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Post by Noa on Aug 12, 2021 19:57:00 GMT -6
Whether it had any instincts that might apply here, any genetic memory or what have you, that much he couldn't say. But he had had charge of it for the entirety of its life, so outside of any big adventures it might have had outside of his supervision, he was confident that he knew the scope of what it had experienced.
Then again, maybe it was just glad that this outing hadn't involved the gym. Noa wouldn't blame it if that turned out to be the case. They'd recently had a stint at the gym again, the three of them together, working to train the little feathered creature up to have some better endurance. And it had worked, Noa thought -- though maybe it was too early to be sure -- but it hadn't been a very pleasant experience, not for the little feathered creature. Gym training was pretty much never something that the creatures he trained enjoyed doing, though some disliked it more than others, of course.
Noa sighed, bracing himself for sand. But the thought had buoyed him too -- at least it wasn't the gym. Here he could just relax, for a given value of relaxation, given that the mansion was unpredictable.
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Post by Noa on Aug 12, 2021 19:57:12 GMT -6
It could change on them at any moment, or throw something untoward in their path, and although Noa had never seen a massive monster or the like coming out of this place, he admittedly did feel better when he had a bigger creature with him to deter that kind of thing. Today he didn't, however; today there was no fourth companion to round out their lot. It was just the three of them, and Rhys wasn't terribly big... And the little feathered creature didn't even bear mentioning, since it was even smaller than Rhys was at the moment.
It wasn't that Noa didn't feel confident in his own magical abilities, and Rhys himself was trained extensively on the use of his own powers, even if Noa had only recently begun Rhys's actual magical tutelage. But some creatures could be very fast, and if a great deal of them came at him at once, he might find himself at a loss.
Fortunately though, he had gotten collars of bonding for some of his biggest creatures recently, and these gave him some measure of security even when the likes of Avander and Nightshade weren't present. He didn't know why he hadn't done it sooner.
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Post by Noa on Aug 12, 2021 19:57:24 GMT -6
They were quite a useful thing to have, and for all his spellwork, there wasn't really a spell he knew that brought other beings to him across space. He could teleport others away, and he could teleport himself -- taking others with him if he so wished -- almost as easily as he breathed now. There was a limit to how often he could do it, since he only had so much magical energy to expend, but within that limit, it was easy. But he needed the collars and their magic to bring a pet to him.
He fingered the place on his wrist where he had hung all three. He didn't know them by feel, though there was no need to; they were locked behind words that he had to speak to activate them, to prevent them from being activated without anyone meaning to, presumably. He scanned their surroundings, to make sure that there was nothing obviously dangerous afoot, but also to see if there was anything of interest that ought to be investigated immediately. Nothing of either sort presented itself to him. There were just the tide pools, the sand, and of course the mansion itself, looming over the whole.
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Post by Noa on Aug 12, 2021 20:02:13 GMT -6
In such instances, he usually bowed to Rhys's whims, in an inversion of what was otherwise their usual dynamic. He supposed he owed the Faeron that much after what Rhys put up with on a daily basis for his sake, and it didn't feel so strange to humor Rhys in these frivolous matters. It would have felt more unusual if it was something that Noa had a genuine stake in, but then if he had a genuine stake in something, why would he budge to Rhys's opinion, when Rhys was the one who was bound to him, rather than the other way around? Of course, if Rhys made a convincing argument or a salient point, that was a different matter, and it had happened before where the Faeron had managed to talk Noa out of a course of action by pointing out some flaw or consequence that Noa hadn't considered.
But that was neither here nor there. "Well? Where do you want to go? What do you want to do?" Noa said, eyeing Rhys.
The Faeron didn't even have to think about it. {Let's collect shells!} he declared, and flew off from his perch on Noa's shoulder, presumably to do so.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 0:18:50 GMT -6
He was certainly wasting no time in getting a move on with that goal. Noa wondered why he seemed so enthusiastic about it. There was nothing particularly interesting about the shells here. They were the same kind that you could find at oceans of a similar clime in other places... though admittedly it was also a bit difficult to travel to those places, since the city didn't border an ocean, and travel outside the city was much harder than it was within its limits. So Noa himself had never been to a genuine beach either, though he had come to the mansion in July a few years, when the tide was higher and there was more water about the place.
But shells were still just shells. They didn't even have the original organism in them anymore, most of the time. You couldn't eat them, and you could only really break them down for the calcium -- and if that was all you wanted, there were easier, more accessible ways to do it.
It must have been one of those things. But Noa was used to it by now. He didn't understand a lot of Rhys's whims, and didn't bother trying to either.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 0:27:45 GMT -6
Their working relationship was well enough, and Noa wasn't the kind of fool who expected to know and understand every thought that went on in someone's mind, even if that someone was his partner and his familiar, with whom he spent most of his waking moments. Likewise, if not for the telepathy, he wouldn't have expected Rhys to understand him either, though after some time he would have expected a certain level of anticipation in terms of what he wanted, what he expected, and what he preferred.
As far as that went, Rhys knew him well, and so Noa didn't mind indulging him like this from time to time.
As Rhys zipped off, the little feathered creature watched him go, and if Noa wasn't mistaken, there was a distinctly wistful look to the creature's gaze as it traced Rhys's trajectory. "Jealous, are you?" Noa said. "Well, with any luck, you'll be able to fly yourself someday soon." This was less conjecture than any of the previous times that Noa had made some prediction about the creature's future. He had made a discovery, embarrassingly late in his ownership of a revived fossil but still better late than having never discovered it at all.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 0:31:17 GMT -6
Apparently there were particular nutrient supplements that one had to feed to their revived fossil creatures in order to get them to grow to their full potential. It seemed a little absurd; surely nutrients had not changed so much since their time that they weren't able to properly synthesize the stuff from their own food? But on the other hand, Noa was a mage, not a scientist, and he had no idea what had even made these revivals possible, beyond some basic principles of necromancy that could have been used to derive the result. The labs here dealt in both fields, magic and science, so there were often magical concepts and energies and the like involved in their creatures. But there was also another aspect that he couldn't touch, and frankly he wasn't terribly interested in it either. So long as the creatures he had with him did what he needed them to do, that was all fine by him -- and they did. Avander was very reliable, for all that he sometimes griped about the work, and Azalea and Nightshade were coming along slowly as well.
{Noa, look! I found a good one already,} said Rhys, from somewhere further ahead.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 0:34:36 GMT -6
Normally Rhys was easy to make out, since his white hide made him stand out against most backdrops. It was definitely not a color fit for stealth; even in the winter, where white might otherwise have been an adaptive color, his pink wings and mane gave him away. And of course there was the matter of the little floating bits of light that surrounded him; in general he was pretty hard to miss in most circumstances.
This was perhaps the one circumstance in which that was not the case. the sand itself was, if not white, then at least pale enough; and under such strong sunlight, it was hard to see any other light at all. Noa had to squint a bit, and rely on their bond to inform him of the general direction in which Rhys ought to have been, relative to himself. It wasn't difficult, since Rhys hadn't actually traveled far, but all the same it was a little inconvenient.
... Well. If things got really bad he supposed he could always order Rhys to teleport back to him. As a familiar, it was something he was capable of, after all. "What is it?" said Noa, walking toward Rhys slowly.
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Post by Nadia on Aug 13, 2021 8:01:42 GMT -6
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 10:50:28 GMT -6
Rhys might have been excited over his discovery, but Noa had no desire to exert himself in this summer heat. The fact that he didn't like to wake up early in the morning meant that he had to come out in the afternoon, when it was already hot from having an entire day's worth of sunlight. And the beach offered no cover from it, or at least not as far as Noa could see. This wasn't the type of beach that had palms waving in the breeze or anything so convenient as that, so Noa was going to have to content himself with...
... No, come to think of it, didn't he have a spell for this? It had been some time since he had last had any occasion to use it, but he did have a spell to ward off the worst of the sun. It didn't abate the heat too much, but it helped a little, and in the meantime he wouldn't get burnt, at least. That was something, since the sun in summer was fairly strong.
He reached with his mind, drawing energy out from the fire node, before shaping it with the spell and dispersing it over himself.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 10:50:41 GMT -6
The spell settled over him gently, and he felt a mild sense of relief from the worst of the sunlight. That was good enough, he supposed. He quickened his pace a little to where Rhys was waiting, looking up at him with bright eyes as he crouched in the sand, his foreclaws around a conical shell.
{Look at this!} he said, lifting his find out of the sand with a proud expression. {Isn't it such a nice shade of brown? It's not even broken anywhere!}
Noa motioned for Rhys to lift it higher so Noa could better see it, and Rhys obliged by doing so with his telepathy, rather than his claws. It wasn't that he couldn't fly up holding an object of that size, but this was less work, and shells weren't necessarily light for their size. To a creature of Rhys's stature, they might have been more trouble than they were worth to carry manually while flying around. But it didn't matter to Noa how he did it, so long as he did; and anyway the telekinesis offered better stability. If he had flown it up himself, he might wobble in the air, making any inspection difficult to manage.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 10:50:52 GMT -6
Now that he was holding it aloft for Noa to look at, Noa obliged by studying the shell. It was, more or less, just as Rhys had described, a shell in shades of brown that was unbroken. As to whether it was a handsome specimen or not, he had no opinion, but since it didn't matter, he supposed that if Rhys said it was, then it was. "It certainly is brown," he said, to which Rhys sighed, not satisfied with such a lukewarm response but also resigned to getting no different from the likes of Noa.
{There's a subtle iridescence to it too, if you look carefully. I mean, mostly on the inside, but still.} He angled the shell so that Noa could better look inside, and Noa closed one eye so that he could do so. The interior was curved such that you couldn't really see very far into it, so all he could make out was the rim, where yes, indeed, there was a little pearlescence. It wasn't enough to make this an object of any real value, but it was enough to appeal to the likes of Rhys, at least, and the Faeron seemed heartily satisfied with it.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 10:51:03 GMT -6
"It is prettier on the inside," Noa allowed, which as far as statements went was still true. This satisfied Rhys a little better, and the Faeron took the shell back down so that he could inspect it again himself. That was, Noa thought, the better arrangement for the two of them. It was clear that Rhys derived more pleasure from looking at the shell than Noa himself did.
Still, it was a find. And the objects one brought home from the mansion did have a certain value in certain markets. For example, the trader in town liked them, and would sometimes even ask for these in exchange for a magic crystal, so Noa couldn't overlook their appeal when he came to the mansion for whatever other purpose. It was better to have a stock of this stuff lying around somewhere in the house, on a just in case basis.
There were other people too, collectors or enthusiasts or maybe even people who just wanted cheap housewares and didn't much care where it came from or whether it was cursed. These were fewer and more far between, but they did exist, and before the trader opened, they were the only market.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 10:52:54 GMT -6
At that point Noa hadn't paid as much attention to the things he found in the mansion, because the money that you could make from the stuff didn't matter as much -- because there wasn't a lot of it. But now that the trader offered some consistent competition for the stuff, the prices had also stabilized a bit more. It was worth his time now, either way, to collect it, and collect it he did.
He was sure when the time came that Rhys could be convinced to part with some shells, if it came to that. But there were also other things in the mansion. There always were. It was just a matter of finding them.
Rhys put the shell away, into a different pocket than the little feathered creature. The one unpleasant thing about not having anything bigger with them was that Noa became the pack mule, a role that he didn't think himself well suited for at all, given that his bodily strength was not exactly high. In the mines there was the buggy, which he only had to pull along, though a pack mule would have been nice for that too if he could get one down there.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 11:05:17 GMT -6
Here he had nothing to rely on except himself. And for that matter his garments weren't the thick, durable type that was meant to carry a lot of weight, the way he saw some rougher adventuring folk wearing. What he wore was the fine clothes of someone who liked fine things, fabrics that felt nice against his skin and showed off his wealth in a way that made it obvious who he was. He could have bought sturdier, more serviceable outfits as well, but who would wear thick clothes in this summer heat? And he really did like the feel of nice fabrics; he didn't think he could adjust to wearing anything of a lesser make, not unless he really had to for whatever reason.
And if the clothes he had got damaged, well... it was a simple matter to replace them. It would dig into his funds somewhat, which was not ideal, but funding nodes and having nice clothes were on such different levels when it came to the expense that he hardly noticed what he was buying anymore when it came to shopping for his wardrobe.
It was still something of a shame when it was happening though.
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