Inari’s Gift

Upon waking up the next morning, Cera quickly headed out of town, intent on doing more experimentation.  Once again, she followed her normal method of setting up multiple shields before using a construct to remotely interact rather than doing so directly, like most would.

A few hours later, one of her experiments went incredibly wrong, the magical detonation powerful enough to shatter all the barriers she’d set up, and throwing her a significant distance away, the plume of dirt and magical byproducts stretching several dozen feet into the air.  Once she managed to return to her senses, Cera found that she’d cracked a rib, and, after healing it and approaching ground zero, found a significant crater.

Apparently, her latest attempt had reacted with something other than itself, given the violence compared to the actual input she’d provided.  The twenty-foot across crater proving that even small-scale experiments could be quite dangerous.  Fortunately, she’d had some significant defenses up, just in case.  While she’d assumed they were overkill, there was always the possibility of extreme reactions well beyond expectations.

Events like this were likely the cause of many experienced mages managing to obliterate themselves when they ought to be strong enough to handle experimenting.  It was simply fortunate that Cera specialized in defense.

Making note of what she’d done, she decided that was more than enough excitement for today, and headed back to town.  Partway back, she ran into a group of soldiers who questioned her about if she knew anything of the explosion they’d spotted from the town.

Unwilling to lie, she promptly explained that she’d caused it during magical experimentation, that no one was around, and that such things were exactly why she made sure to be a considerable distance away from anyone or thing that was important.

Unfortunately, they were not terribly pleased by what they heard, and did not want to allow her to enter the town after having proven herself to be so dangerous.  It took nearly an hour of arguing with them before they finally agreed that if the mages’ guild approved of her, and claimed she was safe, they would consider letting her into town.

As they held her outside town, a considerable amount of time passed before their messenger returned with a very annoyed-looking priest.  The messenger admitted that she’d been given the approval of the mages’ guild, which she’d never been in doubt of, but that they’d decided to make sure of things by bringing in someone to be certain of things.

Several minutes later, the priest had inscribed a complex glyph in the dirt and mumbled out some kind of ritual.  It was easy enough to guess what was going on; they’d clearly decided to make her speak under a truth field.

Before anyone could explain, Cera bluntly stated, “Truth magic, right?  No matter, I know what you want.  I have no intentions of causing harm to anyone unless I am forced to do so to defend myself or others.  Nor will I likely do so by accident, as if I am teaching, I prefer to be safe and launch non-explosive attacks, and aim to the side of people instead of directly at them.  Similarly, unless I am absolutely confident in what I am doing, I refuse to experiment with magic near anyone or thing of value.  I will only experiment in areas of value when I am simply slightly changing something I already know, and am confident I am in full control.”

She then focused back on the people around her instead of her words, and asked, “Is that sufficient for you, or do you need me to say more than that?”

The apparent leader of the group looked to the priest, who nodded, then back to Cera as he sighed, before spitting out, “I suppose it is…  I’m not happy with the idea of letting you into town, but I’m not risking my job over it.  See to it that you follow what you said, damned mage.”

As they began to gather back up and return to town, one of the men lingered for a moment to quietly apologize for his leader’s behavior, stating, “Not all of us are like him, please don’t let this ruin your view of all of us.”

Not wanting to deal with the guards again when she arrived at the town, Cera decided to waste a little time, and headed toward a different gate, choosing to take more time instead of dealing with the asshole again.  Fortunately, as expected, she had zero issues entering, and quickly made her way to the mages’ guild.

Cera spent a few minutes explaining what happened to Ann, who nodded when she mentioned the messenger before remarking, “They did actually send someone here.  As you expected, I didn’t have anything bad to say about you when they asked, though the guy doing the asking seemed pretty upset by that.  I guess he was looking for an excuse or something.”

Once the part about the priest was reached, Ann frowned and shook her head, stating, “It’s really rare for someone to be that dedicated to trying to screw someone over.  No idea why they hated you so much as to try to use them to stop you.  Weird.”

To this, Cera simply replied, “Well, their leader called me a ‘damned mage’ when they finally decided to let me go, and sounded like they only let it go because they didn’t want to risk losing their job.  Maybe that particular guy is just the sort to try to abuse his power, and the messenger was trying to earn his favor?  I dunno.”

After discussing her bit of excitement, eventually it was time to meet with her students.  The very first thing they covered was why experimenting was so dangerous, using Cera’s recent mishap as a prime example.  After all, if it had been one of them, they probably wouldn’t have survived the event, since it broke through multiple of the best barriers Cera was capable of at the moment.

Properly warned, they all agreed to not experiment randomly like she was, but only incremental changes to things they already knew.  Several expressed disappointment, however, as they’d been hoping to try new things.  Everyone did agree, however, that it was better to be alive and messing with small things rather than mess with big things and wind up dead.

Eventually, they finished their meeting, having gone over some other topics of less exciting nature, and Cera met with Ann again, finding that Laura had agreed to allow her to visit her home.  After getting the directions, Cera headed out to go see her newest student.

Quite some time later, Cera was left looking between her sheet of directions and the building in front of her, rather intimidated.  Apparently, if the directions were correct, and she had no reason to doubt them, Laura was quite wealthy.  The manor before her certainly didn’t look cheap, at least.

Rather hesitantly, Cera moved toward the door, only to find it opening before she made it there, a man in a suit stepping out to invite her in.  Behind him, she could see a glowing red crystal mounted on a pillar in the middle of the room.  As they both made it inside, it changed color to green, making her think it must be an indicator for someone being on the property outside.

Cera thought it an interesting, and useful sort of enchantment.  As she was thinking, however, the man was speaking, and she was, unfortunately, not paying attention.  Rather sheepishly, she asked the man to repeat himself, and was told that Laura was expecting her, and was upstairs down the hall on the right, first door on the left.

After a single glance at the expensive looking decorations, Cera made certain to keep her tail from moving too much, not wanting to risk damaging anything.  It didn’t take long to reach Laura’s room, and she knocked on the door, waiting for the woman to open it.

Surprisingly enough, the room was quite bare, looking very similar to the function-over-form of the rented rooms she’d seen.  Laura noticed her looking around, and promptly stated, “I’ve never been a fan of excessive displays of wealth.  It’s not my own, anyway.  I prefer knowledge over looking fancy, and have a library downstairs for that.”

Feeling slightly more at ease from that statement, Cera nodded, and they began going over some of the easier things she’d taught her other students, finding that Laura was much quicker at picking things up.  Then again, teaching one-on-one made it much easier to help someone out, and meant you didn’t have to wait for others.

Several hours later, Cera found herself quite tired, and was about to head home when Laura offered to let her stay in the manor.  While she was tempted, she had her own place to live, and all her stuff was there, so she declined the offer, explaining her reasoning.  To her surprise, Laura offered to have a word with her family and see if they would allow Cera to move in.

Confused as to why Laura was trying to get her to stay, she asked about it, finding that Laura was equal parts interested in her due to her species, as well as thankful for being allowed to learn such interesting things.  Cera thought it a bit absurd, but simply shrugged, allowing Laura to do as she pleased.

Afterward, she returned home, and decided on a quick bath after dinner before going to bed.  Fortunately, a wet tail wasn’t much of a problem anymore, now that she’d managed to improve her magic from when she first arrived on this world, so she didn’t have to sleep with a soggy tail.

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