WoV, Book 1, Chapter 5: Disciples of the greatest magic of all!

“Thank you for being honest,” The pack of Lalafell escorted Muur as they moved through the various corridors of the temple complex, “You see, this routine is one we have been working on for quite some time. A personal request from a highly influential noble, the idea to practice it during this meeting came to us during the morning. Your feedback will be invaluable in ensuring we live up to our reputation– and fee!”

“Indeed! However, I, Cocobuki Lolobuki, The Piercing Eye must apologize for my little ruse,” As it turned out the last one to appear had been her teacher’s actual friend. The other four were his brothers, “To hear someone claim to be my dear friend’s apprentice filled me with suspicion, and I couldn’t bring myself to cast them aside.”

“Someone claiming to be an old and very much absent friend’s something or other is one of the oldest scams, so I can hardly blame you.” Muur said with a shake of her head, ruler-straight hair flaring with the motion. 

“I am glad to know this,” Pushing open a door, the six of them found themselves back in the main temple, “Unfortunately… I must apologize for something else. I cannot teach you.”

The lizard cut off a fuck of a lot of feelings and thoughts at the pass, focusing on the immediate with a simple question, “Why?”

“I’d love nothing more than to honor my friend’s request but–” “Guildmaster!” A lalafel woman ran up to him, looking rather crossed as she waved papers in his face, “What’s the meaning of this?!”

Wait, what?

Glaring just a tiny bit, Cocobuki the Guildmaster(?) snatched the stack of paper from her hands and reviewed them, “The meaning of this, is laid out here!” Slapping a hand on the page, he pushed it back at the woman.

“I am fully capable of reading! What you’re ordering is–” “Perfectly reasonable, and has been vetted by both the council and her ladyship the Prioress,” That– that was the voice of someone that did not want to hear anything else on the subject. His tone dripped with annoyance and no small amount of anger, “The rule I am repelling was put in place by my predecessor for, dare I say, obvious reasons.”

“But–” “If you attempt to gainsay my authority one more time, I will have you demoted back to slum clearing duties. Am I clear?” “You can’t–” “Am. I. Clear?”

Cocobuki’s sole eye bored into the woman, the bandages covering the other half of his face not any more welcoming.

“...Yes.” The lady finally acquiesced, bowing her head, scurrying off.

“Good,” Watching her back, the winner of this little exchange took a deep breath, “Fundamentalists will make a move soon.”

“I shall endeavor to rip their budding rebelion asunder, and drown them in their tears of failure.” One of the other four said with a nod.

“My thanks, Cocoboha.” Sighing, the one eyed lalafell turned back to Muur, “As I had hoped to inform you before such a circus. I am, I fear, not a Void Hunter. But rather the current master of our storied order. That is the reason for which I cannot teach you the art of the arcane– not as a master would teach an apprentice at least,” He then gave her an actual bow. Not a deep one, but it wasn’t just a simple nod or a few words of acknowledgement, “I am deeply sorry I cannot fulfill the request of your master.”

“Politics and time, the worst enemies of man.” Muur sighed with a soft shake of her head as she leant on her staff. At least she assumed it was a matter of policy and time constraints more than anything else. “Who will I be assigned to, then?”

“No one,” He said curtly, “As the guildmaster, it is true that I cannot show favoritism. And that, no matter how much it pains me to say this, upholding my dear friend’s wishes would be seen as such by many. I do not trust others to be able to teach you properly–”

“Or, if he is honest and you peel away his waxed poetics,” Almost appearing out of nowhere, a tall miqo'te strolled towards the group, pulling on his pipe as he did, “His pride and sense of duty refuses to allow him to allow any sort of ‘subpar’ mage to teach you.”

“Void Hunter.” “Guildmasters.” Wait, what, were ALL five Guildmasters!?

Cocobuki and the man gave each other a nod of respect. Exhaling his smoke, he handed over his own pile of documents to the lalafell, “The reports you asked for. Nothing to report, baring the usual Risen and Bombs. Some rumblings about the Brass Blades sending a force to cull some Beastmen soon though, patrol didn’t return yesterday.”

“I see. I will give these my due attention in time. For now, I shall explain my cunning plans to this young traveler. Dismissed,” The smoker gave another nod and left, a cue followed by the rest of the brothers. Peeling away from the group, each of them found something, or someone needing their attention, conveniently allowing the guildmaster and Muur to speak in relative privacy, “This plan is as complex as it is simple. For your services rendered, I will see that a powerful focus be made for you, a ring, a bracelet, an earring– what it is matters little. Only that it shall curb your condition far better than your staff, and will not be something so simple to steal. That is the first part. The second is one that involves you far more. I suspect you already know of Eorzea’s adventurers?”

She (the fabricated memories) had dealt with people calling themselves as much after arriving on the continent. But only in passing, the majority of them seemed to just have been some sort of mercenaries and caravan guards of some kind, though some of these self proclaimed ‘adventurers’ had tried to recruit her into their party upon seeing her staff and correctly assuming that she had magical knowledge.

“...The broad strokes, just from having trudged through it.” Muur diplomatically settled on, recalling the varying responses to refusing to join groups of random strangers, and delaying her arrival to Ul’Dah more than it had already been. The fabricated memories. It had been the fabricated memories, not her.

“Then allow me to inform you that in response to the death of many of our battle-capable priests in the wake of the Calamity. Under my leadership, the guild has recently begun to allow adventurers who show some talent in the way of magicks to join our numbers,” to the very back of the temple, he climbed up the stairs on the sides of a dias made from stone and wood. Before jumping on top of the ornate desk-styled pulpit that stood at the back and sitting on its surface, grabbing some writing supplies and settling in, “Each week, hopefuls come to us to showcase their potential on Earthday. In other words, today. Only a few are taken in, I would have you be one of these few. From there, if you were to show great skill in our arts, it would be easier to assign you a proper teacher.”

“That being you.” The lizard woman hazarded, horned head tilting a fraction.

“That is my hope. Life tends to be ever so infuriating in these regards.” He grumbled under his breath.

“Alright,” The whole of her spine crackled and popped, garlands of purple lightning ringing in tune with her vertebrae as she ran a rippling shrug throughout her whole upper body. “Let’s see how big an explosion I can make.”

It’d be nice to see what she could actually do instead of what the fabricated memories said. That lightning bolt yesterday had been promising.

“Quite! Just, please wait until the banners are taken down,” He told her, pointing out a few priests removing large silk banners from the ceiling, “Last thing we require is to accidentally set them ablaze… again.”

__________________________________________________________________________

It only took fifteen minutes or so for the banners to be taken away, a time that the Guildmaster spent doing paperwork and chatting with Muur. It was completed just as he finished explaining that the adventurers that joined the guild were not expected to join the clergy– but that those that did received proper tutelage, rather than a simple, watered down, introduction to the concepts behind the Guild’s school of magic.

“Very few do take the offer,” He’d told her, “They see our art as a means to earn power, fame and money, and rarely ever wish to tie themselves to the responsibilities asked of a priest of Thal… All the better, as I’d not trust the funerary rites of a common criminal to the majority of them!”

“Nobody deserves to be left to rot or be turned into a vulture’s meal. The remains should at least be reduced to charred bones, if nothing else can be spared.” Muur agreed with a bob of her head, forcefully shoving the fabricated memories away. She’d used them where she’d had to for answering questions, but she wouldn’t accept them creeping into things like this.

She would befriend the Guildmasters as herself, not some convenient prop.

With all preparations finished, he’d then asked her to stand into the testing ground and to prepare whichever spell she felt the most comfortable with. One of his brothers returned as she stepped onto the wood, and informed her that as the first to be ‘tested’, she could take her time. Other hopefuls wouldn’t arrive until later in the morning, and it would help them get a better handle on her condition if they could see how she channeled aether through her body.

“...Saaaay, Guildmasters, is the roof fireproof or just fire-resistant?” Muur asked in the timeless leading tone of someone about to make a right and proper disaster.

“It is resistant enough.” They said in unison as they looked at the stone ceiling, then at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Okay, you said it!” The lizard grinned the smile of a dyed in the wool pyromaniac.

“I like her already!” “Indeed, my friend knew how to pick them, it seems.” As she prepared for the first proper casting of this new life, the transmigrator could hear the two lalafell whisper to each other as she wholly focused herself on the spell.

Muur breathed in, one hand choking the neck of her staff, the other held over its crystalline head. Her deathgrip on her aether, crushing and utterly subconscious, relaxed for the first time since she’d awoken in that carriage. She breathed out the smog of wildfires, thick and choking, swimming with flecks of burning red. The whole of her neck was alight, Korea’s best spice seared into every last inch as infernal light shone through her skin. 

It cracked volcanic lines across her veins, straining to escape. It gnawed at her gut, insatiably hungry. It turned her sweat to hissing steam, raw power boiling away the water in her body.

She was in pain, feverish, only barely riding the wave and hanging onto coherent thought.

She had never felt such a high.

It was a battle, directing her aether. So much was wasted, turning the heat haze around her blood red, slowly cooking her body rather than filling her staff, but barely. Just barely. She managed to keep the raging eruption directed in roughly the right direction. Her staff didn’t much appreciate it, wood smoldering under the soot and glass spitting sparks every which way. But she–“Oy! This here where we get tested for ma–”

Something she only belatedly registered as a finger poked the back of her head. Belatedly because she’d started moving the moment the idiot’d shouted from right behind her. This new body may have had enough nerve to not flinch, but her aether? 

It jumped right out of her skin.

A cacophony of seven voices shouted in fear, surprise, anger, worry and perhaps even something else as Muur’s magic slipped its leash. Wisps of uncontrolled flames burst out of the young witch, biting and nipping at not only the air, but the one that had disturbed it like some kind of overeager and aggressive mutt.

“What is wrong with–!?” “WHAT IN THAL’S NAME ARE YOU DOING!?”’ Arguing broke out between the clueless interloper and the more experienced mages, “HAVE YOU NO BRAINS!? INTERRUPTING A MAGE LIKE THIS!?”

“Wha- Hey! I didn’t know she was casting that sort of spell! I thought she was just doing a small fireball at most!”

The chatter fell to the back of Muur’s mind as she wrestled with her aether. ‘Overeager and aggressive mutt’ had the right of it. There was no malice there, it was part of her, just one that reacted far more intensely. So she breathed, deep and steady, smoothing out the flow to her staff. It wasn’t a snap of the fingers, but a couple seconds later the current had reasserted itself, drawing in the lashing discharge around her.

“‘I thought she was doing a small fireball at most’,” One of the five said in a mocking tone, “Twelves, what kind of braindead idiot adventurer are you! I’ve seen tempered with more sense than this! You never interrupt, or distract a caster!”

“I just–!” “Cost this woman her life? Why yes you would have! Luckily for you, the wards of this place, and her own experience and control, protected her! If not, she would have perished!”

Speaking of wards, gods above, were they helping. It was like a gentle hand wrapped around her aether, both in her body and the staff. Keeping it stable and much more dense than the loose mess it wanted to become.

Muur could probably pack in more into her foci, but the damn thing was incandescent orange and threatening to melt. Or explode. She’d rather not ruin her new body with a bunch of burning shrapnel.

The fireball that ripped out of her staff and screeched towards the ceiling was easily double or triple her size, taller than the elf matron and far wider. Red wrapped around a yellow core so bright it was almost white.

“Prominence.” Muur named not it, but what it was about to become as her exhale shot a lance of lightning for it. Thick as her fist and enough to make most hearts stop and everyone else piss themselves. Exactly what the doctor ordered.

Lightning aether catalyzed fire. Her spell swole like a balloon, turning a brilliant maroon as flames became plasma half a second before hitting the stone ceiling. Much like a balloon, it burst with a deafening thunderclap, the stuff of stars splattering every which way. Thick and roiling as it bit into the stone ceiling, visibly sinking into the ancient brick only for the wards to push it back. Some sort of repair system?

She didn’t much care, she was woozy from letting out that blast of hot sticky love and needed to find herself a seat while she cooled down. Her aether had left her medium rare and setting off a plasma bomb hadn’t exactly helped make the room pleasant for her.

A wave of unpleasant dizziness washed over her as she dared take a single step, making her sway and slam her staff into the ground to not fall facefirst onto the wooden boards. Her tail then had to work overtime because her treacherous meat had decided that casting that large of a spell, and making that much aether course through her, was exactly the same thing as getting up too quickly after a heavy meal.

Hopefully this was just from the incident with the Darwin Award candidate. It’d be a pain in the dick if any spells bigger than those lightning bolts she’d chucked at the lizardmen left her stumbling drunkenly.

Some polite clapping broke her out of the tangent, “Well, I would say that you’ve thoroughly shown what you are capable of.” Cocobuli declared as he hopped off of his lectern and waddled over to her. The other four lalafell continued to lay into the adventurer, a hyur wearing chainmail over a leather jerkin that shared each other’s old and beaten, yet well cared for, appearance.

“I aim to impress.” Muur offered the Guildmasters with a crooked smile, sparing a glance up at her handiwork now that the plasma had dispersed. The stone ceiling glowed dull red at the apex of her spell, but was left unblemished and undamaged as the heat quickly dissipated, leaving behind near pristine stone. The Ossuary’s wards were truly something else.

“And impressive you were dear.” An acidic voice came from just beyond her sight. The venom dripping from the words shutting down whatever the Guildmaster had been about to say, and making him stand straight as an arrow.

A plain old lady walked up the stairs, glaring at the man standing next to Muur. Unlike the robes of the other thaumaturges, hers were a sandy white, “Almost as impressive as these boys’ idiocy. What in the Twins’ name possessed you to let this go on!?” Angrily stomping towards Muur, she tore into her would-be teacher, “The poor woman was cooking herself alive, and you did nothing!”

Belatedly, said lizard realized that her throat and insides were sending her pings of pain masked by layers upon layers of familiarity and rote, “Yes, well–” Reaching the much taller woman, the elderly priestess thrust a hand out, a glass bottle filled with a clear blue liquid held in her fist, “Drink this immediately, you poor girl. You shouldn’t have to suffer for their inability to see past their noses.”

Well, Muur had hung out with an USMC doc long enough to know to just chug and make herself very small. She wondered if thaumaturges had hydration formations, but with potions.

“Just– Wait a moment please!” The man pleaded as Muur started to drink, before immediately adding, “Not the high potion, you should drink that immediately– But before you lay all blame upon us, please let me explain priestess!”

“I am all ears,” She told him as she crossed her arms together, “I am certain your justification will be enlightening!” In the back, the adventurer gave a small snort of amusement. The woman clearly heard it as she whipped her head in his direction and fixed him with a look capable of setting stone on fire, “Don’t think you are not to blame either. I have heard you arguing that ‘She was fine’, I will see to you after this.”

The man shrunk in on himself. Whether it was from fear, or the decency of being ashamed, Muur couldn’t tell, “Her condition was known to us. Yes,” Cocobuki said as a way to bring people’s attention back to him. Based on this Mamane’s eyes narrowing at him. This may have been a mistake, “But! Neither me, nor my brothers, thought it so… severe. By the time she had begun to cast her magicks, it was already too late. True as it is that we entreated her to push herself as hard as she could. None amongst us thought her so capable– or reckless. We believed that, at most, she would perform as well as a gifted initiate. Not, as she showed us, as well as a fully fledged Thaumaturge.”

“So you would put the blame on her,” The elder sniped in between two of the man’s breaths, “is that your defense?” 

“What? No!” He looked genuinely hurt by the sudden insinuation, ”We would never!”

“So you say, and yet. You’ve taught a child with a condition as dangerous as hers magic!” she blew up, “A condition that–” “We did not teach her anything!”

His own shout took the sale out of her sail, and left her perplexed, “I would have hoped that you’d have some respect for me and my brothers. At least not to think we would be this foolish! Had she come to us knowing nothing. We would have taken her on as a temple clerk, that she might earn her keep and buy the medicine required to ensure her sickness would be controlled. But we would have never had her taken such a test.”

“If not you, then who?” she asked, scanning the almost empty temple.

“Gankma sent her my way,” With a sad sigh, the guildmaster reached into his robes and took out the golden medallion that had belonged to the Bangaa, “In her own words. She met him on the road during her journey to find a cure for her ailment. He took her under his wing and sought to teach her what he could to mitigate it. We have found no lies in these words.”

“But, he couldn’t teach her. Not fully,” she said with her own sigh, “Taken too soon for her to be able to pass down the most important lessons. And knowing how eager you brothers can be, you neglected to ask just how much he’d taught her,” The guildmaster simply offered a nod, “Fine. You have earned yourself a stay of execution. If only because learning of the death of one’s closest friend would lead anyone to making a mistake…”

“He may still be alive?” Muur interceded quietly, tail curling and uncurling nervously as she tapped into her fabricated memories, “He told me he was on his way to Doma, and it’d be too dangerous for me to come along.”