Maikana
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Chapter 20 - Dread
🕑 Added 2025-02-13 17:13:27 +0000 UTC“What do you mean, Spiritcaller Ortik? You told me to finish in ten days, it’s the tenth day, so I finished it… How was I supposed to know y
“What do you mean, Spiritcaller Ortik? You told me to finish in ten days, it’s the tenth day, so I finished it… How was I supposed to know you didn’t actually want me to finish it today?” Her tone changing to one of feigned innocence, clearly trying to call him out without saying it.
“’Want’ is not the correct word here, apprentice.” His confusion compounded by Kori’s vague answer. “How in the Scale did you manage to complete your transcription in a mere ten days?”
“Uhhh… I just did? Without the ointment I’d probably have only made it about one hundred and fifty pages in, tops,” Rubbing her somewhat sore hands after the busy day of copying she’d just had. “But with it I was able to relieve all the strain and work really hard. I managed to copy nearly thirty pages just today!”
“Thirty pages… That’s quite the boast… Well let me take a look at it then, if you wrote that quickly then it’s probably an utter mess.” Rubbing the top of his muzzle as he looks at her, “If your tome doesn’t meet my standards then you’ll be doing it again." A threatening tone entering his voice. "Once you earn enough working on producing extra ointments to pay for the cost of another book that is.”
Fetching her tome, and Ortik’s as well though she supposes he could just recall it to his hand like before, still a bit awed that she’d been handling an enchanted object these last ten days. She cringes slightly as she looks at the first section of the book from before her drawing and calligraphy skills had grown, she didn’t think they were terrible, at least not the writing, but the later entries were definitely of a higher quality.
“Here you are, Spiritcaller Ortik. My completed Herbalism Tome. I hope you don’t mind I left a few pages blank at the start since the book had enough pages to spare some. I want to make a list of everything in the book and what pages they're located on so that it’s easier to find things.” A little bashful at having made an alteration, but ultimately she didn’t want to have to flip through the entire book just to find a single type of plant.
Realizing it's a good idea he says nothing about the skipped pages, “As long as the information is intact and legible, which I still have my doubts with how rushed you would have had to have been to complete it in this short time, it will be fine.” Setting the tome in front of himself and beginning to leaf through the pages.
A smug half grin on his face as he makes his way though the opening pages, the worst of her work given the lacking skills at the time, though still no worse than the contents of his own tomes opening pages in Kori's opinion. The grin slowly fades over the course of the first hour and is entirely gone by the end of the second. Inspecting each page one by one for faults he finds bare few, an ambiguous character here that can easily be inferred by context, a lacking punctuation there that can simply be added in without issue, or a line slightly off in a sketch that doesn’t really affect identification of the plant in question.
“Hmph… It is… adequate, apprentice.” His voice neutral and lacking even the hint of his usual smugness. “Your sketches could use some revision and there are some entries that need a bit of cleaning up, but overall, it is passable.” The phrase nearly paining him to admit. “The fact that you have managed to create this in a mere ten days is beyond expectations. I will admit, were one of the other members of the Circle to boast that one of the apprentices did so, I would find it difficult to believe them.”
“Like you said Spiritcaller Ortik, I am ‘not to be most apprentices’ and I must ‘hold myself to a higher standard’.” While repeating his own words back to him, Kori found it incredibly difficult to keep a smug grin off of her face and out of the tone of her voice. A task which she failed at quite spectacularly, in fact.
“I suppose I did say that indeed…” a clear debate of whether to congratulate her for her accomplishment or berate her for her tone warring across his face. Thankfully the former seemed to be the winner. “It seems that I must applaud your efforts. Today it was in fact I that learned a lesson, sometimes even my own expectations, though founded in decades of experience, can be surpassed.”
“Thank you, Spiritcaller Ortik.” All effort to suppress her grin having evaporated. “What comes next, if I may ask?”
“Next? First you will be rewarded for your efforts, you have the next four days to yourself. Feel free to visit your clutch or any friends.” Neglecting to mention that had already planned for her absence, to be still working on her tome, and didn't want to shift his plans “Afterwards, well, let’s just say that I will take no pleasure in what comes next, nor will you.” A bit of an evil grin of his own finally returning as he finishes his sentence.
“That… Sounds… A bit ominous, Spiritcaller Ortik.”
What the scale is he gonna do next… Can’t be worse than making me copy a massive book in such a short time… Can it?
“Nothing of the sort, apprentice. Just the necessary next step to preparing you for your first contact with the ancestors. You do still wish to learn spiritual magics, do you not?” His words dismissive, but the evil grin still hiding in his features.
“Of course, Spiritcaller Ortik!” She knows she’s being toyed with at least somewhat, but the chance to finally try her hand at magic again is all it takes to completely disregard his earlier comment.
---
The next four days pass in idle wanderings. Spending her evenings back at the hatchery and catching up with Plk and Losq and even her sister Qot, who is apparently working closely with Losq at the brewery.
Both of her brothers were at least quite happy to see her. The rest of the clutch still mostly ambivalent to her presence but at least not outright dismissive of her anymore, so that was progress. Though they were all a little surprised to see her, apparently there were rumours that she had run off or that she had been punished and sent to be a farmer in one of the more distant moss farms after her failed apprenticeship. The latter was at least a little related to stories of Korc, which wasn’t much of a surprise since his story was both interesting and comical.
She learned a lot catching up with her brothers, it turns out that Losq had not only attained the [Basic Brewing] Skill but even an uncommon skill called [Brewer’s Palate] which apparently was quite difficult to acquire. The skill allowed him to more closely monitor the progress of any particular batch he had brewing, helping him determine if it needed more time or if the ingredients were out of balance.
Plk as well was progressing on his path to magehood, being able to form the basic light spell and an offensive force spell that directed a bead of mana at speed towards a target causing impact, though in his case he could probably cause a stronger impact with a thrown stone, but he was excited non-the-less at his achievement. He still had not been able to determine his affinity or attain the basic skill for it, but he still had over two years to do so.
Tales of his affinity training were quite interesting to Kori. Apparently, he’d spend entire days meditating in rooms surrounded with blazing braziers, buried in mounds of sand, suspended in a tunnel that had a steady breeze passing through, or even submerged in water to his neck. All in some effort to feel a ‘resonance’ with the natural elemental mana.
The longer she listened to his description of the training, the more Kori actually started to be glad she never made it that far herself, spending whole days trying to meditate, a skill that even now still eluded her, sounded horrendous.
Having time to sit and talk and ask questions of Korse was probably the best part of having days to herself, and what most of her daytime hours were spent doing. At least when he wasn't busy in the Elder's Chambers, which she avoided as much as possible. She hadn’t seen him outside of Elders meetings in the months under Ortik’s tutelage and she missed him. As much of her free time as possible was spent with him over the four days. Their discussions ranged from the rest of the clutch, who were mostly doing well within their apprenticeships, with some praise from Elder Aldr about Losq and his Skill, to matters of politics within the tribe, which now that Kori had a much clearer understanding of the matter she had several opinions to share, which had to be bottled up normally as Ortik did not particularly invite her commentary.
But much of their conversation was spent on matters closer to the two of them, discussion of her progress.
“So, I’ve managed to reach maximum level with one of my Skills, [Basic Calligraphy], why didn’t you tell me that we can’t get past 5 until we can take jobs?”
“Already? My, my. I guess it’s just never been all that important. Most younglings get one, maybe two, before the end of their sixth year. I only had the one myself, [Basic Rearing].” Taking a moment to think on his other children, “The others I’ve chosen usually have 2, sometimes 3, though Kore had 4 I believe.”
“Is there really no way to upgrade them until I can select my jobs?”
“None that I know of.” Taking a moment to consider, “You could always ask the Matrons, but I expect you’ll receive the same answer.”
“Maybe I should…" Taking a moment before dismissing it as something to do later, "So, I guess that once I am able to, I’ll need to take a job related to writing to evolve the skill when I level it fully?” Pausing for a moment, “Does that mean I’ll need to do a bunch of writing to raise the Job too without being able to increase the skill?”
“Correct, though having the skill already at maximum level will make that task quite trivial. I believe that there is a ‘Novice Scribe’ job with calligraphy as its primary Skill, sole skill actually if I remember correctly, that you can take. With the skill already at its peak for the first tier you should be able to spend a few days taking dictation or copying scrolls of sufficient complexity and level the Job without much difficulty.” Back into his wise lecturer role, Korse continues to offer her the kind guidance that Kori has been missing for the past several months.
“Much of the experience required to raise a Job comes from achieving levels in their primary Skills after all,” Taking a moment to think before offering a slightly different perspective, “Or perhaps a better way of saying that is much of the impediment to leveling Jobs is the lack of Skill levels. Never really been certain which is more accurate if I’m being honest.” Giving his head a shake.
“So you’re saying that because leveling this Scribe job will let me evolve calligraphy, I have to have it at maximum level in order to level the Job all the way.” Working through her logic as she goes, “And since I already have it at maximum level then I won’t have to work as hard as I otherwise would if I still needed Skill levels?” A grin of pride growing on her face as she worked through her deductions.
“Just so, yes. I think at least. There are many schools of thought on the workings of the system, and since it is quite reluctant with its answers, we are left to our own devices to figure out its inner workings.”
“So if I can raise skills without taking the Job, then just take the Job for a few days to evolve it, then couldn’t I just wait until the evolved skill was at maximum level again and do the same?” Clearly now confused as to the purpose of Jobs. “What’s the point of taking a job while I’m raising the Skill?”
“The Title of course.” Said like she had asked something completely obvious. “The Matron’s told you about all of this last year, did they not? When you take a Job, you receive a Title relating to it, one which boosts the rate of growth of the Jobs primary and secondary Skills while providing some other minor benefits.”
“Oh… So I can raise a Skill while I’m working on other things, it’s easier to raise it if I have a Job specializing in it… So apprentices are doing everything the hard way then?” A pout entering her tone near the end.
“Correct again, but doing hard work gets you better classes. You wouldn’t want to sit in your den all day until your class unveiling and end up with some Wanderer or Hermit Class, would you?” Spoken with the tone of one telling spooky stories or delivering warnings to young children to eat their moss. “I hear that’s a thing with the soft skins up on the surface, ending up with undesirable classes and having to work all the harder to return to a proper path with their Ascension.”
“That’s a thing?!” Clearly the tale of the boogey-class having some impact.
“Not amongst the Clan it isn’t, us Elders make sure all you younglings work hard to ensure it.”
