” Muur chuckled as she pulled herself to her feet with help of her brand new staff, which made a deeply satisfying THUNK against the floor.

“No idea what horses are either!” The cat woman declared with a chuckle, “What manner of fantastic and wondrous beings they must be– Also, you’ve not seen a wild Chocobo yet. Those things get huge, trust me. In any case, here’s the jobs I’ve picked out,” Sauntering to the desk, she pulled up three request slips, “They’re fairly simple, brainless and inglorious: caravan escorts,” Handing one to Muur, and nodding at the lizard wizard’s instant grimace, she rolled her eyes with a sigh, “Yeah, yeah, ‘Escorts are boring and terrible! We just walk around doing absolutely nothing and it’s boring and dumb!’ –Well, miss mage. I’ll have you know you’ll be sitting pretty in one of the carts!” She grumbled accusingly, “Also, I figured we’d both appreciate getting away from drama and other nonsense with a low stake, riskless job. The owner of said caravans is one of the EATC’s and Concern’s affiliates. So we won’t be dealing with any clever sod thinking they can make a quick coin robbing us, or the Brass Blade’s ‘protection fees’. You’ll still get to sling spells at critters and maybe the odd Bomb, but in terms of having to do stuff?”

“Twiddling our thumbs, or maybe putting them in more interesting places.” Muur chuckled dirtily, “Aye, fair enough. Sorry, just have some… colorful memories of escort targets just about throwing themselves into the swords of bandits the second you look away from them.”

“You’ll find that’s the single best way to break the ice when talking to experienced adventurers. We all have a story of that one dumb fuck. Moving on…” Walking over to it, she grabbed a rugged notebook from her pack and plucked a map from its confines, “We’d start here–” She said, sitting back down next to Muur and tapping on a spot on the map. It was a fair way away from Ul’dah, but still well within sight of its walls. Something of it caught the Au’Ra’s eye though, its name, “–by meeting with the first caravan, then we move north. To the town of Horizon. It’s a small-ish mining and trading town. Vesper Bay, Ul’dah’s proper port town, is a bit further to the northwest, while the Copperbell mines are directly to the east, up a steep hill. First job would leave us at Horizon, any question so far?”

“Please tell me ‘Scorpion’s Crossing’ doesn’t mean what I think it does.” Muur groaned softly, already seeing the writing on the wall crystal clear. She knew what their luck was like.

“Hm? Oh–! No it doesn’t,” The cat quickly said, taking a full second to process what was worrying Muur, “Not if they want their kneecaps intact and their crime ring left alone. As prevalent as they are, the crossing is quite literally the single biggest trade depot for all of Ul’dah. If nothing changed from the last time I was around… something along the lines of seventy or so percent of all trade comes to and goes from it. If they tried to muscle in on it and stir up trouble there? They’d have the EATC preferred problem solvers knocking at their door in minutes– and I’m not talking about the Blades. When a syndicate wants to make problems go away, they call on realm renowned adventurers. Rumor has it that Lolorito has ‘Meteor’s Breakers’ at his beck and call– they’re veterans of The Fall and Voidsent Purges.”

“Ah, yes, the troubleshooters who shoot trouble very dead.” Muur chuckled as she stretched languidly, the motion rippling from her neck to the tip of her tail, “Alright, let’s go. We can walk and talk.”