Ame gives her a confused look.

"What's dhar corruption?"

"When the Winds of Magic mix - wrongly - they can combine into dhar, which is basically corrupt and poisoned Winds of Magic. It has all sorts of nasty effects like paranoia and insanity, body mutations, being really catastrophically unstable, convincing you that using dhar to cast spells with is perfectly fine and a good way to advance your goals, seeping into the landscape and making it hostile and even creating horrible daemons in really bad cases..."

Ame goes, "Hmmmm," thoughtfully.

"I don't get what that has to do with what we were talking about before, but that definitely seems like an important thing to know about. How does mixing Winds happen?"

Ame's mana is low. She casts the dismissal on one of her slimes.

"I flippantly commented about not regretting reading a case study and it would've been remiss of me to mention dhar and not mention to NOT TOUCH IT. It happens, a lot of ways? It depends. The Winds flow away from each other naturally, it takes really bad conditions or deliberate action to make dhar, it's thankfully not much of a problem except in the rare cases in which it is a very big problem."

"Ah."

More ground is tread.

Ame's mana slowly replenishes, and then she summons another healing slime. She will keep up this pattern until her mana recovery grows to no longer be negative while maintaining two gallons of healing slime, or until something interrupts.

The rocky hills transition to rolling plains. They can see a sizable town in the distance.

"I sort of want to suggest more spells you could learn with whatever Rare Skill lets you pick them up easily. Ones I've seen other people cast."

"Like what? I would love to learn more spells."

"I didn't write down the incantations and I'm not sure trying incantations you're not sure about is a good idea, but it's an interesting one. I could maybe give you a light spell, a campfire-starting spell, and magic missile."

"I think we've established that I won't try to cast anything I'm unsure about. Tell me."

She has vaguely-remembered incantations for all three of these.

(The language power is almost as helpful as last time, but some application of logic will be necessary to figure out if the results make sense.)

Ame has Elizabeth repeat each incantation as she goes over each unfamiliar word. If feels like her knowledge Skill isn't just bridging the gaps in gestural syntax but also making the magic language stick in her brain. Once a word clicks, she doesn't forget it.

It takes a somewhat tedious hour of having Elizabeth repeat herself over and over and over, until Ame feels confident she can re-invent the incantations herself. This is apparently an unreasonable standard, but.

Ame tries the light spell first.

"Let the spirits know the position of my center-mass by the name 'origin'. I offer one mana from my core in the form of viric to the spirits of radiance so that they might create a source of illumination, which will be sustained by mana from my core and emanate from a nexus one-rostral and one-dexter from 'origin'!"

And a mote of light appears above her right shoulder! It shifts when she does, trying to maintain that position. It's not very noticeable in sunlight, but Elizabeth points it out, clapping excitedly.

Ame grins.

"That still makes my brain tired. But. Worth it."

"That was interesting to watch! Especially since it would have taken most people a few days to get that down. I think I'm kinda-sorta starting to understand bits of incantations? Maybe. Anyway, that town can't be more than a couple hours away. We can figure out what to do tomorrow over a nice dinner."

Ame cobbles together a dismissal for the light spell from first principles. It only takes her two tries.

"A nice dinner sounds better than camping out and sleeping in the grass, which is what I was expecting to do. Can you not cast any of these? You said before that you have to know what all the bits mean..."

"No, I can't. I want to learn someday but I should stick to sorcery for now because it's what I know and it's pretty flexible. Just, also kind of more dangerous?"

"Because it's more intuitive?" Ame guesses. "Like, I can't imagine it's possible to cast a viric spell by accident. I could just tell you what each bit means? Is there a reason that wouldn't work? I'd assume so or learning would be as simple as reading a dictionary."

"It's more intuitive, it's more freeform, it relies on the Winds which really don't want to cooperate sometimes. There's probably something more complicated about it than that? Or maybe not. I think a lot of wizardry school is practice and repetition..."

"You can see how someone might make the mistake of thinking its just rote memorization... Anyway, its worth trying, let's start with the gestures. This one is assignation, this one is open-parenthetical, this one is close, this one is statement termination..."

Ame explains each of the gestures and then starts going over the vocabulary from the light spell, doing her best to explain the actual meanings rather than the translations, since the actual meanings are actually painfully specific.

This is really interesting! So interesting that she's not exactly paying attention to their surroundings as they walk. Normally she might catch the accumulating shyish in several minds off to the side of the road.

-The first warning they receive, then, is a clack as four men in ragged clothes rise as one from the grass at the side of the road. One wields a shabby-looking crossbow, and the other three have slings poised and ready.

"This is a robbery, if I see either of you trying magic we shoot! Now, all you have to do is lighten your coin-purses a bit, and nobody needs to get hurt."

...Ame currently has two slimes following her, enough mana that she doesn't feel at all wobbly yet, and her bare fists. Her sword and shield are useless, as is anything else that takes more time to bring to bear than it takes a finger to pull the trigger on that crossbow.

Three days ago, Ame might have been afraid of these guys.

Today, Ame is stronger and faster than she's ever been, and her body can't fail her.

She merely stares at them, blank-faced as she assesses each of them, and then she slowly starts walking towards them, hands spread, stepping in front of Elizabeth as if by accident.

Then, she smiles, and puts a little bounce in her step, because there's always a chance she can convince them to take something she's more willing to give. (One slime parks itself at Elizabeth's feet, the other follows behind Ame.)

"Oh c'mon. Is that really the best offer you boys've got? Are you sure you don't wanna think about it a little more?"

The lackeys seem to waver, but the leader coldly brandishes the crossbow and says, "I'm fucking gay and deadly serious, and you're squishy casters. Your money or your life."

"Shyish," Elizabeth whispers. "He means it." And she starts drawing up the Winds-

"She's casting! Shoot!" A crossbow bolt and two slingstone rocks go out. The fourth bandit drops his sling by accident instead.

The slime at Elizabeth's feet surges up to intercept the sling-stones.

The crossbow bolt---whoa, she can actually see it in flight, her perceptions are that fast already?---but she's not fast enough (yet) to do much about it.

The bolt rams into (and through) Ame's left shoulder. The force of it throws her back, spinning her. But she stays on her feet, uses the motion to draw her gladius. And then she lunges the remaining distance to crossbow guy, sword-point screaming toward his throat.