The Heptagon Mage

The rain was still pelting down on the shield above the academy, it still looked surreal not unlike someone spraying water at a window with you on the other side. Just from below. It was kind of hard to describe. A lot of water was running down the sides, Gilliam assumed there was something to collect it all down there so it doesn’t flood the outside of the walls. Gilliam really wanted to experiment with the sword, as well as a few other spell concepts but he didn’t want to do either within the Academy walls, and with this rain he was not super keen on going outside either.

Students were about and training or testing their own things, the ones that noticed the group did react. Some waved, some shunned them and tried all too hard to ignore them, but Gilliam was happy realising that the majority of them just kept up with whatever they were doing before.

Through some distractions there was nothing that stopped the group from getting back to the Dome. And Gilliam started finding it slightly interesting and odd. At the same time as he started hating it.
But, as a training tool it was nothing short of amazing. You could go in there, have a duel or fight with someone and just go nuts without danger. Though his clothing still had some cuts and stabs through them... He should get that changed, but the construction was just miraculous.
Though, as Gilliam pondered this problem he might have stumbled on the problem. The pain is not only ‘like real’, it straight up is proper real. Sure it gets healed but it still happens. Perhaps that is the main reason it’s not used that much? Which in turn might be why Ghaos and Kintas used it with Gilliam, as an adult he could process it slightly differently? Not that he was amazing at handling pain but... His logical side could perhaps process it better?

He didn’t get any good answers through his pondering until they got back to the Dome. Gilliam can’t remember anyone turning it off but it was currently not activated. Perhaps it had a timer function after people left or perhaps someone just turned it off after they were done.
In any case it seemed there was still plenty left of the crystal he made, as Angela just took a peek into the container and seemed satisfied before turning it on.

Gilliam turned to Petal “Do you need any weapons? Remember; you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” He wanted to be somewhat supportive, she was her own person, after all.

She turned to him with a surprisingly odd and determined face, replying in demonic.
“No, I think I want to do this. For... For the first time I think I have a goal. When you were gone I had a lot of time to think and look around. Get used to the night thing.  And when you asked me for a goal.. There aren’t that many who dare speak of a life different than the lords make for us but... If it’s possible to start something here, in this world. I want to save them like you saved me.”
It was clear she had a lot on her mind, her uncertain body language confirmed that she was not used to this determination.
Gilliam didn’t consider it much, he had been on the receiving end of a slight personality shift not long ago, it feels weird, especially when you think back on things.

“And for that I need to fight.” There was a look of pure determination, no hesitation in that part.
At least it was easy to know where to start.

“Then we’ll find out how you can fight.” He smiled, and almost as if on queue the dome started growing its field as Angela let out a satisfied “There we go.”

“In case it’s needed, I give you permission to fight Angela honestly inside this dome when she is fine with it.” He felt a bit dirty having to word it like that but... He had to be careful about certain things. His earlier order about allowing her to defend herself would most likely work inside there but... Since there was no actual danger of bodily harm he thought it best to just make sure there were no restrictions in this specific instance.

The dim mark on her forehead pulsed once, signalling the acceptance of the order. Petal modded as a response as well.

Gilliam let the girls handle this for now, since she didn’t answer about any weapons she either just missed the question, or is fine without. Given her lifestyle she had probably never fought with anything besides claws and teeth before. It’s as good a place as any to start.

Angela came over and grabbed Petal’s hand, dragging her into the field as it grew up from the ground towards the top. Angela started explaining things, Gilliam could only properly hear her mentioning how damage worked in there, something she was very aware of from seeing Gilliam getting murdered for hours.
As the dome completed and most sound was problematic to make out the still talked a little back and forth, it was interesting seeing things from this side.
Though sounds were muffled, like they were on the other side of a thick piece of glass, vision was a bit different. He could see them fine, but there was a slight haze to it, not distorting much but a little bit. It was actually harder to look out from the inside than from outside inwards.
Gilliam just found a place to stand close to the dome and let them handle this.

As expected, they used a bit of time to talk and discuss, even to the point that Angela stretched out her arm, letting Petal claw at it and draw blood, almost to confirm that it was fine and that it was working as intended. This was also the first time that he actually considered that Petal had claws.
Gilliam expected something similar to himself happen, she might need to get over the hesitation of hurting someone. Since she had been subservient her whole life.

They spoke a few more seconds before Petal nodded, seemingly replying to something Angela said. Suddenly they both moved, it was a ‘blink and miss it’ moment where both had attacked at the same time.
Angela who was clearly the most trained of the two had landed the first attack, she had crouched down a little bit, had her left hand pulled back to her side and her right fist landed hard in Petal’s chest. Petal’s larger sweeping attempt to claw at Angela had missed by a lot, she found herself lifted off her hooves for a brief moment. In the brief moment she was in the air, Petal had attempted to kick Angela in the face, though missed as her sparring partner had taken a step to the side.
Angela attempted to follow this up with a blow to Petal’s knee, seemingly to instantly realise this, Petal pulled her leg back enough for the blow to hit the hoof instead. This seemed to do zero damage but the momentum from the punch sent Petal spinning around, something she took advantage of and slapped Angela in the face with her tail hard enough to leave an imprint of the arrow-head shape at the end of her tail, on Angela's cheek.

As Petal landed she took a step backwards, Angela having already taken a short jump to gain distance at the time of getting tail slapped.

Gilliam was amazed at this, he knew that Angela was well trained so everything so far was within what he could have guessed but Petal. Where the hell did she learn to fight like this?
She had potentially been fighting for food in the Fractured Lands but... did she get this kind of training there as well?
Or was it that... she was just a natural? Gilliam had no idea how to process this, it all happened so fast. He could follow it but it was not super easy.

They didn’t wait apart for long, both stepped into range and the fight continued. Petal went for another attempt at landing her claws, but this was easily deflected by the trained Angela, causing Petal to get off balance which let her land an incredibly hard punch in Petal’s gut.
Gilliam could almost feel the punch from outside the dome, it gave her a solid second of pause, no doubt to let the healing magic do its work.
Angela didn’t wait for anything and with a swift movement she had stepped to Petal’s side and lifted her leg with her own, as she lost balance completely and started falling forwards she delivered a powerful slam in her back. There was no way that didn’t break something as she slammed into the ground much harder than she should.

Petal remained on the ground for several seconds before she got back up. Angela had made some distance between them at this moment and it seemed that it all eased up a bit. They talked about something for a few seconds before they both got ready again.

This process repeated itself a few times. Petal got in some good attacks here and there, but the monk had the training on her side and got the majority of good hits. Gilliam felt a bit jealous... Petal won more often against Angela, than Gilliam did against Ghaos and Kintas together. He wasn’t sure if Angela was going easy on Petal or not, but she was doing quite well.
But a few things he did notice was that Petal was deceptively strong. This might be because of her demon blood or that her old ‘job’ was to haul people from A to B. There is a good reason why the people working for moving companies tended to be strong as shit. He was also surprised at her speed, she’s rather petite so that was always an option but he was still surprised just at how well she did.

Standing outside the dome originally sounded boring, but time passed surprisingly fast. With his untrained eye it seemed like Petal was doing better and better, but Angela was not letting up too much. Slowly but surely Petal was getting in more good hits, a feint that allowed for a followup here, a strong kick to something vital there, some claws across a jugular and such. They all seemed almost random but they were landing a bit more often than before.
This was also the first he saw of his pale friend fighting, he had seen her jump really high and do serious damage to a tree with a punch... But that was about it. So though this was definitely more educational for the two of them, he also learned a lot about them by just looking.

To pass the time Gilliam had started condensing mana into Crystals, aiming for the same fist size as before. He had been thinking how practical they are to have laying around, so there was no reason for him to not use some downtime here and there to make a few. Carrying too many sounds dangerous when you consider their fragile nature, but the ring handled that nicely.

Their duel lasted a surprisingly long time which matched Gilliam’s own perspective in the dome. Since you didn’t get tired and wounds didn’t stick, you entered a sort of ‘no time exists’ kind of mentality where you just keep going.
When they decided to end the training, Gilliam had created four of the mana crystals, and he was getting better at it passively. Not focusing on them properly had them take longer to make, but since this was using passive downtime anyway it didn’t change anything.

Angela and Petal came out of the dome discussing something, Gilliam could not properly hear them until after they had come through the dome walls. Angela was mid sentence as they came out. “-real talent. If you train some more and find a way of fighting for you I think you can really do well”.

Petal was in deep thought until they got to where Gilliam was before she talked to him in Demonic, seemingly ignoring Angela. “I am faster and stronger than I used to.” She seemed a little worried about this.

“I... Isn’t that a good thing?” Gilliam replied hesitantly, why was this a bad thing?
Angela just looked at them confused, Gilliam was potentially one of the very few in this world capable of speaking to the demons, after all.

“If I had this strength and speed when I attacked that human, I would have killed him. I think it might be because I bit him and ate his arm.” Her subtlety was nonexistent, however she might be onto something.

“Since your people get stronger by eating other species, it doesn’t really feel that weird, does it?” Gilliam did realise that he was not even reacting to this subject, nor reacting to the memories of feeding a chained up demon a human arm.

“You... Don’t seem to react to this as I thought you would.” Petal seemed to have worried about Gilliam.
And to be honest, given how careful he had been around things when he came to this world and even after she got enslaved to him, he couldn’t fault her.

She was correct in worrying, in a sense. He knew himself well enough that he knew without a doubt how he would have reacted about those things before. Odds are very high that he would have gotten severely nauseous, perhaps even throwing up and shuddering at the very thought.
Considering the last week or so, in his mind, the trip through the demon realm seemed to have changed him. In fact it might have started with the training with Ghaos, learning to not fear hurting others... The battle for sheer survival in the Fractured Lands probably did most of it. Since everything was demons it was easier to just ignore what he was doing, but it seemed that he had gotten used to it enough that he was getting jaded about other things.
Seeing enough gore will have you not flinching at gore kind of thing, no matter the source. He would probably have been a psych student’s favourite subject right now.

“I spent five days.. I think.. Fighting your people for my life. I have no idea the actual number but I possibly killed hundreds.” It was a bit of an overstatement. His guesstimate was potentially a hundred or something. The groups were clustered and.. All over the place afterwards, so it was hard to use an exact number. But in this case he overdid the number a little to check her reaction.

“Then they should not have gone against My Lord, then.” There was a slight hint of pride and a suppressed smile on her.

This was a bit weird for Gilliam. He was glad that she was getting more independent and whatnot but she was acting a bit weird. Or was it that she was just extra careful before, not wanting to insult her master lest he casts her aside or something?
She did mention that her life with him was scores better than what she could have gotten in the Fractured Lands, and from what he saw; that was correct. He fought some men of her subrace there, they were the lowest of the fighters, not far from the dog-like ones. At least that’s how it felt when he fought them. Given that they are servants, odds are very high that they are kept there or given a bit of ‘good food’ to become warriors, and just become fodder.

This also had her little shift make sense. She was now seeing that her body could progress, having the first little taste; the metaphorical first chip of the bowl of power.
However, Gilliam didn’t see this as a bad thing, he saw this as a potentially good thing.
“Petal, I wonder. Your people could gain power by eating your own, right?”

She didn’t even seem to worry about that question and just nodded. “Yes, the other demons did that all the time to rise in ranks or to just become more powerful after a duel.” This was said with a completely normal tone.

Given her lack of reaction it was probably very normal. Evnen ancient human society had that thing where they ate the heart or liver of some animal or enemy to gain their strength. The demons seemed to just have something like it literally.
“From what I remember before, you said that the stronger someone is the more of a boost they had. So if a servant ate a gatekeeper they would rise a lot, right?”

She nodded.

“Do... you have problems with the thought of eating other demons?” Gilliam eyed her extremely carefully, though she was under orders to never lie or withhold information from him, he still instinctively tried to pay extra attention.

“Not really. Most of our food was other demons.”

Gilliam felt extra sad for her, he partly knew it but.. This also had him feel sad for himself, he most likely ate demon meat in the demon realm... He was a bit glad that he still felt sickened by some things, that he hadn’t gone completely jaded.

“Hey, what are you talking about?!” Angela broke into their discussion about things. She seemed annoyed, probably from being left on the sidelines during a talk like this.

“We’re talking about eating demon meat.” Gilliam responded without hesitation. Causing Angela to react a bit with a slight ‘eww’ response.
She was there during the briefing thing, she knew he ate some mystery meat and that the odds were high of it being from a demon.

“Well... Stop it. Rather than that disgusting thing-” she looked at Petal. “-No offence..-” Looking back at Gilliam her tone ramped up a bit. “Let’s talk about how good she is! She did very well in there. We need to train her to fight!” She seemed eager and very interested in this.

Gilliam briefly wondered what kind of things Angela had seen since she seemed to be eager on Petal’s behalf, very friend-like behaviour, for not only a demon but one she saw eat a human arm not long ago.
He wanted to talk to Petal more to find out what had happened and how she had changed that much when he was gone, but he could do that later. Angela was absolutely right, Petal seemed to have a good foundation to train on, but there was one thing.
Turning to face them both he had to explain something about that topic.
“I agree that we should get her trained but... Many of the demons in the demon realm use weapons. Can either of you block bladed or heavy weapons with your hands?”
He asked this as a curiosity thing more than a berating thing.

“I... Can not. If I find out how to harness my inner energy like my father, I could but I haven’t learned how to yet.” Angela looked at her hands and was a bit sad about this.

Petal just shook her head. Given that she might not have seen much combat, odds were also low that she had any resilience against weapons that could have built up over years of training.

“Then we need to find out what to do about that. Now I don’t know if it’s possible for you-” He turned to Angela with an uncertain expression. “-but.. Gauntlets?”
As Angela thought for a second, but before she replied, he turned to Petal. “And this was just a test, we can test you with weapons, perhaps some armour and other things. You are good at this but we might find something you are even better at.” He smiled, this was interesting to him as well as a companion.
She seemed to perk up and get a bit interested in this as well!

“Well, I think we know what the rest of today will be.” Gilliam mused with a smile to both of them.

“Yes, we’re going to spend it on Petal.” Angela added with her own musing thought. “I imagine we’ll use the dome a lot today.”

Petal, having now experienced the dome properly, didn’t seem distressed by this, she was rather very interested! The rest of the day went for testing various weapons and armour, courtesy of the Academy training armory.