“Oh, I remember it now! It was something like, ‘PRIMEVAL OF ICE, I BESEECH THEE’—”
“Alright, that’s enough of that!” she yelled, shoving me to the side and stealing the quill and ink out of my hands. “What else did you have in mind?”
I took a few seconds to regain my composure, then sat back against the table and looked over the mostly bare signboard. “Well, Val prayed to the Light Primeval when she invoked her magic, and it let her disguise her armor and turn invisible. That would definitely be useful.” Turning to the objects behind me, I picked up the diamond orb I had taken from Solette during our mission in Attetsia. “Solette prayed to the Primeval of Darkness when she took away our voices. I don’t see how those things connect at all, but it’s worth investigating.”
Lia nodded as she scratched down the notes. “The rest of these are pretty straightforward, I think. I’m a lot more interested in this one,” she said, tapping the first empty sheet in the “mana manipulation” column. “What else do we have to learn about this?”
“Oh, there’s so many possibilities!” I said excitedly. “What sort of objects can you store mana in? Can it be any object? If so, does the material you’re storing the mana in affect how much it can hold or how fast the mana can flow through it? Is there even a limit to how much energy can be stored in a single object? What about—”
“Hey, slow down! I can’t write that fast,” she yelled, laughing at my enthusiasm. “You were the one telling me we don’t need to rush anymore, right?”
“Sorry, you’re right,” I said, looking away. “Some of this stuff has been bouncing around in my head since our time in the dungeon. I never really thought I’d have a chance to study all of it.”
The room fell silent apart from the scratching of her quill as she caught up with my excited ramblings. “Okay. What next?” she asked.
“I think our Detection could use some work,” I said, keeping my enthusiasm in check. “For starters, we can only see things that are touching the ground, and only when we’re touching the ground as well. The ability to hear what we’re seeing through Detection would be a huge boon, as well.” She nodded as our list of notes grew longer. “Communication in general is something we should look into. You could also add...no, actually, just add telepathy to the miscellaneous column.”
She wrote the word, then turned to me with a confused look. “What’s telepathy?”
“It’s the ability to communicate with just your mind.”
A smirk curled her lips as she raised one eyebrow. You mean like this? I heard her voice clearly in my head, in spite of the fact that her mouth never moved.
I, uhm...yes. Exactly like this. We both laughed as I gave my answer in turn. Although we had never discussed it or purposely practiced the ability, the connection we shared through our constant meditations had clearly developed into a much more powerful tool than I had realized. “However,” I continued out loud, “I don’t know if this would work for anybody apart from the two of us. I guess that’s something we’ll want to test with Marin once you start your magic training.”
Lia’s eyebrows tightened. “Oh, about that. I was hoping that when the time comes, you could, erm, ‘turn on’ Marin’s mana,” she said quietly. “I don’t really know how that works, and I don’t want to...mess anything up. Or hurt her.”
Her concern was clear in her wavering voice, and I stepped forward to give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Of course I’ll help. When were you planning on introducing her to magic?”
“Tonight,” she answered, more confidently. “I thought it would be a good idea to get her training started in every field as soon as possible. We’ll do stances and sword drills in the early afternoon, then set up a workout regimen before dinner, and finish the night with meditation practice. Seeing as she’ll probably fall asleep as soon as her mana is activated, I figure it should be the last thing we do,” she laughed.
“You’ll probably have to carry her back to your parents’ house.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” she said with a grin. “You know, I’m actually feeling excited about training Marin now. I think it’ll be fun.” Her eyes unfocused as she clearly began to run through her plans for the afternoon, but she shook her head after a few moments of daydreaming. “Sorry, we were doing something. What’s next?”
“I’d say we have a pretty solid plan already,” I said, nodding towards our newly written lists. “When it comes to enhancements, I think it’d be best to always keep the thought in the back of our minds and add any new ideas to the list whenever they come up. As for enchanting...I don’t really know where to start.” I admitted. “It’ll probably take a combination of copious meditation and a stroke of luck to get a foothold there.”
“Okay,” she agreed, crossing to lean against the table next to me and read over our notes. “Where do we start?”
“I think today would be an excellent day to spend the morning meditating. We’ve been out of our routine for so long, it’ll be nice to ease back into things. Maybe we could fit in a quick sparring session before you go to pick up Marin, just to get the blood pumping a bit.”
“That sounds nice,” she nodded. “To be honest, I thought you’d want to dive right into our research.”
“I envision this as an ongoing project. We can pick and choose the things we want to work on, and we’ll keep adding things as we think of them. Besides, we already made progress today!” I picked up the quill and added a small checkmark next to the “telepathy” entry. Returning the quill to the
