Chapter 55 - Growing Stronger

Gardenia caught hold of her arm suddenly, her gentle pull coaxing Ash to turn around before leading her back up the stairs to the safe room. She moved to clasp both of Ash's hands, meeting her eyes and speaking firmly, "I want to make two things very clear, Ash. First, you are not obligated to fight that thing with us," she saw the expression on her face, shame that she was afraid to fight suddenly mixed with a stubborn will that required her to do so.

"Second," she continued before Ash could start arguing, "That thing is wrong in its assessment of your strength. You are most certainly strong enough to fight alongside us. While I think we may have gotten this far without you, it would have been a multi-day ordeal for us. Your Spellweaving has helped immensely and I am certain it will continue to do so."

Ash looked at her list of spells, realizing that she would have to create a journal all too soon to catalogue all of the words that she had and searched for something to help. The arrow spells were a fair bit stronger than her regular attacks because of their concentrated nature but she'd need the next tier of spells entirely in order to really damage the creature on the floor below them.

At first she grazed over the new enchantment spells considering few of them even offered her new words to work with beyond enchant. The elemental spells in particular were just the attack spells she'd started with along with the word enchant. Frustration mounting, she forced herself to look carefully at the other three enchantment spells she'd gotten: Enchant Power, Enchant Speed and Enchant Magic. They were made to make things stronger, which immediately caught her eye.

She caught hold of Enchant Magic considering it was the most familiar of them to her and she could likely parse its different words easily enough. Star was a given, a word engrained into every inch of her being that she'd be able to recognize by feel alone. It was the magic that made her what she was, the magic of the god that called himself her father. Enchant was simple, a new word she'd learned in the magical script rather recently.

The other two words were more difficult. There was a word that looked somewhat like mana, but wasn't. Considering the names of the spells were often literal, she determined it must have meant magic itself. That left a final word, one that she technically had no meaning for going by just the spell name. Its effect, though, told her what it was. She pulled up Enchant Power to make certain she was right and found the word firmly in that spell as well.

She'd just dismissed Enchant Power and brought forth her light attack spell when Gardenia spoke again, her voice very soft, "If this is how you cast magic where you are from," she paused, as if uncertain of how to phrase her question, "Why do you seem to have so much trouble with it sometimes?"

Ash turned her attention away from her spells to look at the priestess, "The building blocks are different here than at home. When I first started with this, I knew very few words and was mostly guessing based on effect. The only word that retained any familiarity to me was Star, the prefix for Sidus' magic. From there, I've had to separate spells based on context and effect."

She frowned slightly, "For example, Starflame is too long to just be the words for star and flame. There was another word within it. Going by context, I figured it was some form of attacking word. By removing the word that felt kind of like what is used for fire in my world, I got Starstrike. That told me that the words were star, strike and flame."

Gardenia's eyes widened slightly as she understood, "You're learning a new language to cast spells in. It's a wonder you've made this much progress, then."

Ash nodded slightly and took the word that likely meant strengthen from the enchant spell. She then pulled the word for light ever so slightly away from the attack spell without breaking its connection. Her intent was to see if the words could combine to make a stronger word that could be used in place of light just as she'd accidentally done earlier when creating arrow.

She didn't exactly know the meaning of the new word, though she could guess, but the spell would likely tell her itself if the grouping of words was a valid formation. She released it back into the attack spell to find out.

She didn't think too hard on what it meant by it only being the first step, instead trying the word strengthen within the shielding spells she'd made. Rather than creating new words the result was a second tier of the spell that she could create by using more mana. She made certain her important spells were all ready to go before giving a slight nod.

"We need to get back, quickly," she said, glancing anxiously at the stairs.

The others were down there but the problem was less that and more what was above them, an empty dungeon. If the monster decided to break its way out and managed to do so it would need only force its way past them to make it closer to the entrance. Then they'd be stuck chasing it, trying to take it down while it was busy trying to break through barriers unless it decided to stop and face them.

It had a lot of interest in her, though, in eating her magic likely in hopes of gaining some form of immunity to it. She didn't want to chance it trying to break free from the dungeon. Suppressing the slight quiver of anxiety that ran through her, she stepped towards the stairs. She was prepared to act as bait to keep the monster from deciding that escape sounded like a good idea.

She was also prepared to find a way to teleport all of the others free if it got hold of her as the one from before had done. It would likely be a rather traumatizing event, but she'd rather deal with that than with losing the friendships she'd started to develop with Yarrow and the others.