princess Zena of Zendor

The first thing I hear once I emerge from the land of dreams is the drone of pretty heavy rain, luckily without the rumbling of yesterday’s wind. Looking out the gaps in the wooden blinders, I see the ground being peppered with large raindrops. The air is chilly, but not enough to be really bothersome. 

Warm and cozy clothes then, namely an oversized hoodie and brown sweatpants. The hoodie is a lighter brown color with a teddy bear motif. Kinda cute. I also take a look at my magical girl outfit from yesterday, and sure enough it has a number of holes. Have to get a tailor to look at it after I learn the enchantment so I can reapply it, or maybe put it on a different outfit. A sigh escapes me as I put it back in my inventory.

After getting dressed, I walk into the common room where there’s a few people lounging about. It’s mostly the new dwarves though, as well as Garth. Nobody breaks the silence, but two of them wave at me and I wave back at their mage and tracker.

Their mage is a woman named Gertrude and seems to be quite competent, probably somewhere around Dallard’s level. The tracker is harder to pin down as I can’t sense his mana, and James didn’t tell me yesterday.

I sit down in one of the free couches. Soon enough I get bored to wait in silence. Sure, it’s the perfect weather to just sit in silence and relax, but nobody doing anything or even talking is taking it a bit far. My solution is to play with magic, not casting any spell, just making random shapes by manipulating mana. After a bit of fiddling I end up making a green sorta stick figure and moving it around on the table as if playing with a doll. 

I end up giving it a sword which I make it swing around like a fencer. Having an idea, I make a second one and have them fight.

While I’m distracted by my miniatures fencing on the table, someone sits down next to me and joins me in watching the two vaguely stickman-esque soldiers. When I look at her, she gives me an impressed expression and a moment later she forms a light blue orb of mana in front of her on the table.

The shape of her blob wobbles and stretches a bit, before it shatters. She doesn’t really waste any time and does slightly better on her next attempt. I direct my stationary stickmen over to her blob and make them start to cheer on her blob by gesturing.

After six or so attempts, she has a five limbed blob she moves clumsily around, not that mine aren’t clumsy. She does end up cheating with the sword and gives her blob one made of ice, smiling at me in the process, which has her blob breaking apart again. I simply smile back. Her seventh blob is the first one to challenge mine to a fight, which they respond to.

The fight is on! Her doll swings its frozen blade at my closest one, but it’s fast enough to block the strike with its mana-blade. We go back and forth for a bit until I remember the second one I have. That distraction let her fighter strike mine. The strike isn’t enough to break it, but I let it shatter anyways.

Pretty sure she cast a focus up spell on herself at some point, but I’m gonna refrain from doing it to keep it somewhat even.

My second fighter approaches the victor and the fighting resumes. We go back and forth a bit, before mine gets a lucky strike in, slipping past its opponent’s guard and striking the “head” of her blob. It takes her a moment to let hers shatter and mine does a celebratory cheer by dropping its sword, waving its arms in the air and jumping.

A couple of the others have joined on the couch on the opposite side of the table, silently looking on.

While she recreates her blob, mine steal her icy sword while I smile at her. She respond with one of her own, and gives her next fighter a longer halberd. After an exciting back and forth the shorter reach of the sword ultimately loses out to the reach of the halberd.

A few more matches go by where each time we lose, we make a more elaborate fighter to counter their opponent, more swordsmen with shield, large animals, etc…

By the eighth round everyone is gathered around our fighting arena and Jo has silently joined the audience as well.

During the ninth round James comes into the room and says “Good morning” which is quickly followed by him asking our little fight club what’s up.

Everyone turns to stare at him for a moment while the metaphorical silence spell breaks. Conversations break out, some explaining to James what’s going on, others what’s been happening in the arena, though both me and Gertrude remain silent.

Seeing their opportunity, the two apprentice mages start to ask questions about what we’re doing, and more importantly how we’re doing it.

The answer is mostly “basic mana manipulation” or maybe advanced, because I’ve gotten the impression that it’s quite hard. We did augment a few of our fighters with other spells, like the ice weapons or the cheeky one that threw small water balls or the brawler I made with burning green hair. 

While the apprentices try to make anything other than spheres and flat planes, I take out another of the melons with blue flesh and start to slice it into manageable pieces, offering one to Gertrude in the process which she accepts.

After breakfast, we continue our fights, though not in silence this time. It was quite fun after all, and the apprentices even managed to join after a hefty focus up spell from me.

At some point I created a dragon proportional in size to the fighters we’d been using so far and it became three versus one. It won its first fight, but Gertrude responded with a mage fighter that threw ice spikes who ended up winning after a locky hit on the dragon’s wing when it flew around the table.

We probably spent a few hours playing the game, though the apprentices ran out of magic pretty early on. Luckily the tale we use was a sturdy one, otherwise it might have broken in some of the more intense fights. It definitely was damaged a bit though.

Seems we all just silently agreed to wait out the rain, and by the time dinner rolled around James wanted to make a stew and asked me for help. He did all the cooking, but I provided all the ingredients.

It took a pretty long time to make, but the end result was worth it. A stew made mostly of sweet fruits and meat. It’s both savory and sweet and probably needs a change in the recipe, but good. 

After dinner time, I decided to look around for a bit as the amount of rain had lessened greatly. With my raincoat magicked on, I step out and immediately take flight to avoid the muddy river that remains of the path.

The damage in the surrounding area is pretty intense. More than a few of the tall firs have fallen and I’m pretty sure it’s a landslide I see in the distance. The local golem populations have changed to mostly water golems, though I’m pretty sure the stone golems that are still alive are just hunkered down still.

One of the bigger water golems seems to have spotted me and decided that I must be dealt with. As its muddy mass makes its way toward the small settlement, I simply channel a paralysis spell to make it lose cohesion and finish it off with a spike. Despite being the size of a small building, it had nearly no mana to resist me.

Once I return inside, I tell everyone of the state outside and we settle in for an evening of games and relaxation.

Kamba

AM BACK! dunno how long though.

hopefully I'll write more in the immediate future, but I can't promise anything.

The story is not abandoned, but writing can be hard at times.

Also between me writing the previous chapter and this one there's been pretty massive flooding in some areas.