This Ascent to Divinity is Lewder Than Expected

3.19 Meeting Maddy

Waking up next to Rosalie made it hard to keep her conviction, but Zoey somehow managed to.

As last night, Zoey took her shower alone. The thick black ink below her stomach had mostly washed away. It turned out that while the magical item’s markings were aggravatingly difficult to get off her skin, it wasn’t impossible. Though Zoey wondered whether it was her scrubbing efforts or if time—a cooldown—had softened the ink. It hadn’t budged in the slightest the first night, so Zoey suspected the ink weakened each successive day. Either way, the last dredges of the markings washed away, and Zoey was left with clean skin. She suspected Rosalie and Delta would likewise be able to get theirs off.

Zoey knocked on Delta’s door, but either she was a deep sleeper, or she’d set off for the day … Zoey suspected the first. So Zoey and Rosalie shared a breakfast down at the Guild’s restaurant sans their third party member.

With some instructions from Rosalie, Zoey made her way to the Oasis, the casual title for the mage’s training hall. She sat on a bench and leaned against the wall, cracking open her alchemy textbook.

Surprisingly, the material had been riveting so far. Though written in a dry, academic way, the exact sort of reading that Zoey hadn’t been able to suffer through in her past life—was that too dramatic? She hadn’t died, only been teleported, so it wasn’t a ‘past life’—but considering the sheer relevance of alchemy, and the intriguing dissimilarity to anything back home, Zoey found herself working through the dense text much easier than she’d expected. Next time she met up with Sabina, Zoey thought she’d be ready for a brew.

That’d probably be tomorrow. She had a busy day today. After training with Maddy, Zoey intended to set out into Treyhull and formalize her date plans with Rosalie, as well as run a few errands. She’d already decided she’d be keeping things relaxed and low key—so hard-to-get reservations or whatever wouldn’t be needed, and were impossible for Zoey to arrange anyway—but she still ought to have a clear itinerary. A visit to the park, and a picnic, was the definite event she wanted, but she needed to pick out which park, and a nice place to set up.

Another event or two would be ideal, too. Did they have ice cream in this world? The thought demonstrated a problem—Zoey was at a disadvantage. How was she supposed to plan a date in an alien world? She’d need to talk to someone and get advice, ideas. Delta, maybe, if she was in her room when Zoey got back.

Maybe Maddy?

It would give the two of them something to talk about. As a potential fourth party member, Zoey didn’t want to keep their training session today strictly professional. She wanted casual topics too, where she could get to know Maddy. Though Zoey wouldn’t be neglecting her true purpose of this event, learning the basics of magic. But as teammates, she wanted to get a feel for Maddy.

Er, not in that way.

Though … that would happen too, if they did group up. But better to keep those thoughts reined in until Maddy decided to join them. If she decided to.

Besides planning for the date, Zoey needed to go shopping. Nice clothes, a pair of shoes, make-up. The clothing Rosalie had helped her pick out was strictly utilitarian … not exactly what Zoey wanted to wear on their date.

What would Rosalie want to see her in? A dress and heels? That would be too formal considering her plans. Tank top and jeans? A skirt? Button up and slacks? Maybe she should’ve talked to Rosalie in more explicit detail about this—she might expect the event to be formal. Which would be fine, but maybe too unwieldy for an evening at the park.

Zoey would get a few outfits to cover her bases, to be safe.

Somebody slid onto the bench next to her. “Lost in thought?” a cheerful voice asked. “Pretty sure you’re supposed to look at the pages, not above them.”

Zoey blinked as she turned to her visitor.

Maddy had a round, innocent face, and she was smiling brightly at Zoey, her light gray eyes warm—and genuine—enough that Zoey’s returning smile came by instinct.

“Maddy?”

“That’s my name!”

She was in a full mage’s get-up: long gray robes (that clung surprisingly tight to her curves), a wide, droopy hat, and to her side, a long staff of twisted white wood, knotted at the top. Her blue hair was the most noticeable part of her, besides maybe her general cheerfulness. Her droopy wide-brimmed hat covered most of it, but the straight blue locks went down to her shoulders, so it was plenty on display.

She was cute. Not like Delta, whose curves Zoey sometimes couldn’t draw her eyes away from, or the regal elegance of Rosalie. Wholesome. Though, Zoey knew not to place too much emphasis on first impressions. This was a girl who fought monsters for a living … she might seem cheerful, but ‘young and innocent’ wasn’t true. She was older than Delta and Rosalie, even—nineteen, the same as Zoey.

Zoey closed her book, vanished it, then held a hand out. “Zoey.”

“Figured!” She shook Zoey’s hand. She was still smiling. “What were you reading?”

“Alchemy stuff?” The inflection implied Zoey wasn’t the best person to talk about it with.

“Oh! You’re a craftsman? Trained as one?”

A person’s runes weren’t guaranteed, but most people who received craftsman runes came from craftsman families … or at least had prior training. Hereditary in some part. So it was a reasonable assumption. “No, actually,” Zoey said. “No clue why I got it. Don’t know a thing about alchemy … so I’m playing catch up.”

Maddy didn’t know about her ‘amnesia’, did she? Zoey didn’t know what Delta had told her. But Zoey could skirt around the topic much better than when she’d first arrived … she would undoubtedly say something soon enough that would have Maddy giving her a curious look, and it might be better to explain anyways, but Zoey could at least not be caught immediately. She could hold a halfway reasonable conversation, without giving away she was a foreigner from a different world.

Instead of blinking in surprise, Maddy looked jealous at Zoey’s explanation. “Lucky you. I’d have killed for a crafting rune. My auntie is an enchanter … it looks like a lot of fun.” She sighed. “But it wasn’t in the stars for me.”

A brief pause, Zoey struggling to find something to say to that, but she didn’t have to—Maddy stood and clapped her hands together. “Kay! Did you check out a room for us?”

“Er, no,” Zoey said, rising. “I don’t know how it works. Sorry.”

“No problem. Let’s go handle it.”

The room wasn’t excessively expensive—relative to her portion of earnings from the previous delve, at least, since Zoey didn’t have a good idea of how the economy worked, here.

Zoey knew these training sessions wouldn’t be cheap, but that was on account of Maddy’s tutelage, not the room costs. As one of the better lower-advancement mages in Treyhull, her time wasn’t cheap. Which wasn’t a big deal. Money wasn’t too important for Zoey, as things stood. She had what she needed in the short term. And also had a few plans for future money making, through alchemy with Sabina. Though, that was still in the musing stages. Maybe she’d broach the subject their next lesson.

Maddy opened the door for Zoey, and she walked in. Unlike the other training rooms, this one had no windows. With a fourteen foot ceiling and an impressively large area to move around in, though, it didn’t feel claustrophobic, despite being a giant box.

There were a few items of interest. First, the training dummies: mannequins of wood etched with arcane-looking diagrams. Zoey could only cast one ‘free-form’ spell—the sort not handled automatically by a rune—her ice spike, but she recognized the similarities between the diagrams for the spell, and the ones scribed across the mannequin. The same language. The same … ‘symbols of magic’, whatever the formal term for it was.

Zoey had seen similar markings elsewhere. Magic shared a consistent language. Most recently, the tall black obelisk sitting at the center of the Oasis. In more mundane places, too—like the showers back at the outposts, though the ones at the guild worked on regular plumbing. Or, at least, this society’s magical solutions were mixed in with the counterparts Zoey knew better. She doubted the plumbing system Treyhull operated on didn’t use magic at all. Why wouldn’t it?

Besides the mannequins, there were several other things that drew Zoey’s eyes. There was a large ‘target board’ on the wall, floor to ceiling, about ten feet wide. Or, that was what it looked like. Most of the items of interest Zoey couldn’t discern the purpose of. Undoubtedly, they were features of the training room intended to aid with practicing with magic. Maddy would probably explain as they went.

“Delta mentioned you were in some weird circumstances,” Maddy said. “And that you might not know what’s going on.”

Zoey’s curious looks around the hall must have been more obvious than she’d thought. And, it was as good a prompt as any. She should let Maddy know what she was in for. “I have memory problems. It’s not just that I need help learning magic. Almost everything—terminology, routines, best practices, whatever else. My head’s mostly empty.” She waved around at the training room, at the various items. “Don’t have a clue what any of this does.”

Maddy tilted her head at Zoey’s announcement. Delta hadn’t brought her into the loop on Zoey’s amnesia, then, only vaguely referenced her ‘odd circumstances’. Not that it was a big deal; Maddy took Zoey’s reveal in stride.

“Well, that’s no problem,” Maddy said. “We’ll get you squared away. Honestly, people with bad habits are in worse shape than someone with no habits. You’re fresh clay! Soft and pliable.” She made a squeezing motion with her hands. “I’ll take great care of you.”

Zoey paused.

Maddy realized what she’d said, and the gesture she’d made. “Uh,” she said, turning pink. “Like, a blank canvas! That’s a better metaphor. Much better. Forget what I said.”

“Right,” Zoey said, trying to fight away her amusement for Maddy’s sake … however funny it was, the speed Maddy was turning red. “You’re an illusionist, right?”

“Yeah!” Maddy seized the change in topic a little too loudly; she flinched at her volume. “Um, yeah. Same as my mom, so I got lucky there. Learned half my class before I ever got it, it feels like. You have a generalized arcana rune, right?”

“Generalized?”

“It doesn’t have a specialty tied to it. Just, ‘rune of arcana’? Probably around a third of mages have it.”

A frequent rune type, then, like her rune of alchemy. “Yeah. Does that mean you have a ‘rune of illusions’, then?” Zoey paused. “Sorry—was that an inappropriate question? I do that sometimes. Still relearning everything.”

Maddy shrugged, but didn’t answer Zoey’s question. People’s runes were personal topics … except for extremely common runes, like ‘arcana’ or ‘alchemy’.

Zoey guessed Delta had taken the liberty to tell Maddy hers was one such. Zoey wasn’t bothered; it was pertinent information, and really, the only thing that Rosalie had insisted needed to be hidden was her ‘quicker-advancement’ skill. The most ‘overpowered’ ability Zoey had by a large margin, and which made her someone people would want to exploit.

“I’ll still be able to teach you,” Maddy said. “I can’t make elemental spells, but the process is the same. Plus, I have this.” Maddy raised her hand, and a heavy tome dropped into it from nowhere, pulled from her inventory. “You’ll need to learn how to read spell formulas. That’s gonna be a bit tricky, and take more than a day, but I’ll translate for you—we’ll have you trying out a few different spells before the day’s over. Delta mentioned defensives, right?”

“Ice armor?” Zoey echoed, the spell name sticking out from their discussions. “They’re worried I’ll get hurt … Delta and Rosie don’t really need help on the offensive side of things.”

“Rosie,” Maddy repeated. “Delta didn’t talk about her much.” She hesitated before saying the next part. “Sounds like they don’t get along super well.”

Maddy had picked that up already? “Well,” Zoey said. “They’re not best friends. I think they’re warming up to each other, though.”

Maddy nodded, then returned to the topic at hand: “Okay. Might as well get to it. Let’s start with the basics.”