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The Earth Was Like an Open Flower
Permalink Mark Unread

She checked over her preparations one last time.

Her body and soul were as prepared as they were ever going to be, Her qi pulsing with the power of someone at the first stage of the True Realm, what little she could feel of her soul was consistent with everything being slotted into place as it should be, her body's foundation rock solid, with every aesthetic detail correct. But most importantly...

A tiny, infinitesimal fragment of the Law of Life rested inside her Lower Dantian, which was the key to letting her use her qi properly in a world normally bereft of it.

...Though she admitted that things besides pure qi manipulation would require some... additional work, most likely, adapting to what those elements were in the realm she came to rather then the one she was more familiar with. 

Everything was ready. 

The reincarnation system activated, and she was born again in this strange new world. 

 

 

Permalink Mark Unread

She's on a stone path along a swift river - beautiful and blue and clear, and the sky has only a few clouds. No signs of pollution. The trees are pines, mostly, and the soil is rich and dark, and the air has a deep, cold bite to it. There's birds calling in the distance, sounds of small wildlife intertwining with a faint noise from some nearby rapids.

Permalink Mark Unread

She takes a deep breath in, and takes a moment to sense if there's any 'dragon lines' or spiritual beings around her, and takes in the scene, listening to the chirping of the bird while quietly meditating for a minute before making any choice about where to go from here. 

Permalink Mark Unread

No dragon lines or spiritual beings, no.

Permalink Mark Unread

She walks down the river, taking a moment to probe the internal structure of the grass and trees with her qi as she walks past beside the path, feet treading lightly against the earth. 

She keeps an eye out for anything notable, letting her spiritual senses run and take in what they may as she strode along. 

Sure, getting to know the basic plants of this world wasn't something likely to be all that valuable, but it would be helpful to check if things looked as they appeared and start learning about the life of this world would be useful for studying how to grow in this place, and it was justification enough to not just run along with a movement technique towards the nearest settlement. 

Permalink Mark Unread

None of the plants seem extremely magical. There's something about the sunlight, though, or possibly the air - something diffuse in the soil - this place seems weakly seeped in magic.

The nearest settlement is, fortunately, pretty nearby - there's the sound of a blacksmith, first, then a bit of a stone and wood wall with open gates across the area between the cliffs and the river.

Permalink Mark Unread

She hums softly. 

A proper place of magic, then, if not this bit specifically. She takes the time to probe it a little, feeling it out casually and staring up at the sky - qi reinforcing her eyes against the glare - to look at the sun and sky more deeply. 

She reinforces her hearing too, trying to get a sense of the communication going on and enough information on the local language to assimilate it for later usage.

Permalink Mark Unread

The sun is a portal into a plane full of magic and not, in fact, a giant ball of fire. The sky contains distant, shadowed magic.

People are mostly sounding a bit worried as they talk. A lot of people are glancing at the skies somewhat more frequently than might be normal.

Permalink Mark Unread

She blinks a little, and shrugs her shoulders. It was hardly the most exotic thing she had ever seen. 

She looks over to the settlement, and takes a moment to try to get a general impression of the spiritual strength of those within the city before trying anything. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Most people in the village don't seem very spiritually strong, except one woman helping the innkeeper out.

Permalink Mark Unread

She walks over to the village, and moves to strike up a conversation with the woman - 'adventurer' types tend to know more about what is going on. 

"Greetings. I've just found this place and I can't help but notice the disturbance. Mind telling me what caused it...?"

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The woman considers her, gaze sharp. Her clothes are normal, not anything that stands out from the surrounding village folk. "What's got people nervous? That'll be the dragon everyone's spreading rumors about. Burned down a town to the south of us, and some people saw it flying overhead a bit back."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds troublesome - though I'm surprised you haven't managed to cull them by this point." 

She quirks her head to the side, and thinks for a moment. 

"I'm a warrior myself - I expect I could fight off this dragon, considering the sort of power that one would expect from someone able to ravage a town like this though..." 

She spends a moment slowly gathering power, looking for a reaction before she blurs back and forth a few meters exceeding quickly. If her eyes are sharp enough, she might notice that she's somehow contracting space in order to move that quickly.  

"Would the ability to do what I just did an impressive feat, here?"

Permalink Mark Unread

She definitely seems surprised. "It'd be rare - an advanced mage or someone with the Voice, I'd guess. But we don't know how powerful the dragon is - they've all been dead for millennia."

Permalink Mark Unread

She hums softly. "Is there any reason to expect that waiting to hunt this dragon would do any good - any force that you could call upon to have a better chance of being able to deal with it? The technique I used is, if needs must, a suprisingly adequate replacement for flight - which should make it fairly good for running away, even against a dragon, and it doesn't seem like there's anything in the immediate vicinity that could help against that sort of thing..."

Actually... She takes a moment to reach out and see if there's any wards or rituals or 'magic items' lying about - there's no reason to not use an asset if they do in fact exist.

 

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's rumors of the Dragonborn, but guards have trouble against dragons."

There's some magic items a building down - in two different buildings, actually - and there's two tables that feel magic-like in the inn.

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She blinks a little at the sense of the items, and curses the fact that she doesn't have a good way to track a target established yet. 
"Very well. I shall see if there's anything to gather before going out to deter such attacks." 
She strides out, and examines the two buildings - is there any sort of guild insignia or similar? Any visible descriptions of the purpose of the place? She can probably improvise a method to discern the function, but it's not exactly an exact science when she's so unfamiliar with the principles of this world, so she'd rather not rely on that sort of thing. It's odd to see magic items relatively unattended in a place like this...

Permalink Mark Unread

Both places seem to be shops - one's a blacksmith, one a general trader. There's signs out front (featuring a hammer and anvil on the probable blacksmith, and a set of scales on the probable trader).

Permalink Mark Unread

She hums softly. She wasn't very inclined to simply robbing them, and she was a little too suspect to go for anything more... direct. If they were simple merchants, then it was unlikely they'd have much of a mandate to help with this sort of thing. 

Still, she pokes her head inside the blacksmith's shop, trying to get a sense of the value of the items inside. 

Permalink Mark Unread

It seems to be roughly the kind of quality the local guards are wearing, though it's hard to gauge absolute relative quality when she hasn't seen a bunch of the local arms and armor.

Permalink Mark Unread

She checks if there's a sales counter or some display describing the enchantments, and tries to get a sense of the objective quality of them. Getting a good sense of the amount of power should be feasible enough with a bit of looking, though she doesn't know enough about the local magic system to get much more then that, unless it has some sort of function that makes it intuitive to understand when used or there's some visible sign of the function. 

Permalink Mark Unread

There's no display, though the blacksmith seems nearby.

It all seems really low power compared to the level of magic kind of just saturating the air and all the people, actually. Definitely significantly less magic than a person contains - maybe a pigeon's worth of magic?

Permalink Mark Unread

She tsked slightly. There were probably not even the sort of thing that would do much - at best, they'd be the sort of minor working that anyone who put real effort into the work would get from just trying to saturate it with qi or from doing some simple cooking of one of a thousand spirit herbs that could be found in most places. They might have some minor function improvements but she doubted that it'd be of any real value, especially when she could already do that adequately enough with the basic functions of qi. She strolled out, and checks the trade shop with a resigned certainity that it would be the same sort of situation there. 

Permalink Mark Unread

It's broadly similar.

Permalink Mark Unread

She sighed. It would be... annoying, to say the least, to deal with this...

She tries to find that woman adventurer again - hopefully she could direct her towards plausible locations for a dragon's den, somewhere she could use her talents around here while waiting for it or something

Permalink Mark Unread

The woman is still working in the inn.

Permalink Mark Unread

She walks over to her. 

"I've just... ended up here, without much supplies, and I don't really know what to do around here, though I have a few ideas - it might be worth trying to work that smith for a while, or try to find the roost of the dragon, for example. I was wondering... what made someone like you decide to work here, when there's a wider world out there? I can tell you are much stronger then most of the people here, and it's rather unusual for someone to just... settle down, at your age and health."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I like living here," she says, brusquely. "But if you want adventuring work - go to Whiterun. They'll have bounties and more information."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fair enough. I just..."  

She hums softly, and takes a moment to scan her physiology more deeply, thinking before doing anything, getting what the physiology of 'adventurers' here looks like recorded. Is there any sort of 'internal energy' network in her body that she can sense? 

Permalink Mark Unread

"You just...?"

There's no internal network, just - the magical glow that overlays everything here is slightly more concentrated. More of a higher density blob than anything. It's not very different from the random other inn patrons, though - everyone has a roughly similar blob.

Permalink Mark Unread

She sighs tiredly, and brushes her hand across hers, and her body heals adjusting a little to try to make it more then just the simple vitality infusions that most 'potions' and such of this world are like, taking off some the strains of life and correcting anything that she sees that is somehow 'wrong' in her body. 
"I don't like doing things without repaying those who help me. I hope..."

"That that helps."

Permalink Mark Unread

She startles. "Did you just - use Restoration magic on me?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Something of the sort - My techniques are... not exactly the same thing as what is in this world, but the principles are likely fairly similar, and I felt it was the least I could do."

Permalink Mark Unread

She frowns. "You should ask first in the future unless there's an emergency. Most people don't like having magic cast on them."

Permalink Mark Unread

She blinks, and stares up at the sky. 

"I understand but... It is not so simple. The sky itself is full of magic, and..."

She flares her qi, uncertain of quite what it would do in this place, her energy washing out from her into something almost like a spiritual pressure but... more distant. 

"There are any number of things that are just a function of existing that can have some effect on others."

She shakes her head. 

"I suppose that's fair enough as a practical matter, nonetheless."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's a matter of - intention, mostly."

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She nods. 

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Oh and... do you mind pointing me in the direction of Whiterun?"

Permalink Mark Unread

Small smile. "Not at all." She heads to the door. "I'll walk you to the road towards it."

Permalink Mark Unread

She smiles softly back and walks quietly alongside her, idly taking in the sights.

 

Permalink Mark Unread

The road out of the village is pretty nearby. "Keep following this road until you cross the bridge," she says. "The road splits just after that - there's way signs, but you want to turn right. After that, it's pretty much a straight shot down to Whiterun's outskirts - you'll pass farms as you get down out of the mountains, but the side paths are small and unpaved. You'll hit a paved crossroads after a few hours. Turn left, there, towards the big walled city on the hill, and follow the road up to the gate. Once you're there, I'd recommend the Bannered Mare, as far as inns go - especially if you're looking for adventure or bounties, though if you seem reliable the steward up in Dragonsreach might give you bounties directly."

Permalink Mark Unread

She nods along. 
"Thank you." 
She follows the path set out for an hour or two at a brisk jog. 
Then...
Ground Contraction - Sky Jump Variant
She jumps up impossibly far, hundreds and hundreds of meters into the sky, flaring her qi as high as it goes, sending out a challenge as she looks around, eyes scanning kilometers of sky around her to see if she can find any dragons or other flying things, as well as any plausible dragon roosts. 
She doesn't nesscarily expect to see anything, but she suspects that this sort of challenge is something that would be detected in claimed territory. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Flying things mostly seem to be birds. There's a lot of structures on the mountains, but it's hard to tell if any are dragon roosts - they look man made - and she's significantly below where she'd need to be to see the highest mountain tops, wreathed in thick clouds and mist as they are.

Nothing responds to her challenge.

Permalink Mark Unread

She lets herself descend, making an effort to see past the dense clouds and mist, though she doubts it will be all that effective at this range, falling at terminal velocity 'til she hits the ground, then resumes her travelling down the path.

Permalink Mark Unread

The mist's pretty opaquely thick, especially around the highest mountain range that the others spill off of.