Campfire Chat

Kieran returned to their small campsite with a bundle of firewood he had been gathering. The sun was already touching the horizon. Sophia was sitting on her outspread bedroll and watching him get closer. Apart from sending Kieran to gather wood, she had not said anything to him since their little sparring duel. Nothing changed as he dropped the wood next to the designated fire spot she had marked with a circle of rocks. Kieran took a bundle of dried grass and placed it inside of it, then stacked some small branches on top and then leaned some bigger ones against it. After he was satisfied with his construction he looked around for a bit until he turned his head around to Sophia.

“Do you have a flint?“ he asked as a firebolt shot grazed past his face.

The prepared firewood immediately lit up.

“That works too…” Kieran remark, looking at the fire.

He went to put some bigger branches on top when a pot suddenly landed rolling next to him.

“Get some water from the stream over there.” Sophia ordered behind his back, “I want to make some tea.”

Kieran picked up the pot and went to fulfil the order. When he came back, he noticed a bunch of sausages floating around the fire. Sophia, still sitting on her bedroll, waved her hand in his direction and Kieran felt the pot in his hand pull away from him. It began to float towards the fire and stopped over the flames.

“Letting multiple things levitate at the same time? Must be very difficult to maintain…” Kieran remarked.

“With a bit of training, everybody can do that…” Sophia replied without looking at him.

“Yet I don’t have seen many mages do that.”

Sophia began to laugh slightly.

“Why would you waste your magic to lift stuff? That’s what servants are for!” she said in a pretentious manner.

“That’s something a hoity-toity noble would say,” Kieran mentioned and sat down next to the fire, “I thought you were not one of those.”

Sophia laughed again.

“The most hoity-toity noble I knew said that in our first year in the academy when we learned the spell…” she explained, “Ugh… I hated that bitch… and her hair… but it was funny how it caught fire during an assembly one time.”

“Your handiwork I take it?” Kieran inquired with a faint smile.

Sophia looked at him directly for the first time after their duel. Her lips formed a cheeky smile.

“I was an honor student, you know! Attacking a fellow student is against the rules!” she exclaimed and smirked even more, “They never found evidence that it was me. I held a speech when it happened. There was no way I could cast a spell in front of everybody and no one notice…”

“A delayed spell activation?” Kieran guessed, “That’s quite the advanced spell craft.”

“That’s why they don’t expect students to be able to do it in their first year.”

The water inside of the pot began to boil. Sophia opened a small pouch and let a bunch of herbs fly into it.

“The spell you used during our match is relative similar to this one, right? You wove countless layers of magic around yourself. I guess you used wind element, or at least some to make it that thin, but still strong enough to even stop my blade… Like some kind of magical armor, but instead of weighing you down, it even increased your speed and movement range,” Kieran mentioned, “Very impressive.”

“Somebody is quite knowledgeable about magic, huh?” Sophia remarked.

“I picked up a thing or two…”

“To help you kill mages?”

Kieran chuckled a bit and looked into the flames.

“No… The reason I studied up on magic, despite not being able to use it, was a very different one…” he said and lost his smile, “But it does help to know how magic works when you’re up against mages.”

“Huh…”

Sophia waved her hand and one of the sausages floated towards her. She looked at it while it turned itself around.

“I think those are done,” she commented and waved her hand again.

This time one of the sausages floated towards Kieran. It stopped right in front of him and then dropped down. Kieran quickly caught it out of reflex and noticed immediately that this was a mistake.

“Oh yeah,” Sophia sneered as she watched him juggling the sausage between his hands, “They are probably very hot, so be careful.”

“You don’t say…” mumbled Kieran.

Sophia chuckled before she blew on her sausage and carefully took a bite. They ate their dinner in silence. Sophia then got two cups out of her bag, filled them with tea and handed one to him.

“You just played with me, right?” she asked suddenly after slurping some of her hot beverage.

“What do you mean?” Kieran inquired, still blowing on his.

“During our fight… You were never serious. It was just playing for you, right?”

“It was a sparring match, not a real fight.”

“How long would I have survived in a real fight with you?”

“I can’t fight for real with you. I can’t kill you.”

Sophia raised her right hand.

“Because of that?” she asked showing the sign on its back.

“Yes,” confirmed Kieran.

“Then what if I don’t have it. What would happen then in a real fight between us?”

“The same. I would not want to kill you.”

“Why not?”

“I have no reason to.”

“I’m a mage.”

“That’s not a reason to kill you…”

“Huh...” Sophia took an audible sip of her tea, “You’re a strange man, Mage Murderer.”

“I could say the same about you, Inquisitor Baronet Sophia Schwerdtfeger von Oed.”

“That I’m a strange man?” she asked surprised and looked down at herself, “True… I lack the proper equipment between my legs… and I have boobs… well some men do have them too… some even bigger than mine…”

“But nothing will come out of a men’s…”

“Have you tried? Maybe you haven’t sucked hard enough?”

“Can’t say I have…”

Kieran glanced over to her and his gaze naturally fell a bit lower than intended. This was maybe caused by her sticking out her chest. She smirked when she noticed.

“Before you ask…” Sophia said and covered her chest with her arm, “You can’t try with mine… Nothing will come out of those either… I think…”

“That was not my intention… sorry…” Kieran said slightly flustered, “I meant that you are a strange woman…”

“Because I have smaller boobs than some men?”

“No… I… forget it…”

Kieran took a sip from his tea. Sophia slurped from hers as well and watched him over the edge of the cup.

“Okay… so what about in a real fight, when I don’t have the mark on me and for whatever reason you want to kill me,” she continued asking, “How would it go?”

“You’d be dead.” Kieran answered curtly.

“Would I be able to at least land a hit on you?”

“Maybe…”

“Be honest.”

“No… you wouldn’t be able to.”

“Hmm… so you would just teleport behind me and chop off my head?”

“No… I’d rather not...”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like the feeling of teleportation and it makes my stomach upset…”

Sophia nearly dropped her cup as she stared at him, her mouth agape.

“Huh? Teleportation is one of the highest and most difficult magic spells, aside from the Grand Dame Inquisitor only a few can use it safely! Not even I’m capable of that spell… and you don’t want to use it, because your… tummy gets upset!?” she exclaimed.

“Yeah… I don’t like it. So I only use it when there’s no other way… which there normally is.” Kieran retorted.

“But you used it against me! Multiple times!”

“That was different.”

“Why?”

“You have the mark. We were talking about a fight where you don’t have it.”

“Why does that make a difference for the teleportation spell?”

“Because it’s a different kind of teleportation spell.”

“What do you mean? Explain!”

“I can’t really explain it… I’ll show you.”

Kieran got up and took off his gambeson and shirt.

“Do you enjoy getting naked around women?” Sophia asked furrowing her brows, “Now you do it even without order.”

“Only for you of course, Miss Baronet,” he teased with a half-smile.

Sophia’s mouth opened for an answer, but no words came out. She quickly took a sip of her tea.

“You see this inscription?” Kieran said and pointed at a inscription running from his right shoulder to his chest.

Sophia nodded.

“Watch it closely,” he added.

Sophia watched closely and suddenly the inscription he had pointed out began to glow, growing steadily brighter. Sophia could feel the magical energy gathering around him, getting more powerful by the second. Kieran then took a step to the side and vanished as if he went through an invisible door and appeared on the other side of the fireplace as if stepping out of one. The inscription on his chest still glowed, slowly fading out. Sophia noticed that he was holding his stomach.

“I hate teleportation…” he mumbled and spat out to the side, “Did you see?”

“Yeah,” Sophia confirmed, “and I felt it…”

“Good. Now keep watching.”

Sophia continued to watch him and noticed that, now that he was standing behind the fire, the light really brought out the best in Kieran’s physique. Together with the inscriptions, marks and scars it made a mesmerizing view. Sophia traced his body with her eyes, taking in every detail.

Blop

Suddenly he was gone, vanished into thin air. Sophia had not felt any magical energy emanating from him nor seen any of his inscriptions react.

“How about now?” Kieran whispered suddenly directly into her ear.

The startled Sophia let out a small shriek and dropped her teacup. Kieran managed to catch it before it spilled on her legs. Sophia stared into the grey-purplish eyes that were looking at her very close to her face.

“No…I… uhm…” she stuttered, “felt nothing…”

Kieran pulled back, smiled and handed her the teacup back.

“That’s the difference from the outside. For me in feels completely different. No weird suffocating feeling or stomachache after it. But I can only use this type of teleportation only to appear next to the person I’m bound through that mark,” he explained.

“And you can do that whenever you want?”, Sophia asked.

“Pretty much…”

“Huh…Don’t do that when I’m on the toilet or for any other weird reason, understand?!”

“I won’t… unless you call me, then I can’t refuse.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you order me to appear and pour magical energy into the mark, like when you give me orders, I must obey and come to you… or if you are in mortal danger, like yesterday when that Gunther guy attacked you. In those circumstances the mark activates automatically… I think.”

“Huh… interesting.”

Sophia looked at the sign on the back of her hand.

“These powers you posses are very interesting… must be nice to have all of them…” she remarked.

“I’d rather not have them…” Kieran replied and his expression grew cold and distant, “Never asked for them anyway…”

He then went to grab his shirt. Sophia noticed a few holes in it, from where she had hit him with the exploding rocks.

“Wait…” she said before the put it on, “Give that here.”

“Why?” Kieran asked, while handing her his clothing.

“Because I’m gonna fix it for you.”

“You know how to sew?”

Sophia gave him a slightly annoyed look.

“In fact, yes I do!”, she hissed, “But I won’t be using needle and thread for this.”

Sophia grabbed the shirt, put it on her lap and placed her hand on top. She mumbled a quick incantation and a blue light emerged from her fingertips. Slowly the fabric around the holes began to repair itself until the shirt was mended without any trace of damage.

“Curious spell…” Kieran commented.

“And completely useless,” Sophia said in her fake pretentious way again, “Why would you waste magic when you can just buy a new one?”

“I like this kind of magic better than any other…”

Kieran took the shirt and put it back on. Then they both drank their tea in silence for a while. The sun had long set.

“Will I ever be able to beat you in a fight?” Sophia asked suddenly.

“Hmm… you certainly have the potential, but…” Kieran said thoughtfully.

“But?”

“You’ll be dead before you reach it.”

“It will take me that much training, huh?”

Kieran went silent and just shrugged.

“Well then, let’s put it to the test then. We still have a long way and probably many days traveling ahead of us. Train with me in the meantime.” Sophia suggested.

“If you want, fine by me… but I doubt it will make any difference.”

Sophia glared at him with determined eyes.

“We’ll see…” She hissed and then yawned, “Hm, it’s getting late, better get some sleep. I put up a magic barrier, so we’ll get warned if something approaches us in the night.”

Sophia laid down on her bedroll and covered herself with her cloak. Kieran just used the ground as a bed and his cloak as a pillow.

“Oh, I have one more question… you said that you didn’t learn so much about magic for killing mages…” Sophia said after a few minutes, “What was the reason for it then?”

Kieran began to chuckle slightly.

“For the reason men do most stuff…” he answered.

“For power?” Sophia guessed.

“To impress a girl.”

“Oh… did it work?”

Kieran chuckled again, “No…”