Vol.4 Ch.35 – Training
Chapter 35: Training
“You don't like me very much, do you?”
Mare was beyond surprised at the question. Yes, she had been suspicious of Kaja since the moment she'd laid eyes on her but she'd thought she'd been better at hiding it. She had always thought of herself as having a good poker face but either it wasn't as good as she had always thought or this woman was just very observant.
Both options were plausible, of course.
Mare's slow way of speaking was repellent to a lot of people and so maybe she'd never been around other people long enough for them to comment on her showing her emotions too easily or maybe this angel was just ancient and very good at noticing shifts in expression. Either way it didn't matter. The angel had noticed.
“You seem calculating.”
**
What the fuck are you doing, Mare?, Elaine thought. With that revelation about Aurora Elaine had wanted to spend as little time as possible talking to this angel and she'd especially wanted to not cause any suspicion. Instead Mare was going on the offensive.
However. While Mare didn't seem too terribly aware of social conventions, she wasn't stupid. So if Mare was suspicious of this woman then what was there? Kaja seemed like a very pleasant person but the way she could shift gears at the drop of a hat was disconcerting. She'd gone from calmly looking over the cadets to giving that incredible speech to coming over to them and having a friendly chat seamlessly. And, now that Elaine was paying attention she could see the woman's expression changing into a mask of shock for just the briefest moment before recovering into a friendly smile.
She didn't seem like she was evil or anything but it seemed... off.
**
The angel showed the barest hint of shock before schooling her face. “How do you figure?”
“Your speech,” Mare said. “You scanned everyone during it.”
The angel actually looked embarrassed at that.
“After that you came over here and started asking about us,” Mare went on. “I thought you would be asking about the things you scanned, to verify if we were telling the truth, but you didn't.” She wasn't even sure what she was accusing the angel of but things didn't add up.
**
Kaja could stare down Outsider godlings no problem. One time her and Omega had managed to fend off a Mask of Nyarlathotep long enough for the portal it had tried to enter to collapse. She considered herself virtually fearless. And yet she wanted to run away and hide from this girl.
She knew her act wasn't perfect. But to have this girl break down all her walls and call her out on her bullshit within minutes of meeting her was terrifying. She really didn't want to have this conversation. But at the same time, she'd come here to build a rapport with the people she would be fighting with and running away because of a few uncomfortable questions would not help with that. For the first time in forever she wished Omega was next to her to grant her strength. But he was still sitting with Jeanne.
She assumed the two of them had something to talk about, probably something to do with him being an idiot and insulting her for no reason, and so she would have to do this on her own.
“You're a little too observant,” Kaja finally said, deciding to sit down at their table for this conversation.
The girl looked at her, eyes narrowed.
“Oh, don't look at me like that,” Kaja said, “we are on the same side.”
The expression softened a little but not by much.
“Let's start fresh,” Kaja said. “I scanned the room to find out how strong you all were and to find,” she looked at Elaine, “you. We were allowed to pick one squad to tag along with and so we wanted to pick the one with the Lacrima in it.” She paused to see how well this was going over. Nobody was glaring at me. “In hindsight that was pretty stupid of me as I just ended up asking Jeanne anyway. But I did already scan everyone present and so I already knew roughly what everyone is capable of. When I came to talk to you it wasn't to confirm whether you'd tell the truth, it was about building a rapport with you, seeing as we're browbeating you into helping us. Which I kind of messed up by coming off as too suspicious.” She paused again. God, she was used to being the chatty one when she was with Omega that she'd just run her mouth like crazy.
But at least the gypsy princess was no longer looking at her with narrowed eyes. Then again, the new expression wasn't much better. It was compassion, mixed with a tiny little bit of pity. “You're torn.”
Ice gripped her heart. How was this girl so good at reading her? She was right, Kaja was torn. She wore a lot of hats. Protege to the Angel Lord of Wisdom, Necromancer hunter, diplomat, scholar, magical prodigy, Omega's voice, angelic messenger and somewhere deep down inside there was also just Kaja, a girl who wanted a life. And somehow, this girl had seen right through her, just from that bit of babbling.
“I am,” Kaja admitted.
**
What did she mean, torn?, Elaine wondered. She could only hazard guesses at what Mare had figured out about the woman but whatever she had figured out it had been enough to calm them both down.
But what the angel had said was nonetheless interesting. What Mare had apparently construed as malicious intent had actually been harmless, if stupid, at least if Kaja could be trusted. But that was the problem, wasn't it? This had been meant as a team-building exercise but had turned into an interrogation real quick. But even if her methods had seemed underhanded, Kaja's intent had been good. They would need to build some kind of rapport for this mission.
“How about this, then?” Elaine said and the entire table turned to look at her. “Jeanne once told me that celestials fight in pairs, with a fighter in front and a mage in back. Did I get that right?”
“That's it exactly,” Kaja said.
“So,” Elaine continued, “even at the risk of stereotyping, I'm guessing that between you and Tall, Dark and Handsome back there you're the mage, right?”
“The technical term would be 'wordweaver', but yes,” Kaja said.
Elaine nodded. “So, Aurora here only unlocked the ability to use magic yesterday. I was going to teach her about her new magic in the training grounds. So if you want to build trust with us, why not help me teach her?”
**
Kaja blinked. In any other context, hearing that someone unlocked the ability to use magic would have made all her Necromancer alarm bells ring but thankfully she knew that the members of Project Divinity could apparently unlock magic potential with this weird method that Stollos had cooked up.
And so she looked at the little pixie. The girl was adorable and looked beyond terrified.
Yeah. If anyone here needed to be convinced that her and Omega didn't mean them harm it was definitely her. And also she'd never taught a mortal magic before. This might be fun.
**
Watching Kaja weave spells together was like watching a master pianist or an expert painter, someone so proficient in their craft that the idea of ever approaching their level was laughable. For someone of her caliber the difficulty lay in breaking down their knowledge to a level that another person could understand them.
She could clearly do it but it was just as clear to Elaine that she would actually be able to learn a lot more from Kaja than Aurora would. This was too simple for Kaja. And so she decided to step in.
Kaja had just explained to Aurora that the Winds of Magic were drawn to emotion and that she needed to weave intent into them to create spells. But she was apparently having a hard time explaining how to do that, likely because it was second nature to her.
“You've worked with computers before, haven't you?” Elaine asked, walking over and standing next to Aurora.
“Of course,” the girl said.
Elaine nodded, then grabbed hold of the girl's hands and sat down, pulling her along. They were sitting down facing each other and Elaine continued:
“Creating a spell is like programming your intent into the Winds. You tell it what to do.”
“What if I do it wrong?” the girl asked. “I've coded before. Syntax errors and missing commas were the bane of my existence for a while.”
Elaine chuckled. “I say it's like programming but it's not that bad. Magic is still magic. It's what Kaja has been telling you. Magic runs on instinct, on intent. The Winds will understand what you want the spell to do if your intent shines through. Syntax becomes more important and less forgiving when the spells get more complicated but that's a problem for way, way later.”
“Are you at that level yet?” Aurora asked.
“I've only just started running into that issue,” Elaine said. “One of my Soul Shards taught me a spell that's orders of magnitude more complicated than anything I've ever had to come up with.”
“A spell from your Soul Shard?” Kaja asked, drawing Elaine's attention.
“Yeah,” Elaine said. “An acid spell from Tiamat.”
Kaja swallowed. “Would you show me that later?” She paused. “I've been fairly useless so far, haven't I?”
“You're too good at magic,” Elaine said. “You barely have to think about the fundamentals she needs.”
Kaja blushed.
“But I'll pick your brain later,” Elaine said, “don't worry. Until then, how about I teach her the basics and you correct me if I get something wrong?”
“Sounds great.”