Steel cuts into flesh, digs into it, rips it open. The great birch pnks burn a hot blue, turn to ashes before her eyes. Blood stains the marble bright red, roars mix with screams as the bestial, monstrous cws tear flesh from bone.

  For a moment, there is quiet. The scene fades from view, fades from her mind. Repced by her Goddess's voice, a simple command: "Join the mage on her journey."

  And so, she does.

  ___

  A second visit to the tower. This time, I had chosen to forego the heavy armor from the day before, which was something she mostly wore on official missions, since it made it easy to signify her status as a padin. It was quite useful for occasions like the escort mission she had just participated in; it scared off any bandit who had any sense of self preservation (which is, to say, scared off all bandits), and made introducing herself a good deal easier. Afterall, no one would dare impersonate a padin for fear of combusting on the spot.

  Regardless, on her second visit, she wore a much lighter armor. The breastpte was made of thick linen, twined together to make it reasonably protective. The majority of it was dyed a dark bck, which was then accentuated by a white trim. It ended in a skirt, of sorts, one which was simir in color to the top. It covered most of her legs, all the way down to her shoes, which were coverings of waxed linen. It, of course, had the same mark of the birch tree embedded into the breastpte, but it didn't scream "padin" quite like the pte set, so she found it less effective for the aforementioned dealings.

  It was the armor she typically wore during the Summer, as it was much cooler than her pte set. Wearing the pte practically pced her in an oven, and she could handle it, but it was not comfortable. Besides, the protection difference was minimal--she could enter combat naked for all it matters. She didn't, because there was a symbolism to her armor that scared her enemies, but she could. It's a strategy one commander has even tried (sending his troops out without any protections), and it worked quite well. Regardless, the armor she had on now was quite comfortable, well insuted. It did have the side effect of showing slightly more of her light brown skin, especially her arms, which were entirely exposed. She didn't really care much about this one way or another, but it was obvious to her that people would stare at her arms, at their muscles, which she had built up over a lifetime of training. The ck of helmet also let her let her hair out. She kept it short, since regurly covering it with a helmet did it no favors, and generally styled it in ft twists.

  She took a moment to take in the tower as she stood outside it, preparing to enter. It was, not unlike her, the st of its kind. An independent tower, unaffiliated with any state. A pce to pursue magic outside of the decree of any royalty or religion. It has a long, turbulent history, no doubt. Much like I.

  With an exhale, she walked into the tower. No one waited to receive her, as the tower only lets those with permission enter in the first pce. She walked towards the back, where the floor selection was housed. There were no stairs; this was necessary, as the tower was much rger inside than it was on the outside. It would take a very long time to walk up any flight of stairs. And, finally, she selected the ninth floor, where Lusa resided.

  She was there in a moment, and, after a knock upon Lusa's door, a response of "One moment!", and some shuffled, hurried sounds, the door was open, Lusa before her.

  She wore a simple bck silken gown. It was clearly high quality, but otherwise wasn't notable. Easy to put on, easy to take off. On her shoulders was a cloak, bck, with a deep, dark purple trim. The outside was entirely bck, but, from the little of the inside that wasn't blocked by her body, I could see the same purple stars that shined brightly on her hat. She clearly liked this cloak a good deal, since it was simirly enchanted to the hat, simirly well kept.

  Now that she had time to prepare, it was evident that she kept her hair straight, straight and long. It also seems that she slept properly; the dark circles, bags, under her eyes still remained, but they were less pronounced. At least, I thought they were less pronounced. The woman still looked like she had spent the st decade awake, so it was hard to tell.

  It was a few seconds before either of them said anything; they both just looked one another up and down.

  Finally, Lusa, with a bit of a stammer, interrupted: "I suppose you've decided?"

  ___

  It had been a while since Lusa st stretched her legs, breathed in the air, in a pce far from civilization. Honestly, she still wasn't all that far out from civilization, they'd only been walking for about an hour. The pair had been damn near silent aside from the occasional "watch out for that branch", "there's a dip here", "I think we turn left, now". It was really like she was alone in nature, trekking through the woods.

  It would be nice, almost a zen experience, if Lusa hadn't already ran out of stamina, already started to pant for air, neared colpse.

  "Do we need to take a break?" I asked, for the third time that night, "We should set up camp soon anyway."

  Lusa wanted to protest, to tell her that she can handle some more, just a little bit longer. But she had to be honest. Between breaths, she did her best to speak, and said, "Yeah. Lets."

  "We should find a good spot for it. Good to hold on until then?"

  She caught her breath enough to say, "Yeah, I can walk a little more." She most certainly could not.

  So she stumbled along, rested against trees when needed, and followed I towards the clearing. I kept gncing back at her, her face very conflicted, but she never offered to help. Instead, they progressed, slowly, like this. It wasn't long, perhaps only a few minutes, before they found a clearing, but those few minutes were enough to turn her legs into a liquid. She fell with her back resting against a tree, slowly slid down it, and rested on the grass, crossed her legs over one another.

  In truth, this was her first time camping out in the open. Her pilgrimage was mostly spent on carriage, which left little need for her to sleep between settlements. At least, as far as she could remember. That was before she kept her journal.

  She watched, resting against the tree, the way I surveyed the area. The way she combed across the ground, the bushes and trees. She could see her pulling on a branch, scraping at the dirt. It was all very mystifying, really.

  "Can I help, somehow?" she finally asked.

  "In your state? No. Rest."

  That was more or less the response she had expected. As badly as she wanted to be of use, she didn't have it in her to even get up, let alone undertake whatever tasks setting up camp entailed.

  So instead she blinked her journal into existence in front of her. Text appeared in her vision, a table of contents, a search, and an entry for the current date. She hadn't had time to write in it that day, so it was a bnk ste. She focused on chronicling her day, and the sentences were inscribed, and they summarized it all, up to the current point. This took a while, and when she focused again, she could see I. She was bent over, picking up a rock. She carried it to the little circle of them she had created, set it down, and it finished the circle in its entirety. Lusa hurriedly took notes.

  Next the woman grabbed a fallen log, and, with a bit of a grunt, carried it over towards the circle, set it down a little ways away from it. Lusa didn't write down the grunt, or the way I's muscles flexed as she moved all the objects, the way a bead of sweat ran down her arm, the way her face turned a little scrunch, but she made a mental note of it, one that she knew would be ephemeral. Something just in her own mind, not in the journal. Something she might dream about. Then she blinked again, and the journal disappeared, saved itself back into her hat, where it belonged. With it, a new bit of stardust spawned, drifted, and found its pce in a nebu.

  "Are you going to sit there all night?" I asked.

  "Ah, no, I was just writing in my journal," she trailed off.

  "That's not what I asked. Are you going to sit there, on your own, all night, or would you like to be next to the fire?"

  "I don't think my legs can handle moving any more."

  "Oh?" I walked over as she spoke, "But the fire pit's so far away. Here, let me help you," she said, and extended her hand. Lusa grabbed it, of course. She didn't want to be rude. And before she knew it she was on her feet, leaning against the padin, being supported by her as they walked towards the pit together.

  "Take it slow," I said as she lowered Lusa down next to the log. Slowly. Eventually, she was seated, legs crossed as they were before, resting her back against the log. "Don't get too close to the pit, it'll get really hot."

  Lusa nodded a little "Okay". Then she closed her eyes. She let out the breath she had been holding in. It was a bit more comfortable there than the tree. She listened to the sounds of I at work; some branches snapped, some leaves rustled, dry ones, she thought. It was a different kind of rexing than the walk earlier, knowing that someone else was going to take care of everything, that she wouldn't have to do anything herself. She could not do anything herself, for that matter.

  "Brigeth, may this fme show the grace towards us that you have towards me," I was speaking her prayer. Lusa didn't bother opening her eyes to look at the woman, but she imagined that she was on her knees with her eyes closed, her hands touching the ground. That was tradition for prayers, at least, the st time she was around the religious. Then she heard what sounded like rocks rubbing against one another. And a swear.

  This continued for some time, and, finally, Lusa looked at her. She was striking a bit of steel against a rock, next to some of the dry leaves.

  "What. Um, what are you up to?" She asked, doing her best to keep her tone in line, to not let in the hint of the, 'have you gone mad?' that she thought.

  "Starting the fire," I responded, with another strike. This did produce a spark, but the leaf didn't catch fme.

  "I could just, make a fire, you know."

  I looked over at her, her expression initially doubtful, then some realization, like, "Oh, duh, you're a mage."

  "Oh," I said, hesitating a little, "That would be nice."

  As soon as she had finished speaking the pit was abze. She wasn't sure how hot to make it, so she only lit one of the leaves on fire. This proved wise, as it soon spread to the rest of the pit, and they had a nice fire. A small one, but a nice one.

  "Get some of the stuff out of your storage, too," I said, "The pot, the stand, some of the water, and cups."

  She did, of course, and the items materialized before them with a blink. It didn't take long, for I to set it all up, and soon a pot of water started to boil atop the fme. She put some sort of herb in it, mostly sprinkled its leaves, and then covered it, waited for it to boil.

  "So, earlier, you were writing in your journal?" I started asking, "Do that often?"

  "Daily. I've lost so many memories over the years, I'm sure you can understand. I need some way to keep track of my life. One of my friends suggested journaling, and, well, here I am. Even have a very sweet enchantment for it. One of my proudest works, honestly, a weave of multiple yers across different schools," Lusa's eyes lit up as she spoke, her pace quickened, "I used a hex my colleague came up with as the base; frightening thing, it caused the most dreadful illusions. Directly in someone's head, too, no visual components. But it was simple enough to adapt it to a more constructive purpose. The real trouble came in the storage itself," Then she paused as she realized that she was ranting. To someone who probably wasn't all that interested. So she ended her train of thought with a, "And now I have this, a journal I can access at any time, entirely private to myself, entirely within my own head."

  I took a moment to take all that in, poked the fire a little bit, with a stick, to make sure it stayed abze. "You said storing it caused trouble?" She asked as her gaze shifted towards Lusa.

  Lusa smiled, a little, a grin that really only came out when she met someone foolish enough to fall into the trap of asking her more about the magic she's made. "Yup," the delight in her eyes seeped through as she started talking, "My first thought was to store it in my hat. You know, a true mage never goes anywhere without her hat. And that's what I did, sort of. Every star on here is a journal entry!"

  "But just doing that would be incomplete. If anyone ever got a hold of my hat and figured out how to work with it, they could learn basically everything about me," Lusa was surprised, a little, that the other woman seemed to be listening to her at all, "My first thought was to just cast increasingly eborate hexes and enchantments on it, yer on webs of security. And I did that. But we're talking about defending against other mages. Something like that would stall for a time, but it wouldn't be able to resist someone with centuries of time to fuck around with another mage's hat."

  She paused, for a bit, to take a breath, and I asked her, "So what did you end up doing? What even could you do to make it immune to that?"

  "Tied it to my soul." Lusa said, and I looked at her like she was crazy. "Not all of the information, of course; I'm not a deity. I can't change my soul. But I *can* determine whose soul is trying to use my hat. Make it so, if it's not me, it doesn't do anything. There are other safeguards, of course, but I won't bore you with the details to those. One fun one was using my hair, which I can change whenever I want, since it isn't part of my soul."

  "So you made magic to read the soul, just for a hat? A journal?" I asked, the end of her sentence slightly cut off by a hiss that made it clear that the tea was done. I poured a cup for Lusa, then one for herself, said, "Careful, it's hot."

  "Not just for that, no. Though, journals and knowledge keeping are big deals. We don't, remember things, the same way you do," she blinked to cool her drink down once again, "I was researching something else at first." She took a sip of the drink, then, and immediately spit it out.

  "What the hell did you put in that?" She asked, a little bit louder than normal, as she looked at I, whose normally neutral expression had been repced by the biggest grin she'd ever seen.

  "Revenge. For your incredibly bitter tea."

  Lusa set the cup down and crossed her arms, looked away from the other woman. "I asked if you wanted sweetener, at least!"

  "This tea's much better without it, so I didn't mention it." I took a sip, then, to illustrate her point. She exaggerated it with an "Mmmm".

  Lusa, not one to be beat so easily, tried to take another sip, and this time she forced it down her throat. It tasted awful. "I don't believe you can enjoy it like this," she said, summoning the nectar she normally used from her storage. She put in a few drops, blinked again to stir the cup, and took another sip. "Much better."

  To this, I shrugged. They chatted some more, until it was te enough into the night that the moon shone. Lusa started to drift off the more they talked, and before long she was fast asleep. Getting the rest she needed to embrace a new day.