Tahi-shei was tired and sore from his game with Madhukar and the others, but unfortunately, very few of the other Gembound had actually answered his questions. He was still unendingly curious about the snow! Tahi-shei had been wandering around in the shallower banks in the aftermath when he noticed a brown shape sticking out firmly against its background. Curiously, he trotted forward -- but as he drew closer, he realized that he was looking at another deer.
More specifically, a deer with fungus growing out of him.
His mind worked quickly -- they could have been brothers! Tahi-shei audibly gasped as he raced up to the stag's flank. "Oh my slime molds! Hello! I'm Tahi-shei Deimos," he said quickly -- important to be polite in situations like these! He was already pacing a circle to look in the eyes and wow, red? "I've never met another deer with fungal magic before! Or anyone with red eyes, I think? I did meet someone with green eyes once, though. What's your name?" he asked brightly, having absolutely no earthly clue who he was bombarding.
If he had, perhaps he might have conducted himself with a little bit more of an air of respect.
Astraea had come to investigate the chill, but he already had his own suspicions. This kind of freeze could only come from Ursa, and as he drew near to the tapering shores of snowfall, it did indeed seem as if it were blowing in from Tunnel B.
His ear flicked at the sound of racing hooves and his head turned casually to see a deer approaching him. Hm. It began to speak. Its name was Tahi-shei Deimos, and they were circling him. Astraea folded his ears back and narrowed his eyes, meeting the gaze of the other. Tahi had never met another deer with fungal magic before...?
He straightened.
"Astraea," he answered.
"Master Astraea—and the Fungi Master." His nose nodded toward Tahi.
"Your magic comes from me." You're welcome. "How do you like it?"
As soon as he heard 'Astraea', Tahi-shei straightened up.
"Oh, really? I thought Overseer-Alpha," he said, very notably saying it like one name rather than a title and then a name,
"had made all that stuff up. Umm... Oh, uh, sorry if I surprised you, then!" He took a half-step back. Someone who ran the whole caves probably didn't like to be bothered very much. At the question, his eyes lit up.
"It's nice! I can't do very much with it yet, but I'm getting lessons from someone named Giggle. I don't know any offensive magic," he explained.
"How did you get all those little mushrooms to grow on you? I can only do big, black ones around my neck -- and sometimes my ankles. Is that something only you can do, or is it something anyone with fungal magic can make happen?"
Then, he paused, another question occurring to him.
"Actually! Overseer Alpha said that the Masters run the whole caves, right? Does that mean you know where the snow is coming from? And, uh, if it's going to stop?"
@two
He smiled as he listened to the enthusiasm in Tahi's voice, and as much as he wanted to ask about the Orthoclase, he decided to let it slide. Although it did make him curious: what stuff?
Astraea nodded at the words, noting Giggle's name, but took care to listen to all of the questions too.
"Giggle is a very powerful fungi user, yes; you are in good hands—er, paws—there. The mushrooms that grow on me are a result of the magic that runs through me, it is almost like a curse." He frowned and rolled his eyes.
"I would rather appear clean-furred." Well, he'd rather be not-furred-at-all.
"But yes, those black fungi are a great defense mechanism, so make sure you get comfortable using them. Anyone with this magic should be able to do that, yes."
His head cocked slightly before his gaze swept away from Tahi and back to the snow.
"Hm. I think it may be coming from Ursa—that is, a room to the north. Its tunnel has been blocked for some time, but it appears that something may have opened it somehow," he said, turning his attention back to Tahi.
"I think once we deal with whatever opened the tunnel, we can get the snows under control." The only question he couldn't answer was:
what had opened the tunnel?
Tahi-shei was glad that Master Astraea didn't seem to be angry with him -- he was even more glad that he knew who Giggle was, and seemed to approve of her. If Master Astraea was the origin of all fungal magic in the caves and he approved of Giggle, surely that had to be a good thing...! (Although, wouldn't that relationship go in the reverse? Giggle didn't seem too fond of her magic, or at least the yuckier parts of it, so she probably wouldn't have liked Astraea very much).
The praise made him perk up, but he paused, pondering the 'curse' bit. "Well, I'd say that maybe there's a magic that can fix you," he said sheepishly, "but I figure you'd probably have tried it already if that were the case. Maybe somehow we can trade," he said, only half joking. The mushrooms looked really, really cool.
The young stag's inquisitive nature was sparked like flint against steel. "Ursa... I've never heard of that one! What sort of block was it? Magical, or physical? That can give us a place to start, I think. Strong mages are more common than strong fighters, but if it's something you couldn't break -- assuming you tried, I guess -- then there's probably not many candidates. I know golems are pretty strong, and there's a ton of them in Polaris -- maybe one of them wanted some of the magic on the other side?" he asked, not really noticing that he was implying Astraea was weaker than a golem.
Ouch.
Astraea offered a small smile to the suggestion. Oh, if only there
was a way to
fix him. It was not something he wished to talk about though, so he let the conversation slide toward Ursa.
"Hmm, both magical and physical, you could say," he said, turning to view the snow again.
"Golems are not very good for that sort of thing—if you mean, breaking through the tunnel—but it is a good start, and good thinking. The magic is most dense in Polaris, so Ursa does not have anything more to offer them." His nose lifted as he tested the scent on the strong winds. It was mostly the crisp, cold bite of Ursa, but lingering there was another he had not known for some time.
"It seems someone else is already lending a hand though, so I will wait here until it is safe to move forward with everyone else."
His eyes shifted back to Tahi.
"In the meantime, why don't you show me what you can do with the fungi magic? What's your favorite thing to practice?" Anything to keep prying eyes away from the inner eye of the blizzard.
He listened with great interest to Astraea's explanations, internalizing them and mulling them over. But at the suggestion that someone else was handling it, his mind started to wander -- just who was it that Astraea would leave to deal with something like this? Was it another Master? Or maybe something above them?
He was drawn abruptly from his thoughts at Astraea's suggestion. Tahi-shei's eyes lit up at the opportunity -- was he really going to get to show off for the root of all fungal magic in the caves? The prospect excited him immensely. "Okay!! I know how to do three things, but I don't know how I'd show you one of them. I've been trying lately to practice making my fungal spells work offensively, but it's not going quite right. When I was born, I kept trying to meditate on like, what the magic wanted." Sounded kind of silly, talking to the master of it. "I made my spells work by clearing my mind and trying to... think like how I imagine a mushroom would, I guess. But then I made a friend who used her magic way differently -- not fungal, but I figured the same principles might apply -- and I realized it works when I'm angry, too. So I'm kind of back at square one," he admitted. "But I can make things grow pretty consistently!" He scraped a hoof against the ground, trying to spawn up some whitecaps.
A little field of them sprung up, and he preened just a little bit -- Tahi-shei had been worried that his magic would fail him. That would have been embarrassing. "I've been thinking about trying to make my magic grow on flesh and other creatures' magic as a substrate instead of the ground, but I, uh, always start worrying that I might seriously hurt something by accident and I stop."
He listened as earnestly as he had before, and could not help but grin, again, at Tahi-shei's enthusiasm. Tahi mentioned meditating on what the magic might have wanted, and a snort of air left his nostrils—he sounded a lot like Tenzin! What did the magic want to do, did it want to be offensive, supportive, defensive...? Of course, there was always ways to bend magic to your will, and he had noticed other Water users doing such; surely, there were other ways to abuse it, too.
Astraea had never considered what mushrooms thought like. His eyebrows raised at the mention of this and he still simply observed. And soon enough, fungi sprouted around them.
An almost wicked smile cracked his lips when Tahi-shei shared their concerns for practicing their magic against flesh.
"Yes," he agreed,
"that could be very dangerous. But what are you hoping to achieve by using the magic offensively, if not to put someone else in danger?" His head cocked slightly to the side.
"You achieve nothing without practice, though. As a Master magic user, you will be able to better control the will of your magic—and, if you choose to try growing fungi on flesh, then yes, you will be able to better control whether or not it is extremely damaging to your opponent or only slightly. Either way, it will definitely be painful." He twitched his back, shrugging his shoulders to move the bundle of fungi growing there.
"As they would in a normal substrate, the fungal growths need to feed. When grown on flesh, they feed on the creature and the creature's magic—a host."
Another smile, a mix between sinister and genuine.
"That's what fungi magic wants: to feed. So the question becomes, what do you want to feed it? Its natural food: the ground, trees, living natural things; or an unnatural food: flesh, blood, and magicka." A single eyebrow raised before he added,
"but your magic can be offensive without directly growing fungi on flesh. Such as spores that enter the body, attack the lungs, attack them from within." If Tahi-shei were worried about accidentally harming someone though, he couldn't fathom why they'd want to use their magic offensively at all. All magic could be harmful, especially his.
The question of what he intended to do with offense magic if not hurt someone gave him pause. It was a genuine question he did not have an answer for; his desire to know fungal magic came from a desire to defend himself, and defend others, but that would require hurting someone no matter how he went about it. Astraea was right -- no offensive magic could be wielded without first acknowledging that someone would be injured. But his eyes were drawn to the way Astraea shrugged, and he looked dismayed -- did the mushrooms cause him pain?! How awful! Surely, there had to be a way to break that curse of his.
"I've been asking myself a similar question," he said absentmindedly in response to the dichotomy between what the fungus wanted to feed on. He was considering this new goal presented to him -- previously he had assumed the goal was grow, but feed seemed... similar. Certainly, he'd been close. But briefly, he wished he had a more peaceful magic...!
However, Astraea struck him as the type of person who expected an answer when he asked a question. "I guess I'm not sure. I... don't think I ever really thought about it too hard," he admitted, realizing he'd held two conflicting beliefs simultaneously -- that he could use offensive magic to protect himself and others, and that he would never hurt anyone. But a question (two, actually) occurred to him, gnawing at his curiosity, and he looked Astraea over briefly. Considering. Wondering.
"Who's your Overseer?" he asked, assuming that Astraea had to have one. Tahi-shei liked patterns. "Overseer-Alpha mentioned your name, but not another one. Well, no, they -- she, maybe? I'm not sure -- mentioned Giggle and Auré, but not in the same context." And then, after a beat, "I know I said you'd probably tried stuff before, but I figured I should ask. Giggle told me that the spell I used a minute ago could be used to remove fungus that stuck to you, like if you messed up a spell or got something else growing on you. Do you mind if I try that on you? I just... well, if you don't want them, you shouldn't have to have them."
It seemed good to mention then, that using magic offensively would almost always result in the harm of an opponent. He nodded to Tahi's admission—yes, get that brewing through your head. There would be some sacrifice in Tahi's life, either themselves or others, and regardless of how much thought he put into it, it will still come as a shock. There was nothing one could do to prepare for that.
His eyebrows raised when asked who his Overseer was.
"I do not have one," he answered, and in his mind, it was honest: Vargas had been Nemean's Overseer, in the sense that Vargas answered to Nemean. Astraea had never needed one, and even Vargas himself was a bit of an anomaly. Overseer was... not a common job.
A wary smile greeted Tahi's suggestion.
"Ah, you are welcome to practice on me, if you like. You cannot do harm to me, so do not fear for accidental damage—but unfortunately, these growths are a direct manifestation of my magic. They will regrow if removed." A sad smile, and then,
"I've tried."