Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The Witch and the Lich; Divine Guidance

Credits; Rea, Krell, Arcania,

Rea didn't come out until nearly noon.  Not to say he particularly minded; Arcania, for all her being responsible for more deaths than any other mortal over all of history, was not only nice, but very smart as well.  He had proposed a round of TacSim only to find out that neither Cyssie nor Igor played and hadn't thought to include the needed facilities in the house.  They'd played Chess for a while but he'd eventually figured out that it wasn't so much her having skill that made her win as that she'd memorized every possible combination of moves and was simply progressing along what she thought of as the pattern.  Finally, they settled on the random and unstrategic game of war.  It was mindless certainly, but it gave them plenty of time to discuss the finer points of navigation in space.  If she hadn't killed so many people, and he hadn't been dead, he might have been attracted to her.  Although, she was rather pale and the lack of pupils gave her a somewhat eerie look. 
He had the feeling inviting her along wouldn't sit well with his current companion though.  Rea must have caught on to his interest in the frosty mage because she was very quick to interrupt their game after finally waking up. 
"So where are you headed next then?"
Arcania seemed to have been caught midthought and was quiet for nearly a minute before responding.  "I've been spelunking on Krove lately.  Zink is known to have hidden a lot of things in those caves and I was hoping she might have left me a clue or something."
"Sounds awfully boring; have you tried just asking her?"
"No..I..I don't think I have quite the standing need to get anything from Him, let alone an audience with her."
Rea shrugged and sat down.  "You're probably right, only one she ever shows up for is Petra and we all know why that is."
Krell wasn't sure how much more of this conversation he could take.  Besides the fact that Rea was clearly being as rude as possible to Arcania; he still had only a limited idea who Petra was, and he had no idea who this Zink person was.  He had to do something. 
"Say, I don't suppose you know anything about finding a phylactery, would you?"
Rea stared at him.  She must not have been used to interruptions, as she was somewhere between confusion and annoyance.  Arcania seemed to welcome the change in topic though, so he felt a little better about having done so. 
"I do actually, it's a very simple spell.  You'll need at least a two point shift towards Light magic though.  Otherwise Rea would have done it by now."
He looked over at Rea.  It wasn't so much surprise that she wasn't perfectly good as that he hadn't considered the possibility that even enormously powerful mages like Arcania were still bound by things he hadn't had to worry about in ages like light and shadow based magic.  Here they were being blocked by the fact that Rea had used a few too many shadow spells to pull off the light based spell they needed in order to complete the task at hand. 
"Oh don't tell me something basic like detect evil would work." 
"You clearly don't read.  You'll need a trace enchantment attuned to a Lich.  Since you have a Lich, all you'll need is a compass or a Universal Positioning System, or some other mundane navigational mechanism that can point you towards a Lich's phylactery.  Divine Guidance should work to isolate it to the desired target.  That's the part I'll teach you." 

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