16 Summoning Spirits

The always stoic and aloof instructor Gorm suddenly seemed to be in quite the hurry, leaving far more quickly than he had arrived earlier.

"That's rude Myra, I didn't even find a weapon seed yet that will accept me and you're already running around with a fully bound spirit that has such a cute appearance!" Nell jokingly said.

"Well, you should have been a bit faster, it's not as if I didn't take my time finding Stella." Myra answered him. "If you didn't find a spirit though, why do these students not make a weapon and summon one on their own?"

"Summon one on their own? What do you mean?" Nell looked at Myra curiously.

"Well, finding Stella was luck I guess, but it would be a lot easier to summon a spirit just for yourself that fits your personality and your own spirit. It's easier than having to look around among a limited number of them."

Nell was a bit skeptical at first, but after all the one he had this conversation with was Myra. He quickly agreed to give it a try. "But where would we get a weapon?"

"Oh, I can make you one, do we have a smithy in the academy that I can use?" Myra seemed quite excited by the idea of forging a weapon. Interacting with Stella had given her many ideas that she wanted to try.

"I think there is one we might be able to use, let's look around."

Just when they wanted to leave the area looking for a smithy, they were stopped by one of their classmates.

"Excuse me? I just overheard your conversation about making a weapon and summoning a weapon spirit. Do you think ... I could get one as well that way? I ... I would of course pay for your help."

The girl who asked them about the weapon was like Myra's polar opposite when it came to looks. She was a good head taller than Myra, who was always a good bit smaller than most of her classmates. The girl had platinum blonde wavy hair that fell down to her waist, with ribbons of a dark green color weaved into it, complementing her dark green eye color. Her clothes looked very different than the typical clothing style one would find in Luminos and one could easily tell that she was likely one of the foreign guests not from the empire.

If Myra were a mysterious and scary dark goddess, with her red eyes and black hair as well as her powerful aura giving off a majestic vibe, not to mention her dark colored hooded robe and the dark pants that she liked to wear, then this girl looked like a goddess of light. The blonde nearly white-colored hair along with the cute ribbons and the mostly white soft fabric of the long dress, with some green accents made the two look nothing alike.

The only aspect the two shared is that each of them was rather pretty, even though in a very different way.

"Why do you want a weapon spirit?" Myra asked the girl, not even asking about her name first.

Realizing that she didn't even introduce herself the girl gave a short bow, before explaining her intentions.

"I'm Alyn Wyn and came here from the forests of Aenweidh."

Myra had absolutely no idea where that might be and looked to Nell for help.

"It's a forested area to the north." he quickly explained for Myra. "They are something like an empire of … city states I guess you could call it, very loosely organized, but all having similar beliefs." Then Nell turned to Alyn to ask his own question. "Is Wyn not the family of oracles?"

Alyn shook her head. "It's true that my family has several people, who you might call oracles, but not all of us are gifted like them. Most just have a natural affinity to our forest god Amrun. I'm one of his priestesses. He is a god who is not used to receiving prayers and homage like most of your gods, but it is very important to show your faith by acting in a way that would please him."

"I could not find a weapon seed that felt right for me, not even if they would have accepted me, so I hope you can help me with finding one."

"Alright, we can make another one then." Myra said before heading off in a direction to find the smithy. Her intuition told her that Alyn would treat her weapon spirit well and was not a bad person. Trusting her intuition more than others would, she did not bother to ask any further questions.

A little bit surprised, how easily Myra would agree, Alyn and Nell followed her as well, with Nell quickly taking over the lead, because soon after, Myra was totally lost again leading them in circles before awkwardly letting Nell go in front of them.

--

"Here it is!" Nell happily led them into a room with a small forge and with various tools placed inside the room.

"The senior said we could use the room for today, but we have to clean it afterwards and return it in the same way that we found it."

Myra nodded and started to get to work. "What weapon would you like Nell? What about you Alyn?"

"I want a sword please, or maybe two? I always thought that a pair of swords would be cool, but there was no pair of weapons in the weapon hall." Nell never used a shield and would much prefer to fight with two swords instead.

"I can make you a pair of swords with the same spirit bound to them, yes." Myra took out a few of her materials that she collected in the past during her shopping sprees.

"Is that mithril? You want to make the weapons with mithril right away? I always thought only seniors would use a little bit of it to enhance their weapons, because it's rather expensive and hard to work with."

Not only did Myra use mithril for the new weapons, she also planned to use a lot more than just a little bit. While it would use up some of her funds, she had more than enough to make a few weapons.

"I'm too lazy to improve on your weapons all the time later on, I'd rather make them properly from the start, saves me time later on. I already have to improve Stella's home."

The sound of hammering echoed through the room. Neither Nell nor Alyn had any idea of smithing or how weapons were made, but even for them it was easy to see that Myra was really skilled and obviously knew what she was doing.

It did not take her long to make two beautiful short swords for Nell. With the assistance of magical power, making weapons if one knew how to and had the materials, was not taking a long time. They were made in a similar style and like yin and yang also different from each other, like a proper pair of weapons. Then Myra took the weapons, handed them over to Nell and had him sit down.

"Now think of what your weapon spirit should be like, what it should stand for. Why do you want a weapon? Why would you want to give this weapon more importance than a simple tool? Then don't close up and let me help you send that vision out in order to attract a proper spirit. Oh and we need a little bit of your blood and some source of energy."

Nell could not interact with the world, or send his spirit out of his body. Myra however had enough experience to help him with this part. It did not take long for the weapons to start glowing softly. One of his swords started to glow in a light blue color, while the other took on a red hue. Myra frowned a little bit, not expecting such an outcome.

Unlike Myra's weapon spirit, Nell's weapon spirits were awakened, but did not yet have a form, nor would they take on a form any time soon. He could not guide them in the same way as Myra could and they would just have to find their true forms on their own later. Myra did however help those spirits a lot to understand Nell.

Spirits, not a single one. Nell quickly realized that he was now bound to not one weapon spirit, but two at the same time.

Nell was really flustered when he opened his eyes after some time.

"There are two of them!" he told Myra, but the girl in front of him only nodded as if she was already aware of it.

"What are their names?" was all she asked curiously.

"Uhh .. they decided on Blue and Red" he told her rubbing his head awkwardly.

"They decided on it?" Alyn asked him, quite curious herself how this bonding turned out and why he would now have two spirits.

"Yeah, they started to argue with me in the middle of finding a name and then they just decided on it. I think Little Blue will turn out to be more of a female personality and Little Red will likely have more of a male personality. They remind me of my brother and myself when we have an argument." Nell explained to them, making both of the girls laugh.

"Sibling spirits are rather rare." Myra told them after a while. "They are more used to interact though, as they are not all on their own, likely you will see them improve rather quickly. Very fitting for a pair of weapons to have a pair of sibling spirits. You got quite lucky … I guess." she didn't mention that those spirits were also used to having a lot of arguments. A lot.

'Some things don't need to be mentioned. Just let him find out on his own, I'm sure he will be fine.'

"Alyn did you already think about what weapon you would like to have?" she then asked their new friend.

"Not really, maybe some sort of staff? I'm not all into clubbing people to death really. I'm more used to hunting if anything at all. It would be nice to have a spirit who can support me with helping people though, maybe like a healer's staff." Alyn really didn't know what type of weapon she would like. None of the weapons in the weapon's hall appealed to her. Many of the other priests would wield maces and hammers, but she did not really like those slow and cumbersome weapons.

"If you are used to hunting why not make a bow?" Myra asked her after thinking about it for a while.

"There are spirit seeds for ranged weapons as well?" Nell seemed really surprised. "I never heard of anyone managing to forge a weapon seed into a bow."

"Well, that's because they are forging the spirits into a weapon, it's like trapping them in a cage, ready to be released if the right person finds them, it's not like they are being summoned like we do here, it's not really surprising that they don't manage to make bows with weapon spirits." Myra obviously didn't quite appreciate the skills of the craftsmen who made those weapons for the weapon seeds.

"Bows are rarely made out of metal. It takes a stable structure to trap a sleeping spirit of any kind, what is usually called a weapon seed. Wood cannot provide the same magical stability. As we don't trap them, but summon them to come bind with you of their own free will, it's very different. It's also the reason why it will be very hard for others to communicate with their spirits."

"Not only are those spirits in the weapon hall traumatized by being squished forcefully into a weapon, but forging them in such a way also binds their senses to interact with the outside world. If I wouldn't have used up a lot of power to free Stella and heal her, she would still be in a very sorry state, unable to interact freely. Compared to freeing Stella, summoning Nell's spirits was a piece of cake in terms of power."