Eyeroll. "You know. Our comp is weird. If I guess right he's dedicated caster like me, so we have two dedicated support, a ranged fighter picking up some melee stuff, and a melee brawler with a powerful heal - which usually goes with support casters. I guess we probably shouldn't consider the depressed necromancer a party member actually, though."

"A dishonorary party member, maybe," Ame puns, then adds in a deadpan, "Our comp is weird. We have one straight girl, one gay girl, and one omnisexual girl. If we add a straight boy to that.. just imagine the orgy logistics."

"You seem to create those with the townsfolk just fine wherever you go. I'm not saying don't find me a hot guy who's into casters, but I'm saying probably don't invite me to any orgies."

"...Yeah, sorry to disappoint, but I think most people have more mental baggage* about sex than you."

*"Unclear mind"

"I've noticed." The understatement that defines Ame's existence.

"More seriously, should we be trying to grow toward fitting a more typical party comp? Or should we double-down on the weirdness that seems to be working for us so far?"

"I'm sort of feeling double down, make sure we're all adaptable badasses? I'm the worst offender, there. The 'typical adventurer party' composition of tank-fighter-ranged-support is typical because it's a nice, safe, proven, sensible, easy and unimaginative way to do things. Royal Legions and the like make sure everyone has more general skills, and adaptability."

"Same feel. If I keep getting faster, pretty soon I'll only be melee in the sense that I'll be using myself as a projectile. Maybe I should lean into that instead of hacking together missile spells. Conversely, my Axiom of Physicality is already growing beyond healing... but it started out as more 'infinite stamina' than healing and I'm reasonably sure that it's always going to require physical contact to share the effects."

Ame thinks for a moment. Digs in her pack. Pulls out the book she learned Pelt of Caeris from. And with it the other book, Ashes and Dust, that she had more or less forgotten she had. What wind is even used to cast it?

"We need more sorcery," Ame opines.

Ashes and Dust uses Shyish, the wind of death.

"University doesn't like giving out spells without a good reason, and they are risky. Surprised we haven't had a major miscast lately, actually, especially around all that dhar. Though I did let go of a fireball early so it wouldn't go weird."

"Specialization," Ame says. She elaborates, "How many sorceries do you actually know? How often do you use them? I only know the one and use it constantly and I can't imagine miscasting it anymore. But that's not just because I'm familiar with it, not just because my Skill has leveled up. Right? Sorcery depends on you adapting to it, so the more different things you do with it---flexibility is not a matter of just practice or Skill, it's a matter of how mercurial the caster can be. Do I have that right?"

"Uh, dozens? I'd need pen and paper to actually make a whole list. Most of the cantrips, a lot of ghyran, three kinds of fireball, shadowhorse and shadowcloak and bewilder, and I can do basic divinations and put Convergence on people, in terms of azyr. You're not... Entirely wrong? You're going to miscast someday, though. It's inevitable. You've already had a massively easier time than I did, I took two years to get proficient with cantrips and summoned a rotwyrm once and the seniors murdered it."

(Abyssia has zoned out at all the magic talk, a bit, and gone back to watching their prisoner)

"You should actually make that list. It could be important. Especially if we're really going to invent our own composition."

Ame puts the Pelt of Caeris book away but hangs onto the other one.

"Alright, I'm clearly not an expert on sorcery or anything but what I was getting at is that we need force multipliers for our weird nonstandard comp in particular. Like how Pelt alone makes the difference between me being a viable tank and me not being a viable tank because of how well it synergizes with my everything else. And if I had a movement sorcery on top of that..." Ame glances at Abyssia. "One or two abilities that multiplies everything else and each other. Bys? You don't know any sorcery yet, right?"

"I don't have the Windsight. I can't learn any. If I'm going to learn magic, it'll have to be natural magic of some kind. Class magic, skill magic."

"I didn't have Windsight either, until Elizabeth taught me," Ame points out. "Has anyone tried to teach you?"

"I was seen by a Fischer sorcerer and tested. He took me to places that were supposed to have a lot of magic and told me to meditate and try to feel the sensations, but I couldn't feel anything. Gave up after two days."

"Ah. Sorry. Good to know, though."

"Mm. But I've started to feel the, uh... What do you call it, ki? Skill magic? When you get high enough levels in something weapon-related, you start to feel your weapons. Armor too. It helps with aiming a lot, and I'm starting to feel it with my harpoon too. Pushing ki in them makes everything about them just that much better, but being high quality helps obviously. Cheap weapons will just break if you push them. The special thing about Fischers' harpoons, though, is that they can grow with us. If you've noticed me bleeding on it every few nights."

"...that's a thing?"

Ame puts it together half a second later. "Is that what I've been feeling when I push myself?! Wait, that's why you bloody your harpoon? Fuck, I've been pushing my sword but I didn't know that could break it!"

"Uh, maybe? There's like, five different things that are subtly different, and it's hard to tell them apart. There's ki, and weapon energy, and serenity, and body enhancing skills, and holy charge, and spirit magic, and psionics, and... There's all sorts of magic, sorcery and wizardry and the basic weapon and armor enhancing almost everyone picks up but isn't really a coherently studied field just top the ranks in a sort of combination-of-usefulness-and-difficulty thing. Fischers are on the upper end of the bell curve of weirdness but not at the extreme upper end, you know?"

Ame is really, really starting to miss Wikipedia here...

"Apparently not, but okay."

What was Ame saying before she got diverted... right.

"Anyway, Liz, you probably should make that list at some point. I should get a full explanation of the, five things, at some point too. And we need to figure out what the best force multiplier for Bys even looks like."

For now, though, they should set up their camp.

Well, they can certainly do that.

(Their prisoner(?) eats whatever is put in front of him morosely and cries quietly during the night.)

Ame helps, but when it's time to sleep she summons a lube slime to use as a bed.

She dozes atop the squishy gelatinous mass, but ends up watching Theodore on and off most of the night, more worried than wary.

Sometime around 3 AM he isn't asleep anymore either and quietly hisses from the sleeping bag, "What are you looking at, huh?"

"A form of suffering I can't soothe," Ame replies softly.

He feels patronized, ugh.

"Yeah, well. Life sucks and then you die."

"How's your head. Still clear?"