Chapter 119: Chapter 119

When Damien awoke, he was surprised to find that it was the following morning. Faint streamers of sunlight poked through beneath the door. All of the stuff that they’d bought from the general store had been piled up just in front of their beds. Damien yawned, sitting up and stretching. Sylph had, unsurprisingly, already vacated her bed. He could hear the scuffle of her feet on the rough floor of the training room behind him.

Damien threw his clothes on and got out of bed, taking a few minutes to get ready for the day before he headed into the training rooms. Sylph was facing the wall in the farthest room, holding her hand in front of her.

A droplet of green liquid fell, sizzling against the ground as Sylph partially turned to look at him. Her eyes were lit up with a faint green glow.

“Sylph?” Damien asked warily. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” Sylph said, the glow fading slightly. She turned the rest of the way, shaking off one of her hands. “I’m just trying to figure out my new magic a bit better. It’s much less willing to do what I want, but I’m making progress.”

“That’s good to hear,” Damien said, letting out a relieved sigh. “For a moment, I thought you were, well…”

“Turning into a monster?” Sylph guessed.

“That makes it sound harsher than what I meant.”

“It doesn’t make it wrong,” Sylph said, grinning to show she wasn’t hurt by his words. “I’ll try to make some noise if I lose it, so you’ve got sufficient warning.”

“Thanks,” Damien said, rolling his eyes. “The gesture is appreciated. Did I really manage to sleep through all of yesterday?”

“Pretty much,” Sylph said. “The clerk came by and dropped everything we bought off. It was quite impressive. He had some sort of spell that let him reach into a portal and just pull out our stuff. It looked pretty high level.”

“Damn,” Damien said, genuinely meaning it. “That sounds interesting. My Magic Theory teacher can do something like that with that as well. He’s so monotone that the class would have been unbearable if the concepts weren’t so interesting.”

“At least you’re learning something,” Sylph said with a scoff. “My Magic Control teacher is going over concepts that are so basic that it’s practically a joke. I think half of my class sleeps through the lectures.”

They both chuckled.

“I’m going to get some training of my own done,” Damien said, rolling his neck to get some of the kinks out of it. “I’m getting pretty close to figuring out my newest spell. I just need to get through the last bit.”

“Good luck,” Sylph said. “I’ve got some training of my own to practice. There are only a few days left before classes start again, and something tells me that Mark or the Grays are going to want to spar with us again.”

“You’re probably right,” Damien said. “Let’s just hope it goes better than the last time we sparred them.”

“I don’t think it’s physically possible for things to go worse,” Sylph said. “Let’s work until a few hours before lunch, then set up the kitchen. Depending on how long that takes, we could go try to hunt something in the forest afterwards.”

“Sounds good to me,” Damien said, nodding. “Good luck with training.”

“And you as well.”

Damien headed back out to the first training room, summoning the net of mental energy and casting it out as he walked. Lines of Ether lit up the room and Damien ran his hand along the nearest one, drawing the power into his core.

He envisioned the Devour spell’s effects and channeled the Ether, drawing a rune in the air and detonating it immediately, forming the flickering shadowy disk. The spell had already started to become close to second nature for him, although it was still a far cry from what Henry could do.

Damien carefully brought more Ether to his palm, carefully attempting to increase the gravity to activate the Expunge spell. For a moment, the disk buckled. Then the disk shattered, dissipating into the air around him.

He let out an irritated sigh, then channeled his energy and repeated the process. Every time he tried it, the concentration of Ether within his body increased by a miniscule amount. The strands of it that coursed through his muscles and infused his bones grew thicker and longer, reinforcing his physical form.

Unfortunately, that did little to assist in the casting of Expunge. Damien was making progress, but it was mind numbingly slow. As the hours trickled by and lunch grew closer, Damien managed to cast something that almost resembled Expunge a single time.

He promptly found himself unable to replicate the feat, which only served to annoy him further. Damien couldn’t deny that he was progressing, but for some reason, this spell just seemed determined to elude him.

Damien’s stomach rumbled. He sighed and let his mental energy fade away, dismissing the Ether around him as he walked over to Sylph’s training room. He nearly bumped into her in the hallway.

“Hungry as well?” Sylph guessed.

“Yeah. It’s now occurring to me that we probably should have made a spot to put everything before we planned to move this stuff.”

“How long would it take to make another small room?” Sylph asked. “I can probably help now that my Ether reserves aren’t so pitifully low. I think I’ve got a good grasp over the basics again.”

“If you help? We could probably do it in a few hours,” Damien said after a moment of thought.

“In that case, let’s go get food at the mess hall for lunch,” Sylph suggested. “I don’t want to work on an empty stomach if I can avoid it. We can get everything set up, then go hunt something and have that for dinner.”

“We need to get some cooking supplies as well,” Damien said, slapping his forehead. “I completely forgot about it yesterday. We can’t just fry a piece of meat, it’ll be flavorless.”

“Mess hall, general store, build the kitchen, and then we go hunt something,” Sylph amended.

“That works for me,” Damien said, grinning.

The two headed out of their room and down the mountain to the mess hall. Damien bought himself a large sandwich and Sylph got more dumplings on Delph’s tab. They both split off half of their meal and swapped it.

Once they’d finished, they swung by the general store. The clerk didn’t seem particularly surprised to see them.

“Realized you need ingredients to cook with, did you?” he asked.

“Yep,” Damien said, giving him a sheepish grin. “I’m not exactly sure what we should get, though. Do you have a starter pack or something?”

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“A cooking starter pack?” The clerk looked like he couldn’t tell if Damien was joking or not. “It’s not like there’s a one size fits all for every dish. What are you trying to make?”

“We were going to hunt something in the forest,” Damien said. “What do we need to cook that?”

“Well, I suppose if you wanted to go pretty basic, you’d be good with just some spices,” the clerk said, scratching his chin. He wandered down the isles to a small section full of glass jars and pulled several of them down from the shelves. “This should take care of it. Salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika. It won’t be winning any contests, but if you just toss some of this onto the meat, it’ll taste better than nothing.”

He handed the vials to Damien. Sylph plucked one of them out of his hands. It was full of bright red powder that looked more like a base for paint than anything that people would eat. She unscrewed the top and sniffed slightly at it.

Her eyes widened and she coughed, screwing the top back onto the jar.

“That’s the paprika,” the clerk said dryly. “Don’t put too much of that onto your food. It’s from the Eastern Plateau. Adds a nice kick to your food.”

“And would work well as blinding powder,” Sylph said, rubbing her nose. “It’s like angry dirt.”

“Do you want it or not?”

“We’ll take it,” Damien said. “How much do we owe you?”

“Three silver.”

Damien reached into his bag and handed the merchant his coins. They vanished into the man’s pockets and he gave them an award winning grin. “Thanks for your purchase. Anything else I can help you with today?”

“That should be it,” Sylph said, still watching the paprika distrustfully. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” he replied, waving as they headed out of the store.

A short trip later, Damien and Sylph returned to their room. They set the spices down next to the pile of cooking supplies that blocked a good portion of the entrance.

“Where should we make the kitchen?” Damien asked. “I’m not sure if we want it connected to the training rooms. They’re probably going to be a bit too dirty. Should we connect it to the bathroom so we can easily use the sink?”

“Let’s stick it on the left side of the room, by my bed. It’s probably better to keep the bathroom separate from where we cook,” Sylph said.

Damien nodded. “That might be for the best.”

He examined the wall at the base of Sylph’s bed for a moment, then brought a ball of destructive energy to his palm and pressed it into the stone. It carved through the rock like butter, and he quickly started to create a hallway in the rock.

There wasn’t enough room for two of them to work on the hallway at once, so Damien focused on creating the hall and starting on the main room so that Sylph could help. With an orb in each of his hands, it wasn’t too hard for him to quickly churn through enough material to make an entryway for what would become their kitchen.

Once Damien had carved out enough room for them to squeeze inside the tunnel, Sylph joined him. She put her back against his and brought orbs of dark green and black energy to her hands, starting on the other side of the room.

With the two of them working in tandem, they finished the room in record time. Damien was pretty sure it didn’t even take them a full hour to completely carve the small room into the mountain.

They stepped back to observe their work. It was smaller than the training rooms, but there was enough room for them to both easily stand within the kitchen. The floor was completely covered with dust, and more than a good bit of it had settled on them.

Damien sneezed. He grimaced and wiped his nose, only succeeding in getting more dust on his face. “Hold on. I’m going to get the dust off us.”

He formed a gravity sphere with a thought and tossed it into the center of the room. The spell detonated just as it got a few feet away from them, ripping the dust off both their bodies and the floor. Both staggered forward a step as the force of the spell tugged at them.

When the spell faded, a large pile of dust had formed on the ground. Damien walked up to it and drew a rune on the floor beside the pile. He wrapped it in mental energy, then hopped back several steps before allowing it to detonate.

The Devour spell tore a dark circle open on the ground. It expanded beneath the pile, absorbing the dust and snapping shut. When it was gone, not a single speck of dust remained.

“Well, I guess we figured out who’s on cleaning duty,” Sylph said, letting out an impressed whistle.

“Only if you want to lose anything that isn’t attached to the walls,” Damien said, smirking. “Come help me carry the stuff in. Let’s start with the stove.”

Sylph nodded. They walked back into the main room and stood on either side of the large tool, carefully lifting it into the air. They slowly brought it through the hallway, taking care not to bang it on the walls, and set it against the wall in their new kitchen.

“Is there anything we have to do to activate it?” Sylph asked.

“I don’t think so. It should be powered by heat runes, so everything should already be functional.”

Damien turned one of the knobs on the stove. A spark popped over the burner on the left and a small flame sprung up from within it. He twisted the knob and the flame grew in size.

“Looks good to me,” Damien said, turning the stove off.

They returned to the main room, dragging over the rest of the kitchen supplies. The pan went on top of the stove along with the knife. Everything else was set on the ground in the corner of the kitchen.

“We should have gotten a table,” Sylph said. She curled her nose in annoyance. “Every time we buy something, it feels like we need to get something else.”

“Cabinets too,” Damien said, letting out a sigh. “Oh well. We’ll be here for a while. Might as well make it comfortable. You said it yourself – there’s no point having money if we can’t use it.”

Sylph nodded. “Well, I suppose this is set up then. Do you still want to go into the forest and try to hunt something?”

“Sounds good to me,” Damien said, surprised to find himself hungry already. “I could go for some food.”

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