RavensDagger

  Chapter Three - No Questions

  49th Day of Spring - Year 1758 of the Goldehe Sapphire O

  She sat between her panions, though remainied wasn't an easy affair. She cked a posterior to sit upon, and so the back of her... body rested directly upon the wooden bench they'd been assigo that m.

  The curved wooden barrel that was her torso had a tendency to roll slightly, and so she was holding herself ih her legs caught on the legs of the table. Fortunately, the table was bolted to the floor.

  The three of them were in the ship's mess, a rge but narrow room with three long tables fnked on all sides by behe kit was just further in, and an elderly man was tending to something oove.

  The sailors had e for their m meals a already. They had beehe whole time, but other than one or two inquisitive questions, they'd bee alone. Not being able to talk was... surprisingly frustrating.

  She felt like she had a lot to say, but her ability to unicate was rendered down to simple nods and shakes of the head, with perhaps a gesture or two.

  The two puppets o her were in a simir position.

  She khat one of them was Unit One, and the other Unit Two, but those names felt far too weak. She'd taken to calling them Red and Blue. The barrels around their chests had the faded remains of paint in those same colours. Her own had a bit of green.

  She wondered what her chest had been, before it was turned into the receptacle for her very being.

  A woman stepped into the mess, the same mage she recalled seeing at the moment of her creation. The woman wore long, darkly coloured robes that were open at the front to reveal well-tailored but otherwise simple clothes. The only thing of true note in her clothing was a sort of jousting shield over the right side of her chest. It was held in pce by a few leather straps. It was a small kite-shield, no wider than a handspan and covered in intricate carvings of a blue dragon ed around a siree.

  She had no idea what that meant, but the symbology seemed important.

  "Ah, you're here," the woman said. She hen sat herself down across from the puppets. The mage gnced around the room to catch sight of any eavesdroppers, then she reached doulled a small satchel onto the table. "Magus Maldrak has asked me to guide the three of you through some basic lessons. I find that this is a difficult thing to be asked to do. I've avoided teag, though I did participate in some group projects at the academy I attended." She leaned back a little, eyeing the three of them. "I've never had students with so little base knowledge."

  Shrugging, the magus reached into the satchel and started to pull out a few items.

  "Magus Maldrak had two lessons he wanted me to impart. The first about the location we will soon be arriving at, the sed about the are arts."

  The blue puppet shifted with a cck of wood on wood.

  The woman looked up, then smiled. "Ied, are you? Magus Maldrak didn't have much to say about who you were before, or who you might have been. But I imagihat anyone who has delved deeply enough into the are will have some amount of that delve marked upon their very souls. Perhaps you were some minor practitioner before? Ah, it matters little. Let's begin with this."

  She pulled out a small tube made of some sort of pressed tin with a cap on the end. Unscrewing the cap revealed a rolled up piece of thick part that the magus pced upoable. She ran her hand over it, ying it out ft.

  It .

  "Do you know how to read maps?" she asked.

  The puppets took a moment to reply, but eventually all three nodded. She wasn't sure how she knew, but she did. It was simir to knowing how to read, she supposed. It might have been the same with knowledge of how to move, but this new body was joirangely and banced incorrectly.

  "Hmm, that won't do. Put your hands oable. Left hand is nht hand is yes," the magus instructed.

  The puppets all pced their hands oable, though it took a moment.

  She didn't like looking at hers. They were ugly things.

  Their palms were all puck-shaped disks of wood, obviously hollow oerior so that the meisms that trolled their individual fingers had a pce to fit. They had three fingers on each hand, and a thumb that could pin and out. The fingers were only articuted at their middle, unlike a human hand which had a sed joihe end. Grabbing anything was a challenge, one only made harder by the ck of skin.

  "So, do you know how to read maps?" she asked.

  All of them raised their right hands.

  Then the green-barreled puppet brought her hand even higher up and pointed as best she could at the Magus.

  The woman blihen her brow knit together. "Is this a misuanding?" she asked. "Or are y to ask a question?"

  She lowered her hand onto the table, then raised it back up.

  "That's a yes. I 't imagine disc what your question is when all I have to work with is a binary would be easy," she said. "Is it a question about the lesson, or is it a personal question?"

  The green puppet tapped the table twice.

  "The tter. About me?"

  She raised her right hand.

  "Well, that narrows it down somewhat. Does it pertain to the lesson?"

  She raised her left.

  "In that case, it matters little, does it? You've lost my i. From here on out, only raise your hands to answer questions I may pose, uood?"

  Relutly, she raised her right hand.

  "Hmph, very well. Keep in mind that you will soon have the ability to speak. We 't expect you to carry out the Magus's will without being able to unicate. What use is there in a scout that 't rey what they've discovered? In any case, this map is of the Yellowfield region of Draya Calyrex."

  The map pictured a rge region that featured several pteaus and an in-nd ke of some det proportions near its middle. The shore stretched on for some ways o an area marked out as the Sapphire O. There were markers for several settlements on the map, including a rge one along the shore and more deeper within. These were usually along the sides e rivers that seemed to flow down along the length of the pteaus in the region.

  "This area is the one where we will be making our ndfall. It's our hope that the Yellowfields will be the area least impacted by the dragonpgue." She tapped a part of the shoreline some distance away from the city along the coast. "This is where Magus Maldrak intends for us to stop."

  The puppets all leaned in a little closer, their eyes clig down as far as they could go to better observe the map.

  "This is the town of Shorefarm. It's a small, uhy settlement that housed some few hundred peasants and was ruled over by a lesser lordling. I suspect that your task on making it to nd will be to clear the town and its surroundings of any threats."

  She allowed them to stare for a moment longer. Shorefarm seemed like little more than a blip on the map, not something that drew much attention.

  "We don't know what to expe arrival, but... if there are any survivors, they will have been maddened by grief. It is safe to say that little humanity will remain amongst them. I believe that your primary task will be seg the docks and seaside vilge o Shorefarm, as well as a local mine."

  She rerolled the map suddenly and tucked it away.

  "Others will cover the details better than I . I am an arist, not a tacti. What I do know, and what I io teach you today, is magic."

  She pulled out two small objects from her satchel and pced them oable. One was a ring, made of a golden material and created in the likeness of a coiling dragon. The other was a short stick of carefully carved wood.

  "There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of magic. These are the are arts and the draic arts. I am a Magus, and am therefore an are wizard. The magic I practice draws from both the power within myself, and the raw essence of the world arouhis is a limited resource that only repleself slowly. Are Wizardry is a structured, intellectual pursuit of magic, relying on study, discipline, and the manipution of universal ws. Practitioners draw power from the world itself, weaving plex spells through the use of symbols, formus, and rituals. This magic is detached from the nd's draic history, instead fog on timeless principles that govery."

  She flicked the little wand, and a sparkle of bluish lights appeared on its end and fluttered through the air.

  "Wizards spend years perfeg their craft, and their power lies in their ability to adapt and innovate. They wield tools like grimoires, staffs, and magical artifacts to el their energy, relying on precise intations and well-crafted spells. This form of magic is often seen as , elegant, aile, in trast to the raw, instinctual nature on affinity magic."

  She picked up the ri. "Draic magic, on affinity magic, is a primal and deeply personal form of power, drawn from the lingering essence of the great dragons that once ruled the nd. Each dragon's affinity—whether fire, frost, storm, shadow, or another force of nature—serves as a unique wellspring of magic. Practitioap into these energies through a rites, meditations, or by invoking the dragon's name in their spells. More often than not, they need access to the actual essence of that drago food grown froilized soil or a discarded scale piece or something that the dragoheir essence upon."

  She raised the ring and frowned deeply for some time before a tiny spurt of fme came out of the dragon's mouth. It was no lohan a fiip, and flickered like a dle in the wind.

  "This magic doesn't require actual worship but relies on an uanding of the dragon's essend a willio align oneself with its raw power. Those who truly revere a dragon or its ideals might find their magic amplified, but eveics wield this force by eling it through relics, bloodlines, or sites of draic significe. This magic often has a visceral, elemental quality, and the caster's body bear subtle marks of the dragon's influence, like glowing veins or scaled skin. This magi't more versatile than a wizard's... but it is undeniably more powerful with signifitly less effort necessary to achieve greater power."

  The woman g them all.

  "Any questions?"

  Three right hands rose.

  "Ah... well, these will have to wait. I'm a busy woman and I don't have time to py games. I've done as Maldrak asked, and you'll have to be satisfied with that."

  ***