章 164: Relearning is Hard
5/26 Early Afternoon
Honestly, I don't want to talk about how shadow magic 101 went with Sadie. It was all stuff I'd learned before but suddenly I was really, really bad at it. I could remember that I knew how to use it, but I couldn't get into the right mindset and kept tripping up trying to overreach. Shadow words and power words are similar enough that the skill transferred, but I absolutely couldn't jump straight to even the simple shadow words like pain without first mastering the fundamentals, and Sadie didn't actually know any training-level shadow magic. As such, first I'd be learning light 101 before I could even touch the shadow.
I ended up cleaning cloth with the light. Like a lowly acolyte. Which, to be fair, I was again. I got to the point where I could do it without getting dizzy much more quickly than last time, but it was still irritating. I wanted to be good at everything and I purchased the "be good at everything" perks, so why do I still need to practice so damn much?
I'm not being entitled, you're entitled.
Anyway. After one hour of pointless feeling but probably necessary training exercises in the Twilight Grove, Sadie had to go home to the Light's Hope Chapel. I needed to do something to recover my good mood, so I made my way back to the Wailing Caverns. Experiments usually made me feel at least a little better.
••••••••••
Lady Anacondra was glaring at the group and spewing vitriol when I arrived. She was unable to move from her current location under her own power, but we needed her to eat. I couldn't just mind control her anymore, a thought that I ruthlessly put out of my mind, but she also hadn't eaten anything since I captured her. If I needed to, I could also get Ursula to come along and charm her into eating.
As it turned out, she was hungry enough to eat the mushrooms we offered her; Magglish, Dremuus, Nadira, and Norin had some reasonably well cooked mushrooms for lunch right in front of her, after all. (The raptor had a hyena). When she ate, I was treated to the lights in her eyes going out as her memories drained away, leaving confusion.
Her profile listed her as captured, with the name Night Elf Female, but also had a strange notation: Tier 1/5. I did a bit of mental math and her rebate for Creature Defense was applying, but only for a value of one credit. So… what the hell did that mean? I tried poking around a bit and found that she was tagged as having Base: Lady Anacondra.
Ok… So she's down to tier one and is valued at only one credit at the moment, but she can relearn everything with training and doing so would bring her value back up. I was hoping that "base" would work similarly to template stacking, where it's like a very narrow version of soul talent. If not… well, I could always make her a specialized druid with my base, later.
"Uh… hello?" I snapped out of my reverie and remembered that there was now a very confused amnesiac woman in front of me. One that was suddenly much cuter when she wasn't looking at me with naked hatred. In fact it was quite the opposite; there was virtually nothing in her head right now other than love, lust, and submission towards me.
https://imgur.com/a/kW3WHOr
"Oh. I'm sorry. Hello. My name is Erich. We just used an experimental treatment to heal you of magical corruption. How do you feel?" I was Erius at the moment, but whatever.
"I feel… okay, I guess. But I don't really know where I am? Or who?" I signaled for her to sit down with me on the stone floor, and laid an arm around her shoulders, which she leaned into.
"When you were found, you were screaming abuse at everyone around you, calling yourself Lady Anacondra and setting giant mutant snakes upon intruders. Does that ring any bells?"
To my mild surprise, it did. "Yes… a little. There was something strange in the water. That's what you healed, isn't it?" Ok. Not quitetabula rasa on this one.
"That's good, that's very good. So was Anacondra really your name?"
"No. My name was… Scarletleaf?" It sounded like a silly name to me, but I wanted to encourage any dregs of her memory that might bubble up.
"Then it's nice to meet you, Scarletleaf." I removed the limit on movement and added a mild compulsion to recover the parts of her pre-Anacondra identity that were lost; just something a bit like Darcell's old self improvement scheme. It should help her take her Druidic studies more seriously. From a purely tactical perspective, I wanted her to get up to tier 3 in a Druidic manner; that would net me 4 credits when I took down Serpentis and got creature defense.
"It's nice to meet you too, Erich." She seemed to be taking quite a lot of comfort in physical contact with me, and I will never complain when a pretty girl in my retinue wants to cuddle me. "I'm glad you helped. It's all fuzzy, but I don't think I was very happy as Anacondra."
We sat there together while I told her what I knew of her past. Essentially that she'd come here as part of an expedition to bring life and water to the savanna, which had accidentally tapped into the Emerald Nightmare. She would occasionally remember things, like names of her comrades or aspects of their mission. It made me feel relatively optimistic about her prospects for recovery.
I set her up with Harnea as a tutor. She was the strongest druid I had on hand, and was substantially less… eh… overtly evil now that corruption defense was out of the way. She was also in the field, but the Agamand Mills had a shiny new Val'kyr, armed with a spear from the Stormwind armory, serving as muscle now. I figured one of the Druids could tap out without much trouble.
Speaking of druid training: I had a power up. The archdruid template. Who was I giving it to? Tony wouldn't be a bad choice; he was pretty reliably good at anything that I asked him to do, as long as it was remotely within his scope. But he was doing pretty well as my odd jobs guy, and I'd set him up with a couple green Dragonspawn bodyguards so he wouldn't be kidnapped again. He could probably wait until I had an ancient of lore; I think he'd make a good druid of the claw.
I had several other tier 1-2 people, but this was template stacking, not power swap. I wouldn't lose anything by giving it to someone who already had powers or a useful skillset. Xylinnia, for example. Blind Mary would net me a new spirit resurrection scroll. Or I could give it to a ghost and try something tricky with it. Nah; I'll give it to Lividia.
Lividia and I were linked with Together Forever now; if she could just stop getting herself killed literally every day, her very existence would be an amazing automatic panic button for me. Making her a PC druid would just make it stronger; Druids have an extremely flexible kit. Innervate, a quick resurrection usable in combat, healing, curse removal, ambushes, tanking as a bear, trapping people with roots, and shooting giant laser beams from the moon. With one upgrade, she would become a gnomish army knife with an extremely high power ceiling; not too shabby for my most constant ally. I figured I should probably tell her about it before just applying the template, though.
••••••••••
"You want to grant me more power?" Her eyes lit up like I'd told her it was almost Christmas.
"Yes. Specifically, by turning you into a powerful druid. They are shapeshifters who can use magic to control nature and heal."
She waved off the explanation. "Yes, yes, like the ghosts we have been fighting. I'll of course be better at it. I've been planning on learning magic for some time. Sally had me convinced that the Light would be the best path to power for me, but being able to skip over the hard bits and just be powerful by your grace sounds much better."
That made me pause for a second. "Why did you think the light was right for you?"
"Oh, well, the light requires that you always have perfect clarity of purpose and positive intent, right? Well I never need to question myself since I'm always right, and everything I do is for your glory, so it seemed like a natural fit. But when I asked Sally to teach me she wanted me to clean the dishes for some reason and it was so boring and exhausting. I only cleaned four dishes before I had to sit down again!"
Holy shit. Lividia was a natural with holy magic. Her definition of whether or not something was worth committing to 100% was whether or not she wanted to do it. Her definition of good was whether or not something matched her goals. As a dragon she was naturally talented at channeling magic in general. She had apparently cleaned four of those dishes in the kitchenette on her first try, in less than an hour. They were spotless this morning; unless dishes were way easier than cloth, Lividia might have more potential as a holy priest than I did. Even without soul talent.
"I might not, actually. I'll need to think about it. You don't seem to realize how amazing what you did this morning is, for a first try." I tried to phrase it in a way that might persuade her. "I don't want to waste your potential power by grafting something weaker onto you. I'll think about it, and tell you tomorrow."
She pouted, but making it about how great she already was seemed to placate her. I'd need to have Talaada or Whitemane train her if I went down this path. Or maybe Tara. Someone like Calia or Noboru was too sane; they might try to push back on her worldview, just on reflex. Yes, I needed her to learn from someone with the same core principles, fanatical devotion to me, as her. A quick text exchange with Talaada later, I sent Lividia to my high priestess to see if she could learn more under Talaada. Lesser heal, perhaps?
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