A Conjuror's journey

Morning greets you with stiff muscles and a throbbing headache, reminding you of how a prepubescent child caused you more harm than a group of infiltrating soldiers. Thinking of the child, you look to her bed and find her to be missing. Getting up and donning your robes, you head downstairs.

You find Louise at the table, receiving looks of disgust and fear from many of the inn's other patrons. The reason for this is the fact that her zombie had apparently followed the two of you here and the trip does not appear to have been good to it. Three days by horse is what you judged the distance between Tarbes and the academy and judging by its bare and sole-less feet, the corpse must have sprinted nonstop. Still headless, missing an arm, sporting several slashes and puncture wounds... no wonder everybody is on edge. Somehow the thing has managed to get it's hand on a pike, making it's runes glow like Louise's did.

Huh... you'd forgotten about the thing and now it's sitting on the floor beside your apprentice as if it were a dog... Well, Louise appears to be happy to have it back, though she really shouldn't be trying to feed it bits of bread through it's open neck wound. "Stop wasting food, it cannot digest anything you give it."

With a startled chirp, Louise swivels to look at you and set down the semi-stale food. Attempting to hide her obvious embarrassment, she clears her throat and announces in an overly loud voice, "Good morning Master Cynric, are you sure a man your age should be out of bed with your injuries?"

"I will have you know, I once climbed a mountain with two broken shinbones. These mere flesh-wounds are nothing but the result of a child's foolishness." You say remembering that time you learned to never drink and ride a horse again... All of your worst injuries come from those damnable beasts...

Crossing her arms, your apprentice declares, "Foolish? I won our wager!"

"You won by forcing me to save you from your attempt at killing yourself, you idiot child!" You say, slapping a hand down in front of the girl when she tries to argue. Her momentary shock allows you to continue uninterrupted. "Did you not see what you did to the clearing? If I had not carried you away from there, the blast would have shredded you to pieces. I will not have you waste my time by killing yourself... If you ever do something so foolish again, you will no longer be my apprentice."

You leave Louise to think on your words as you wave over the innkeeper's niece. The young woman shuffles over with a tray held like a shield. "Y-yes m-m-m'lord?" she says, eyeing the corpse fearfully.

"I'll have the potato leek soup." You tell her, ignoring the needless fear of the ignorant. The woman trips in her attempt to flee now that she has your order. Ten minutes later, you are eating your meal when Louise speaks up.

"I'm sorry." She says with her face downcast. "I... You're right. I was panicked and desperate and... and stupid. It's just... You act like the strangest mix of commoner and Noble, eating cheap food and hunting down random bandits while looking down on everyone and casting powerful magics... You say these things that go against everything I was raised to believe... and... I-I can't argue against them because it works! For the first time in my life, I can use magic without blowing myself up!" You smother the need to correct her on that. "Private tutors, years of studying into the early morning, countless hours of prayer... none of it worked... and then you come along with all this talk of stars and celestial gods... and it takes less than an hour for you to teach me a spell!"

Putting down your spoon, you scoff. "And I find it hard to believe that a culture with six thousand years of history could be so ignorant of how their own abilities work, but here we are."

Jumping up and pointing her finger in your face, she says, "That! Right there, what you said! It's obvious that you aren't from around here... I just want to know more about the only person that truly helped me."

Making a show of looking around, you reply, "Maybe this is not the best venue for this discussion?" At her glare, you raise your hands in false surrender. "Now, I do intend to tell you, just not here."

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Back in the destroyed clearing, you sit on a fallen tree. "You still remember my diagram of Aetherious, Mundus, and Oblivion?" Seeing her nod, you continue. "Well, to correct your most likely assumption, Halkeginia is not on Nirn. As I told you back at the academy, I come from a land called Skyrim... no, Skyrim is not a place in Albion. Skyrim is the northernmost country on the continent of Tamriel, a continent on Nirn."

"So you're from another world? That's how you know all these things? If you're from Nirn, does that mean we are in that Oblivion place?" Louise asks with surprising calm.

"Er... yes... I created a ritual to locate and travel to a habitable realm... my apologies, but... Why you do not sound surprised."

Shaking her head, she explains. "If it was anyone else, I doubt I'd believe them, but you already explained the infinite realms thing. Since you obviously know what you're talking about, I can't just declare you crazy and ignore you." She grins as you laugh at that. "Sooo... why did you decide to leave your home?"

"Dragons." You respond, what more needs to be said?

Tilting her head in confusion, the girl asks, "Dragons? The wagon sized reptiles that cavalry ride around on? You crossed between worlds to buy a dragon?"

"Gods, no! We must be talking about two entirely different creatures. Dragons on Nirn are an ancient race of immortal, soul devouring beings that are descended from the god of time himself, Akatosh. Their very language commands the world around them, their debates have leveled mountains, towns have been slaughtered by accident in their passing and the only way for them to die permanently is for one dragon's soul to absorb the other's." Her confusion melts away into horror as you describe the beasts.

"Y-y-you... they won't f-follow you here... right?"

You rest a hand on the girl's shoulder to calm her down. "No, I decided not to make a gateway for that specific reason. If they even knew I left and wanted to follow, they would have to search every realm of Oblivion to find me and if they do show up here, we can always go to a new realm... but enough of that, you aren't going to become a powerful sorceress by listening to an old man reminisce about home."

Lifting her arm in your hand, you instruct her on her next task. "After yesterday's... incident, I have decided to teach you how to shape your Frost into an Ice Spike. Hopefully, this will allow you to learn to control your magicka better. Now, instead of an open hand, I want you to curl your fingers together as if holding something round."

She holds her hand as if holding an invisible ball. "No, not like that, round like a cylinder. Like holding a cup." She corrects herself. "Good! Now, slowly pool your magicka into the center of the imaginary cup and form a needle. I want you to take your time with this, an imperfect needle may seem fine, but the imperfections become exaggerated as you make the spike bigger. This needs to be as even and smooth as you can make it or you will end up as one of those mages that can't hit their target. Once you have this part down, you simply add more layers and a strong push of magicka to propel it."

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A few hours past noon, you declare her ability to quickly form a passable needle to be adequate and her throwing force... excessive... you decide to-

Choose 1 for Louise:
[] Have her meditate on the feeling of her magical ice.

[] Have her hunt moles. It's practical application and profitable.

[] Have her stay with you.

[] Write in

Choose 1 for yourself:
[] Shop for Alchemy equipment.

[] Perform some preventative maintenance on the zombie, it's not looking too good.

[] Hunt down that manticore

[] Teach Louise (can only be chosen if she stays with you)

[] Summon an unbound Frost Atronach and unleash it on the town. Cost 50 Magicka

[] Write in

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A/N: Is 'sould' a word? Because my auto-corrupt keeps replacing soul with it.

"Well done Louise, you have mastered the necessary steps to move on to some practical application." You wave for her to follow as you head back to town.

Taking her place beside you, the child is bouncing with energy as she asks, "What am I going to be doing? Oh, it's a obviously a combat spell... are we sparring again? I won't blow us up this time, I swear!"

Ruffling her hair, you shake your head. "No, I will be making sure your... familiar does not fall apart at the seams, so you will be on your own for this."

"Then...what am I doing?" She asks as you pull her wand out of your bag and hand it back to her. With another shake of your head, you continue walking. After ten minutes of relentless pestering, you arrive at the southern fields.

You gesture grandly at the surrounding lands. "We have arrived!" A blank stare prompts you to continue. "While I am performing the necessary maintenance on your corpse friend, you shall be hunting down the moles that are damaging these fields and snuffing out their miserable little lives!"

She continues to stare blankly at you. "So... you want me to do pest control?" You nod your head. "With two foot long magical spikes of ice?" Another nod. "Ok... Why go through all this secrecy instead of saying that earlier?" She asks, exasperated.

"Well, my apprentice, you just seemed so excited about the mystery. Like my grandmother told me, 'When dealing with children, one must be sure to keep them properly entertained, else they'll do foolish things in their boredom'. Of course, this was before her Hagraven days... and she was probably imagining grandchildren when she said it."

Growling and bending her wand between her hands, she complains quite loudly, "I keep telling you, I AM NOT A CHILD! I will be seventeen this year and an adult by law. I shall have all the rights and responsibilities therein, so will you PLEASE stop?!"

"But... Really? Your head barely reaches my chest..." You blurt out in surprise, causing Louise to sigh.

"So I'm a bit short for my age, my mother was as well. I'll get taller someday... hopefully."

Before you can filter your mouth, you ask, "Was she also as undeveloped everywhere else?" You blame the shock of her revelation for your slow reaction, but you wake up an hour later... covered in soot and... is that a shoe-print on your chest? Well, the whole situation was a bit crazy, so you'll ignore that. Still, you had assumed that she was around ten or eleven and just really advanced for her age... instead, she is woefully behind her peers due to this world's ignorance of proper magical theory. They seriously use a bit of unenchanted wood as a focus because they think it's necessary, the lunatics.

You are shaken from your musings by the sounds of explosions, shattering ice, squeals of pain, and Louise's screams of rage. Right, you still have work to do today. After grabbing some rope from the farmer's shed, you begin searching the immediate area. You find the zombie standing between two rows of some type of melon, repeatedly stabbing a small brown creature with it's pike. Pushing it down, you use the rope to bind it's limbs.

Missing an arm and head is fine for now, but too much more damage and you might want to get some more parts to make a Flesh atronach... you could always go the low maintenance, removing the meat and enchant the bones a bit to make an artificial Bone Lord... You could give it four swords and... Well, the required number of arms is an issue. Obviously You'll need a replacement arm and getting two more after that shouldn't be too difficult... Decision, decisions... Best work on preservation for now, Louise might like a say in how you upgrade her servant.

Pulling on the minor necromantic energy being release by Louise's painful slaughtering of the moles, you set to work mending corpseflesh. wounds close and the stump of an arm is shifted into a spike of bone. You dry the meat and organs, giving the body a desiccated look... not optimal unless you find a covering to disguise it's nature as a former human... for now, you remove the remains of it's neck with your sword and seal the flesh to create a smooth surface from shoulder to shoulder. Not your finest work, but you had none of the proper preparation and this should last without natural decay. As the day goes on and Louise explosions continue to echo across the fields, you focus the sacrificial energy into giving the corpse extra strength beyond what a human body can produce... it isn't too much due to the energy available without tapping your own, but he should be as strong as an adult now... not a Nord or an Orc though.

The girl's been at this for a while, making you wonder how much Magicka she possesses. From what you can tell, her output is at least twelve times what you could produce and she doesn't appear to be slowing down. At least she stopped screaming in rage a while ago. Once you teach her more magic, she might just be unstoppable in a fair fight... You decide not to teach her conjuration, that being your one advantage over her if she ever betrays you.

Cutting the zombie free once you notice Louise approaching, you stand to greet her. She looks at her repaired servant before meeting your gaze. She winces at you soot-stained appearance and looks away, mumbling an apology. You wave her off and amble over to the farm house to receive your payment before heading back to the inn in silence.

Choose 1:
[] More spellcasting lessons.

[] Enchanting lessons, you promised to teach her to fly and a cape of levitation is just the thing she needs.

[] Alchemy lessons, you currently have the opposite of too many potions.

[] Write in.

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Optional additional choice:
[] Talk to Louise about-

The following morning found the two of you wandering the streets of Tarbes in search of an alchemist's shop. Louise had informed you that the locals do in fact know of alchemy, however... they seem to have confused the word 'alchemy' for transmutation and simply refer to actual alchemy as simply potion making. Backwards fool, the lot of them... whatever their reasoning, you now must set about correcting another of this world's transgressions upon your poor apprentice's learning.

Heading down another street, Louise attempts to defend her mentally deficient teachers. "Yes, the nomenclature is different, of course it's going to be a different use of the word on a different world. Besides, I'm not the best person to tell you about the subject... all my potions exploded when I got to the magic infusing step."

You groan in annoyance at that. "Of course they exploded, a proper potion should not have any magic except from the ingredients! How do you people even function?"

"I... what? Then how do explain all the potions I've seen other people make?" She asks.

With a shrug, you peer inside another shop, this one selling personally blown glassware. Seeing as this is the best you've stumbled across, you head inside while explaining. "My best guess is that six thousand years of trial and error have produced a few standard potions that do not react violently toward being saturated with raw Magicka. Even a Reikling can make a decent poultice on occasion."

You browse the shelves near the unmanned desk in silence. Spotting two bottles that you could combine to make an alembic, you grab them from the shelf. "Chi- er... Louise, go search for a rounded glass vessel with a beaked cap, I must speak with the shopkeeper for a moment." Once she leaves, you pocket the bottles and go back to browsing.

After half an hour and another fake conversation with the shop-keep, the two of you head back to your room at the inn. With a... decent set of equipment, minus stands and calcinator, you set about laying your ingredients on the table. After listing off what each item is, you send the girl to fetch some water and metal sauce pans from the kitchen.

Upon her return, you begin the lesson. "The basic requirements to know for alchemy are as follows: Pure water from a natural source is the best solvent, all ingredients have four defining traits, proper use and cleaning of equipment produces the best results, always combine ingredients with like traits, and two of the same ingredient combined produces nothing. You would be surprised how many novices try the last one."

Pointing out the mortar and pestle, you say, "As you know, a mortar and pestle is used for grinding ingredients into powders or pastes. This is the most first step in preparing reagents for potions. At this stage, combining two or more pastes and powders can create a weak salve or poultice respectively." You pick up your newly combined bottles. "An alembic is used with one end holding liquids or wet reagents over a flame to evaporate out the magical properties. The vapor travels up the neck and into the smaller bottle to condense into a refined liquid." Pointing out the last bottle, you tell her, "A retort is used for the same purpose with solids, converting solid ingredients into gas. After condensing, liquid can be used as is or refined further using an alembic. Lastly, a calcinator would be used to reduce metals and other substances ill fit for the retort into ash, you must then seperate the useless ash from the useful. Proper use of a calcinator can see your finished potion's effects increased by several magnitude... unfortunately, I did not see one during our shopping today... I will probably need to speak with a blacksmith about ordering one."

Handing the girl a few mountain flowers, you set her to grinding.

------

"So... this is supposed to heal my bruises?" Your apprentice asks, holding up a cup of potion that she had spent the last half hour brewing. You simply nod. "But why? All it is is a blue flower and some wheat from the kitchen... and why is it red?!"

"Well my apprentice, I could wax poetic about the different properties of the two plants and their familial histories and their interactions with the grater whole of reality, but it think I shall merely quote my least favorite colleague and say... 'it's magic'."

The girl gives you a dirty look before downing the potion, making a startled noise as her wounds fade. You clap for her success, minor that it is. "Now, if we can find some hawk feathers or crab chitin, I could make myself some Cure Disease potion for the sicknesses I have no doubt already picked up off of you people." You say, more to yourself than anything, but it appears that she heard you... Though she doesn't appear as offended as you would have assumed she would.

Instead, she seems to have ignored the latter half of your statement. "Cure disease? As in all disease? Not just a specific one?!" As she speaks, she gets closer and closer to you until she is almost touching noses with you.

Picking her up off the table and setting her on the floor, you try to ignore the crazed look in her eyes. "Of course every disease, what use would it be if you needed a new potion for every case of the sniffles? Of course, it is of no use for Vampirism or Lycanthropy, but those are more Daedric curse than disease anyway."

"Teach me how to make it!" She demands, once more invading your personal space.

Enthusiasm is good, you decide. Much better to have an enthusiastic, if slightly unhinged, student than an uninterested and wasteful one... though you didn't take her as being medically inclined... maybe all the times she blew people up was playing on her conscience.

Nodding in agreement, she is your apprentice after all, you point out the flaw in that plan. "Very well, bring me the reagents I asked for." She looks around at your supplies before reality crashes down. Seeing the disappointment on her face, you agree with the sentiment. "Indeed, we seem to be missing some ingredients. It seems as if we must gather them ourselves... or, you could use your servant properly and order it to fetch what we need."

Nodding, she does just that, sending the zombie out to find some crabs. "Now you will explain to me why you want to brew this potion so desperately. Being short is not a disease, you know."

Ignoring your statement, she elaborates. "My sister Cattleya has always believed in me, even when everyone else had given up. She supported me when the rest of my family suggested I give up on magic and focus on marriage. Cattleya is the kindest, most wonderful person in the world, but she has been ill all her life... We've tried everything. Doctors, priests, potions and medicines... Eleanor even sacrificed a dozen different animals in a ritual once when she thought nobody was around! I would give anything to-" You slap a hand over her mouth at that.

"Do NOT say those words! This world is not under Akatosh's protection, do you wish to invite a Daedric invasion?" Wide eyed, she shakes her head. "Good. I understand wanting to help a family member, but some words must never be uttered, lest they attract unwanted attention." Releasing her, you smile comfortingly. "Luckily, we should be able to cure your sister with little effort. It is a simple potion to brew and if it does not work, you could always have her pray to Kyne or Stendarr for healing."

Louise cries a little at your reassurances and you have the good grace to pretend not to notice. You doubt that she is up for talking about necromancy at the moment, so you go downstairs to give her space.

At the bar you notice a young couple arguing over some lost item or other. Seeing this you-

Choose 1:
[] Offer to help... for a price.

[] No helping strangers, you need a drink and no adventure is more important than alcohol.

[] All this yelling is annoying.

[] Leave and go hunt that manticore.

[] Write in.

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A/N: I couldn't see a way to fit corpse surgery in after talking about Cattleya, so that will come up in another conversation later unless you guys vote not to... And yes, I will continue to put the manticore as an optional boss fight. No, loot is not guaranteed.