Amdirlain’s PoV - Culerzic

The electric notes of Ilya’s fear slowly chilled. With Ilya settling, Sírdhem waved before slipping back through the Gate, and the circle’s internal pressure eased. Though the Gate’s continued presence confirmed she was nearby, she moved out of sight. Amdirlain restrained a wince at the erratic spikes of pain and grief that suddenly gouged into the cavern’s song.

Ilya caught her attempt, and she nodded reassuringly. “The grotto’s song and the trees should help Sírdhem.”

“Did she let folks know why I was after other tutors?”

“Yeah, and I’m not surprised. Both the Abyss and Hell have a talent for inflicting wounds that won’t heal properly,” observed Ilya, her emotions cracking in her voice. “Don’t let it claim too many pieces from you.”

“I’m trying,” reassured Amdirlain, taking in the brittleness within Ilya.

Ilya let out a sharp breath. “Alright, let’s get started so I can forget where I am. Sarah said you’d picked up a supplicant’s guide at some point. Is that right?”

Amdirlain pulled the folio from Inventory, and Ilya took a hasty step back.

“I recognise the book and don’t want to touch it. Hell makes sure it gets circulated far and wide. The author got a nice deal from what Isa calls Hell’s PTBs for writing it,” sneered Ilya, thrumming with tight anger. “The damn traitor’s work gives a false sense of security to those who read it. Whoever gave that to you might have had good intentions, but they didn’t do you any favours. Also, it won’t help you.”

“I used it to get close enough to Hell to meet up with Sarah,” Amdirlain objected.

“Yeah, I heard; so glad someone else can piss her off,” Ilya replied with a tight smile. “She wanted to strangle you for that stunt. Listen carefully when I say this; what I’m going to teach you won’t get you safely through Hell.”

Catching Ilya’s steely focus, Amdirlain raised an eyebrow. “What do you intend to teach me then?”

“Enough to fool any Demon into believing you’re infernal or convince any infernal you’re one until they seek confirmation. It won’t help you go steal Sarah’s daughter from Hell,” replied Ilya and smiled when she caught the slight twitch in Amdirlain’s stance.

“I didn’t have that planned,” objected Amdirlain.

“Yet,” interjected Ilya, but tension ruined her smug smile. “You didn’t have it on your plans yet, but I can read the writing on the wall. It won’t get you into Hell—and not from any shortcoming in what I can teach—rather, there is a massive difference between an arriving supplicant and an infernal returning home.”

“Why’s that?”

“Paperwork,” declared Ilya. “The same paperwork they would refer to if any succubi checked up on you.”

“I was told succubi come and go freely between Hell and the Abyss,” queried Amdirlain.

“They’re not stopped, that’s true, but that’s because they have their registration completed. An infernal Succubus doesn’t leave Hell for the Abyss without documentation to prove they have permission; an abyssal one visiting will do so safely if they’re known to an infernal. That infernal will have filed a request for the permits. That’s then used as a reference for the bureaucracy to check the visitor against before they start their permanent record,” explained Ilya.

“So I’d get in the front door, and the first checkpoint would blow the cover?”

Ilya nodded. “Exactly. It wouldn’t take them long to figure out you’re an unknown infernal—which is impossible since you’re entering Hell. The devils on duty immediately escalate issues outside procedure through the chain of command. Let's say the outcome would be quick and unpleasant. I worked on security details at the Gate during my first few centuries. There were attempts by demon lords to slip agents in; they didn’t go well for the pawns.”

“I’ll keep that limitation in mind. Where do we begin?” asked Amdirlain.

“A bit of context, and then we’ll start on weapons. No point covering claws, tails, and wings—I’m sure you can handle them with Protean and your martial art—so we’ll start with daggers,” said Ilya. “You should remember that a Succubus doesn’t come to the Abyss for a holiday. She’ll come to further Hell’s goals: undermining progress in a region, stirring up trouble within or between regions, or just gathering information. They will spend most of their energy achieving that goal.”

“Okay, but I’m just faking being one,” noted Amdirlain.

Ilya frowned unhappily. “What happens if you meet another or there is a Demon who can read deeper into that False Mind technique than you expected? You need to have those answers ready, be consistent, and not make stuff up on the fly. To do that, you need to build your cover story from the ground up and stick to it; it could save you a lot of pain.”

Ilya’s expression didn’t give away so much as a twitch, but painful memories bloomed into razors, scrambling Ilya’s theme. With neither face nor voice shifting in the slightest at the fear, Amdirlain reassessed Ilya's fear of being trapped underground.

In that pause, Ilya’s gaze flickered towards the circle’s edge while the silence lengthened between them, and Amdirlain forced words out.

“You had to go spying in Hell? I thought--”

“That I was just a battlefield scout?” interjected Ilya, forcing her gaze back to Amdirlain. “No, I spent a few centuries assigned to scut work, like all the proper trainees. Learning the ropes in different roles along the way, with superiors secretly assigning you to audit locations.”

“Don’t most devils have one form of telepathy or another?”

“Yep,” popped Ilya. “Surface thoughts, at least. It's fun learning how to spy against telepaths, and there are many opportunities to give your superiors, or those you’re spying on, an excuse for vivisection practice. You learn to keep the cover story firmly in your mind and not slip.”

Amdirlain didn’t bother to hide her wince and gave a whole body shudder at Rachel enduring that fate. “Until a trainee turns up that doesn’t fit into expected regulations and whose mind they can’t read.”

Ilya snorted. “She had no hope of fitting in anywhere in Hell. Thank Isa’s luck that Makaro thought her an embarrassment fit only to get me in trouble.”

“How does the place not come apart?”

“Tyranny. Hell has its regulations and laws, and everyone’s quietly trying to seize the advantage over each other. Everyone that ended up there manipulates the rules and agreements to get ahead. However, those higher up will come down on anyone openly flaunting them, so everyone’s mostly working towards the same goals—just seeking to pad their own nest along the way,” explained Ilya.

Retrieving a hide-wrapped mass from her storage bag, Ilya unfolded it to reveal pockets holding dozens of different short blades. From the wavy-edged kris, snub-bladed punch daggers, thin stilettos, hooked knives, knives with fat wedge-shaped blades, and more.

“We’ll start with these,” announced Ilya, pulling two sets of kris from the bundle. “Each requires a different approach to combat.”

Amdirlain caught the hilts when a pair got tossed her way and took in the unenchanted blades.

“Isa calls these blades kris but I’ve run across four worlds with similar wavy-edged blades,” Ilya advised. “Slashing attacks work best with these, though you can certainly stab using them. Don’t try direct blocks—these blades are too thin. You need to slide attacks away.”

“Is that why you didn’t bring enchanted ones?”

“With these, there isn’t a chance of risk to you,” answered Ilya. “Plus, you’ll need to be delicate to avoid crushing them.”

“I’m not immune to mundane materials,” offered Amdirlain, ignoring the comment about delicacy that she was sure was Erwarth’s doing.

“It’s not so much immunity that I was expecting, but what rank is your mundane resistance at?”

“Greater.”

Ilya nodded happily. “Yeah, no chance of hurting you with these; even a standard rank resistance, you’d be fine. I’d need to be smashing you with boulders or a massive war maul.”

Amdirlain twirled the daggers around to test their balance. “Isa said you spent weeks stabbing her.”

“That was different,” grumbled Ilya sadly. “She needed to learn fast in case we got called back.”

“Sorry, Isa already explained; I shouldn’t have teased.”

Ilya rolled her eyes and adopted an angled stance. “Just make sure you stick with the attacks I show you, and don’t use them with Silent Storm. The goal is to unlock Short Blades.”

“Do you have any Grecian-style blades in your collection? Kopis advanced fast for me because it was familiar to Orhêthurin.”

“Weird, she was familiar with a sword from another realm? A parallel development, or did the Titan bring it along?” asked Ilya.

“The Titan made at least one for her,” clarified Amdirlain.

“Right, I’ll message Erwarth. She’s been to the survivor’s domain, so she can describe the Greek daggers.”

It didn’t take long to get a response, and Ilya switched the kris for a pair of solid-looking daggers. The base of the blades went the entire width of a crosspiece, wider than Amdirlain’s fist, and progressed smoothly to a point in line with the hilt’s centre. It was a pleasant surprise when Amdirlain encountered the same awkwardness she’d experienced trying the kopis.

While smoothing out the awkwardness didn’t unlock Short Blades, the notification she received was significant.

[Dagger (4) -> [B](1)]

The next stab following the notification felt like a piston’s motion and had Ilya’s eyebrows lifting. “That’s interesting. I take it you didn’t just throw a bunch of Skill Points into it like Isa sometimes does?”

“Nope,” Amdirlain stated. “I just had to follow my body’s cues about what felt wrong and smooth my motions to match its guidance.”

Ilya gave her a thoughtful look. “How about we concentrate on the kopis, those daggers, Infernal Lore, and Diplomacy for the next few months?”

“Why that knowledge in particular?” enquired Amdirlain.

“It’s normally progressed by working on Hell’s different layers, running into—or from—various devils, and picking up bits of history. It covers the factions and who is who about the place. With it high enough, you won’t get tripped up ‌in casual conversation if you run into an infernal,” advised Ilya. “Though if you progress the weapons fast, I’ll add acting exercises and other challenges early.”

“I already progressed my Infernal Lore to Master one,” informed Amdirlain.

“What?” gasped Ilya. “There is no way you can could learn that from that folio.”

“Not just from the folio, but I had some intuitive leaps, plus dropped some points,” admitted Amdirlain. “The monastery had some texts.”

“Orhêthurin might have had dealings with Hell, maybe your intuitive leaps were snippets from memory? We’ll work to increase the lore further, figure out a cover identity, a form, and acting, along with weapons,” murmured Ilya.

“Acting is Master 11,” interjected Amdirlain.

“Then we’ll push it until you’re impossible to shift from a role,” Ilya declared. “Fix your Diplomacy, otherwise it will give any Succubus Manipulator act away.”

“Sounds good,” said Amdirlain, and concern had her push forward. “Will these lessons cause trouble between you and Isa?”

Ilya gave a tight smile. “Isa’s not thrilled, but she admitted ignorance won’t help you. Especially since it sounded like Erwarth would teach you regardless, and I’ve got more experience. We’d prefer you to have a proper knowledge of the infernal rules and beings. Especially since we don't know what collected misinformation, the Sisterhood has slapped together in believing its correct.”

“Thank you.”

“Stay free. That’s all the thanks we need,” replied Ilya, demonstrating another attack.

Towards the session end, Amdirlain was working through a sequence of attacks when Torm arrived on the stairs. Sitting on the landing, he simply watched the training, and only approached after Ilya acknowledged his presence. “Those attacks were much smoother than I expected.”

“We found a dagger that matched Orhêthurin’s memories,” explained Amdirlain.

“I’ll leave you two to your fun,” quipped Ilya. Distracted from her focus on supervising Amdirlain’s practice, the last word cracked with strain.

“Go on, Ilya,” said Amdirlain and ushered her towards the open Gate.

Shortly after Ilya crossed the threshold, it winked out.

Torm sighed. “Caltzan wants you to stay well away from our operations, even my material gathering.”

“What?” hissed Amdirlain. “I warned him about Brel and the trap, and he says ‘don’t come back’?”

“Their Liege must have a thing about bad luck or omens. I’ve been trying to reason with them since shortly after I left you at Sírdhem’s mercy,” advised Torm.

Shaking her head in disbelief, Amdirlain gave a broad shrug. “What do you want to do?”

“Are you content to sit out the work if I keep assisting them?” asked Torm.

“I’m going to spend time mostly training and meditating on memories. It might get boring for you to sit around watching over me,” replied Amdirlain. “But are you sure you don’t want to hop out of the Abyss and work on something else? You could visit when I’m not training.”

Though tension screamed his dissatisfaction, his voice remained calm. “I won’t leave while you’re stuck here. Also, they invested time helping me learn about the Abyss.”

“Your Acting is improving, but I can tell you’re unhappy.”

Torm flexed his hands and gave a tight smile. “It is what it is. Caltzan’s being unreasonable, but the Abyss is an uncontrollable place, and they desire what control they can get.”

“Well, while you feel you owe them a debt, I’ve funded their efforts and asked for nothing in return. Maybe factor that into consideration of debts owed,” Amdirlain suggested, unsurprised by Torm’s need to be fair.

“I’ll endeavour to ensure they don’t drag me into anything foolhardy,” replied Torm.

Amdirlain laughed and spread her arms. “Already too late for that; you’re in the ultimate bad neighbourhood.”

With a shift of energies that echoed Ternòx, Isa arrived high on the stairs. Leaning over the shaft’s edge, she waved a hide bag at Amdirlain. “Got a bag of goodies for you! Sírdhem closed the Gate too quick.”

“Regardless of their wants, please yell if you land in trouble. Alright?” Amdirlain asked Torm before she waved for Isa to join them.

“Trouble?” asked Isa, reappearing next to Torm.

“Just asking Torm not to follow my example,” replied Amdirlain. “Is Ilya okay?”

“She’s going to chill in the grove of the biggest settlement for a while. The cavern’s size makes it feel airier. How did she do?”

Amdirlain pursed her lips as she considered Ilya’s shifting moods. “Shaky at the start, but her nerves settled for a while. However, towards the end, there were a few times I thought she was going to panic. She didn’t lash out verbally—just her voice got brittle.”

Isa winced and rubbed her palms along her arms. “Can you keep her to shorter sessions?”

“I suggested we break early, and she insisted we keep going. Told me it was as much for her as me,” sighed Amdirlain. “If that’s what she’s like after the groves eased her fears, what was she like before?”

“You could shatter glass with the tension in her song,” admitted Isa.

“And you got to listen in,” said Amdirlain softly.

“We’re both guilty of that now,” Isa laughed bitterly and tossed Amdirlain the bag. “A bunch of sample materials for you. Sarah also included some items with basic enchantments so you can start studying their music.”

“Why did you go to Sarah over this?” asked Amdirlain, attuning to the storage bag. The contents ranged from air-tight cylinders, boxes of various powders, and pure metal ingots, each carefully marked with its name. Beyond the samples of pure elements, there were compounds, glass, crystal, porcelain, magical metals, and a host of cloth swatches—ranging from rough hemp to Phase Spider silk.

“If you want something properly organised, who better to go to?” asked Isa rhetorically. “Couldn’t get you all of it, and we figured you didn’t want radioactive materials. Sarah added a heap of stuff from her Artificer collection, though some of it isn’t useful to Anar.”

“Would radioactive material push up poison resistance from being exposed to them?” Amdirlain teased and laughed when Isa’s eye bulged. “I was joking. Relax.”

“What do you plan to do with them?”

“Learn to sing them all and make some things. The classes I took seem to like creation the best, so my True Song training might focus on crafting for a few years,” admitted Amdirlain. “Though, do you think the dwarves would sulk if I started shipping them mithril?”

“Does raw material creation get you experience?” asked Isa eagerly.

“Does copying a Spell?” countered Amdirlain, and Isa shook her head. “Though seriously, it seems limited to finished products, and since creating targets for Spell practice didn’t give experience, not even all of them.”

“With your mithril, I think the dwarven craftsman would be ecstatic to have access to more. Unless you go creating megatons, I doubt you could even dent the demand on some worlds,” advised Torm.

Amdirlain tied the bag to her belt and gave Isa a careful hug. “Take care of your partner. You’ve caught her concern about being a liability when you’re in the tunnels?”

“Yeah, we’ve spoken about it a few times, but fear makes her paranoid,” sighed Isa. “I’ll go curl up with her for a bit.”

“Do the groves contain any fey fruit?” Amdirlain asked as she caught Isa's intention to shift planes.

Isa gave a puzzled frown. “No, why do you ask?”

“Just a memory I had from the awakening of the races,” explained Amdirlain. “A crater-like bowl with groves of fey fruit.”

“Never heard mention of anything like that; now I’ll have to dig into the records,” exclaimed Isa, giving her a wave. “The settlements’ groves are a mix of trees; some I recognise—like oak and pine—but most I don’t.”

When she’d vanished, Amdirlain smiled at Torm and patted the material’s bag. “Things to do, or do you want to listen to me play around singing?”

“Listening to you sing for a time sounds like what I need; Caltzan was incredibly frustrating to speak with,” admitted Torm.

Amdirlain shifted them to an unfurnished room in her main hideaway and extracted a mithril sample. “I’ll create more of this and then see if I can form it into a hand-axe.”

The mithril’s lilting honeycombed song continually stirred the air and echoed down the halls. Small ingots or large, none warranted a notification awarding experience, though her True Song increased when she managed an arm-length rod.

[True Song [Ad] (37->38)]

Focused on the material she’d created, an alteration of the axes’ music triggered a reaction. Various small ingots got caught in her focus, blurring together, twisted by the song’s form and her intent. Rather than the golden glow, the light around the work had a silver hue, matching the metal. Part way through her song came apart. Mithril's foundation was incompatible with a piece intended for steel and wood. A molten smear across the stone and a lash of pain within her throat are all she had to show for the effort.

“What happened?”

“The music for the form and the material clashed,” replied Amdirlain, the welt within her throat already gone.

[True Song Composition [B] (15->16)]

“And recognising that helped improve the Skill to compose songs,” added Amdirlain.

“Weren’t you going to start with the fundamentals?”

Torm’s question had Amdirlain shoot him a smile, and she began again. Rather than changing anything, she repeated the music of each sample. She’d spent another hour singing copies of the various examples into existence when she finally stopped.

“If I’m copying an existing object, the form and material are already in the item’s song. With the axes, I used one song for the handle and another for the blade because the material was different. Creating something new, I might need to shape the pieces and apply the material’s song to them.”

“Is that memory or theory?”

“Theory, hence the ‘might’. This has pried no memories loose, at least not so far,” replied Amdirlain. “I’ll need to work out how to separate the object’s form from its material.”

Torm smiled and sat down on a large iron block Amdirlain had created. “If only you had, oh, say, a century to experiment. Or, say, a host of Lómë that could give you lessons or show how it works for them.”

“They sing-”

“Different registers, but isn’t the framework the same? Otherwise, how would True Song Crystal’s waveform work?” asked Torm. “The energy goes from one register range to another; if the frame was different, wouldn’t it slip off?”

“I don’t want them setting my expectations by what they remember,” replied Amdirlain. “I want to find out what I can do now, then stretch my limits and find ways around them.”

And I don’t know what might give me away. If I’m copying Isa, it's one thing. If any of the Lómë teach me, I might slip into impossible land.

“Won’t you end up putting in time reinventing the wheel?” asked Torm, watching Amdirlain move between the created samples.

“Perhaps I am in some ways, but Yngvarr had a perception of how Mana and spells behave that didn’t hold for me. I’ve got time, as you just put it, so I’d like to experiment. If I find my powers or skills aren’t advancing, I’ll put my hand up for help,” conceded Amdirlain.

“Okay, I’m concerned you were talking about returning to the foundations but ignoring an available resource. It's not the first time you’ve tried to carry the whole burden yourself,” noted Torm. “Isa had a memory that distorted her perception of the Lómë. One she later found was only a small part of the story.”

Looking over the samples she’d duplicated, Amdirlain realised she’d let herself get carried away. Among the mess were materials the Anar couldn’t have managed.

“Oddly enough, one Anar or another caused most of the painful memories I’ve recovered from Orhêthurin’s life.”

With that said, she continued to collect samples, rapidly leaving entire sections bare to conceal the items of concern.

“Done practising?”

“Need to get myself organised. The room started to look like someone had upended a toy box,” replied Amdirlain, not stopping until she’d cleaned up most of the chamber.

Torm laughed good-naturedly. “You have lots of empty rooms to use.”

“They won’t stay that way,” huffed Amdirlain.

“Those targets you created with no bother? Maybe you just need to try forms you don’t associate with other materials,” suggested Torm and tapped on the block he’d claimed as a stool. “You have no trouble altering the sample’s dimensions.”