Spell composition, arcane dialect, and component use

This was it, step one of proving that she was ready to Ascend. Thank God for Quillyan, her room-mate; even though the redhead was obviously disappointed to be denied her chance at Ascension through her choice to study White Magic, she had been all manner of help when it came to Patty practising her dialects with her. Mistress Mistmark's idea of a test was a simple sit-down chat ... until you got in there and started.

"Garech wormwood ai aconite de, Bonesig Powell?" the stern tutor asked almost the moment Patty walked into her office, one hand hovering over a set of three brewing pots.

For a moment, Patty thought she'd completely forgotten how to understand the common language, before her brain caught up with why she was there in the first place. Arcane dialects. The whole bloody test was going to be done in dialect. With an almost visible clash of mental gear changing, she slipped into the ancient language, feeling her way through her answer before delivering it.

"Na, ddiolch 'ch, cariadferch," was her negative response as she came to a halt by the chair that had obviously been set aside for her. Her mind was still spinning as she watched Ulyssa Mistmark; she'd been offered wormwood or aconite tea, and her answer had been no, so logically the next question would be ...

"A paham ydy a?" Why didn't she want either tea? Patty fought to hide her smile as Mistress Mistmark added in an impatient tone, waving to the empty chair, "O, gwna eistedd i lawr, bachgennes!"

"Ddiolch 'ch," Patty thanked her teacher again as she obediently slid down into the chair, using the reprieve the moment offered to construct her answer before giving it. "Wormwood ydy feddyginiaeth pawb achos catel, cariadferch, a aconite ydy reputed at bod gwrthwenwyn at lycanthropy. Na ydy 'n ddihangol achos 'n ddynol darfodedigaeth."

This response earned her a rare smile from the notoriously difficult to please mistress. "Well done, Miss Powell," she nodded, lapsing into common for a moment. "You are correct; neither wormwood nor aconite is safe for human consumption. I would recommend using ystyriedig - deemed - rather than stretching the language to include the word reputed, however."

Patty flushed, aware she'd pushed a little too far with that last reply, and grateful that her grasp of this ancient form of Celtic Gaelic had been so well received. It soon became clear that this was only the beginning, however.

"Vad du ?r den fyra huvudsaklig anv?nda f?r caspia fr?n?" Ulyssa Mistmark shot over at her, and from there on, Patty endured an hour or more of conversational questions that switched between the four dialects that were taught at novice level.

From the Gaelic to the Svinnet back to the Gaelic, before a huge mental leap over to Fr?ske and Ogron, the young witch from San Francisco found herself constantly challenged to reply in the language she had been questioned in, seeking to answer those questions on the various uses of spell components from herbs and plants to different animal parts, and even the effect of lich blood on living wood.

By the end of the second hour, Patty felt as though her brain was about to implode with the sheer focus of concentration she'd had to put into keeping up with the stern, unbending mistress. Thankfully, the conversation then turned abruptly to a discourse on the correct composition of novice level spells, held in blessedly simple Common. It was here that Patty realised what Ulyssa Mistmark was trying to do.

Thanks to her attendance at Magic School back at home, Patience Powell was already as fully trained in the use of her own innate abilities as she was ever going to get. Likewise, she had a grounding in spell composition and alchemy that rivalled the students at mage level. But Mistress Mistmark was looking for signs of arrogance and overconfidence; her questions probed the very edges of novice level knowledge, seeking to push Patty into a boastful display of her advanced knowledge.

Again, thank God for Quilly. Patty was lucky enough to have had her room mate as her mentor, and the redhead had been very, very forceful in making sure that she never once so much as mentioned anything beyond novice level in any of their discussions. Whatever tendency Patty had toward showing off had been quashed by Quilly's expressive eyes - a single disapproving look now was all it took to shut the younger girl up and turn her onto a different path. And with her mind constantly considering how Quilly would respond to the way she was speaking, Patty stayed ruthlessly within the boundaries of Ulyssa Mistmark's novice lesson plans.

"Very well," the stern teacher said at the end of their third hour, offering a short nod over to the novice sat opposite her. "You may go, Novice Powell. I will forward my grading of your performance in this area to the Master and Deaconess."

Her hand waved in dismissal, and Patty all but leapt up, thanking Lady Mistmark gratefully for her time before scurrying out through the door. Bloody hell, she thought to herself, heading back toward the room she shared with Quilly with longing thoughts of a cold towel on her forehead and a nap. How many more tests like that was she going to have to face?

Illusion

Astral Projection sounded fine on paper, a really cool trick that could be used to distract as well as many other things once you got the hang of it. The trouble was, Patty wasn't sure she ever had really got the hang of it. There was something very wrong about seeing the world from two different perspectives at the same time, made worse when those perspectives were showing her two different rooms and listening to two different voices.

The real Patience was in Enchantment, trying to concentrate on Master Nil'aiha's explanation of the different types of enchantment and their appropriate application. Her Projection of herself was detailed to assist Mistress LaCroix for the entire day, an interesting bit of psuedo-masochism thought up by the mistress herself as a means to test just how far along Patty had come in her mastery of her secondary gift.

What made this splitting of herself worse was that all the masters and mistresses seemed to be aware of it, not content to let her sit in the back and just take notes today. Oh, no, today was 'Let's Have Patty Demonstrate' Day, something for which she might have been resentful, if she'd had that kind of temperament. As it was, she was simply resigned to being hazy and easily distracted today, and as such, the butt of several jokes.

She hadn't told anyone that she was trying for her Ascension to apprentice after barely four months at the IAP, apart from Jerry and Quillyan. So there had been more than a few odd looks today, when she'd answered a question that hadn't been put to the real her, or had failed to react when a tutor called her name.

Mistress LaCroix wasn't being as evil with the Projection as the rest of them were with the reality, but even so, Patty was having to control every movement of her Astral Projection whenever something was requested of it. Right now, the Projection was talking Dougie Hensall, one of the longer-term apprentices, through the basics of an illusion, helping him painstakingly build an exact copy of the apple on his desk while dealing with the teasing banter he kept muttering under his breath whenever the mistress wasn't close enough to hear. The reality, on the other hand, wasn't listening, which proved to be a big mistake.

"Novice Powell!" Two hands on her shoulders made her jump and look up, silently cursing as the Projection on the other side of the school echoed her movements. Patty looked up at Master Nil'aiha, and didn't need telling twice where Ginger was. She stifled a sigh; ever since that encounter in his office, she seemed to be Nil'aiha's victim of choice in the classroom.

"Yes, Master Nil'aiha?" she asked politely, rolling her shoulders gently to suggest that his familiar might like to remove her hands before Patty did it for her.

"I was asking the class, Novice Powell, when they should be on guard against magics that will seek to ensnare the senses," the master asked, his smile deliberately lascivious, a wicked reminder of how she had personally learned this lesson.

Patty colored in embarrassment, deliberately avoiding looking over at Jerry, no matter how much she wanted to. For a moment she was in two places in her mind; hesitating over her explanation of illusion, and staring up at Nil'aiha in resentful embarrassment. "Always, sir," she finally managed to answer, swallowing hard as she gave into the urge and personally removed Ginger's hands from her shoulders by hand.

"And yet you seem distracted, Novice Powell," the master pointed out, chuckling at the glare she levelled at him. "Could it be that your tests for Ascension are giving you some trouble today?"

Patty closed her eyes as he turned away, lowering her head down onto the desk as the novices sat all around her started muttering amongst themselves. So much for keeping her attempt a secret until she succeeded. Apparently Master Nil'aiha seemed to think she needed more incentive to pass this Ascension - with the scornful expectation of her peers to see her fail, he had just succeeded in steeling Patty's resolve.

He had, however, just stripped her of several burgeoning friendships. Ah, well, what did they matter? She'd just do without, like always. She had Quilly, and Jerry. That was enough.

Binding

"Oh, Wesley ..."

The little kitten that was Patty's familiar looked up at her from where he was currently laid out upon his back under Mistress Tul'Nor's chair, all four paws in the air, purring like a particularly happy steam engine. The Mistress of Bindings was making no effort to hide her smile as she watched novice and familiar stare at one another, all too used to the clashes of will that came into being as the two souls grew used to the bond that joined them so closely.

Patty sighed, and patted the rug in front of her again. "Come here, you great steaming lump of -" She stopped herself just in time before she uttered her fond insult of choice for the little cat, aware that calling your familiar 'bird turd' in front of one of the tutors was probably not the most appropriate use of language. Especially when that tutor's familiar was, itself, a bird, and watching their progress with interest from her perch by the open window.

Wes the kitten meowed back at his mistress and rolled onto his feet, gathering his muscles tightly to pounce at her hand. Patty caught him in mid-air, pinning him down on the rug with one hand as she tutted impatiently at the little feline, acutely embarrassed by his lack of obedience in front of the Mistress of Bindings.

"I think you will find, Novice Powell," Mistress Tul'Nor said in a quiet voice that suggested she was trying not to laugh, "that your familiar will become more obedient as he grows older. Indeed, the fact that you have bonded together at so young an age for you both suggests that your relationship will be rather more symbiotic than some others."

"But he always wants to play," Patty complained softly, rolling her hand - with kitten attached - around on the rug, ignoring the pinprick nips that were being admininstered to her fingers. She was at a bit of a loss here. Told to report to the Mistress of Bindings for an assessment of how well the binding of her familiar was keeping, so far she had been asked to do nothing to demonstrate that binding at all. In fact, Amaya Tul'Nor seemed quite content to simply watch as she interacted with Wesley, rather than prepared to test either of them.

"Then, little one, you must learn to make every task you set him a game," the mistress suggested with a smile. "He is young, he will learn. And though you say he is disobedient, I have yet to notice an occasion where he does not do as you ask, in his own manner."

Patty blinked, startled by this observation, and found herself thinking back over the events of this meeting, paying attention to the actions of her familiar. When they had arrived, she had told him to say hello to Mistress Tul'Nor - he had obliged by clawing his way up the mistress' gown to her shoulder and purring directly into the Nephilim's ear. When told not to attack Ouranos, the mistress' barn owl, Wesley had stalked the bird right onto the windowsill, showing all the signs that he was about to pounce - and had proceeded to lie down in the autumn sunlight beside the owl, inviting the bird to sun himself alongside him. And just now ... she'd told him to come to her, and he had, albeit in a playful pounce.

"You are confused," Mistress Tul'Nor smiled. "You thought you would be set tasks, as you have been in other tests for your Ascension. This is not so here; observation is the greatest tool when it comes to assessing a soul bond."

"Oh ... ow!" Patty jerked her hand away from Wes with a yelp of surprised pain, staring at the little welling of blood on the pad of her thumb. The kitten had become a little overexcited and inserted a claw right into her, entirely by accident. Aware that he had done something wrong, he mewed up at her apologetically, sitting to attention with big, wounded eyes. She offered her bleeding thumb to him, speaking with no trace of offense or anger. "Look what you did, you bully."

The kitten leaned forward to sniff the little injury, meowing again guiltily at the sight and scent of the wound he had inflicted upon his mistress. Under Amaya Tul'Nor's watchful eyes, he then stepped closer, his tongue sweeping out to lick the wound clean with one swipe. Rather shocked that her kitten appeared to like the taste of blood, Patty withdrew her hand hurriedly, frowning in disapproval of Wesley's instinctive reaction to make it better.

"That's disgusting -" she began, but the Mistress of Bindings interrupted her. "Look again at your thumb, little one."

Suspicious now, Patty raised her thumb to eye level, inspecting the pad in minute detail. Where there had been an open pin-prick, there was nothing now to suggest that her blood had ever been spilled. Her jaw dropped, eyes turning to Mistress Tul'Nor in amazement. "He healed me! How did he do that?"

The Nephilim tutor's smile was as ancient as time, gentle with understanding of the shock in such a discovery. "The talents gifted by a binding do not go merely one way," she explained. "The familiar gains by such a symbiosis, too, often earning abilities which compliment those of their master or mistress. You excel in areas where minor injury is common, little one; it is only natural that your familiar should then earn some talent for reversing such injury."

"Hear that, Wes?" Patty beamed down at the kitten, sweeping him up into her hands to hug him warmly against her face, pleased when his purring vibrated through her cheek once again. "You're a little healer! I'm so proud of you!"

Smiling, the Mistress of Bindings turned away, nodding to her own familiar. Ouranos bowed to her and turned, launching himself out through the window and into flight, to deliver Amaya Tul'Nor's assessment of Patience Powell and Wesley to the Mastema and Deaconess.

The Presentation

It was time. Christmas had been fun - a couple of days spent back home with her fmaily, wowing them all with everything she had learned so far here at the Institute, finally able to lord something over her older brothers and sisters as being entirely hers and not something they'd done before her. But the time had come for her to complete her push for Ascension to apprentice, which was why she was back at the school, back in Rhy'Din, four days before the end of the year.

New Year's Eve was the cut-off, the deadline. All Ascension projects had to be completed by then, or the students would have to wait until next year to try again. All Patty's tests had been completed; she had been examined on all her subjects, by all her tutors; she had even perfected the wand augmentation potion she had been working on since arriving at the school itself. Today, however, she couldn't do anything but stand back and hope for the best.

With her cloak folded over her arm, her wand laid lovingly in its little presentation box, and her spellbook in hand, Patty waited patiently in the hallway outside the foyer to the Mastema's office. She'd never even seen Arkon Daraul, not entirely sure she actually wanted to, if the stories about him that flew around the dorms and classrooms were even half-true. He sounded like something out of the history books of her Earth, a creature who could easily have passed for the Source of All Evil if he ever visited. Terrifying, certainly, to someone whose highest level demon kill had been a secondary lieutenant of the old demonic regime.

The ornate portal door creaked open slowly, silence and emptiness inviting her to enter. With a final swallow of her fear and a quick twitch of her uniform to make certain it was absolutely impeccable, Patty stepped inside the sparsely furnished waiting room. The hearth crackled with a cold fire, leaping flames mocking her as they failed to heat even the stones set around them.

Beside the far door - the door that led directly to Barud Das and the Mastema himself - a table had been set up, upon which she could see other novices' accoutrements, each pile separated from one another by a barely discernible aura of flickering black and purple. Trying to touch someone else's offering would no doubt result in a curse of some kind. But at least she would not have to meet with the Mastema himself.

Moving to the table, Patty took a moment to fold her cloak neatly before laying it down in one of the empty spaces, watching with interest as another individual aura of energy sprang up to protect her belongings from others' sticky fingers. Her wand, too, was laid down atop the soft wool of her cloak, and the spellbook with it.

A disembodied voice spoke from the ether, startling her into a jumping spasm of sudden terror as she whirled around, seeking out the source of the sound which could, of course, not be found.

"Name the spells laid upon your cloak, Novice Powell."

That couldn't be the Mastema's voice, no ... but perhaps it was something put in place to keep the students frightened of him? Patty stilled her frantic search for the voice's owner, smoothing her hands nervously over her blazer and skirt.

"Stoneskin, cast with comparison of granite for basis," she heard herself say, marvelling at the way her voice only just shook in the presence of the magics laid down upon the room. "Energy Shield, which can be augmented by my own telekinesis if necessary. Flame Ward, with a view to adapting it for offensive use."

There was a moment's silence, during which she assumed her answer was being transcribed by something onto parchment or another medium for the Mastema and Deaconess to peruse at their leisure.

"Name the spells laid upon your wand, Novice Powell."

She bit her lip, quickly assembling this list in her mind. "Blood Bind, to be certain of never losing it," she said slowly, arranging her words in mind before speaking them aloud. "Fireball; Color Spray; Darkvision; Teleport; Trap Detection; and Light Heal."

Another pause, in which she fretted over the number of spells she had worked hard to put on her wand over the past five or six months, each of them bound to her wand with her own potion, determined to prove that she knew what she was doing, that she could be trusted to advance so soon.

"Remove the wards from your spellbook, Novice Powell."

Patty winced; why hadn't she thought to do that before coming in here? While she had no doubt that the Deaconess and Mastema could certainly break her wards, she had learned in her time here that it was considered the height of bad manners to do so unless there were no other choice.

It was a matter of seconds to do, as well. Bravely plunging her bare hand through the flickering energy that protected her belongings in the hope that whoever had set the trap had thought ahead to novices needing to get to their spellbooks once they had been set down, she lifted her book out of the little pile and laid her hand flat upon the elaborate embossing that decorated the leather.

"Fy gwaed yn dal yn wir
Mae'r rhain yn wardiau dadwneud."

The spell cast, she felt the slight slip of magic that usually surrounded the encasing leather melt away as her protective wards dissipated, allowing anyone to look into her spellbook and discern just what use she had made of the pages. Setting it back, Patty was at least confident that she had done more than enough where her spells and potions were concerned; the book was full to bursting, unable to take another enchantment for more space. She was going to need a bigger spellbook for the next year, whether she rose to apprentice or not.

This done, she paused, looking around expectantly. Was the mystery voice going to give her more instructions, or was that it? After a minute or two of utter silence, the door to the hallway opened once more, a clear indication that it was time for her to leave. She already knew that she would recieve her cloak, wand, and spellbook once a decision had been reached concerning her Ascension.

Now all she could do was wait.