Prayers

Michael closes the book with a slight frown, not as many improvements as he'd been hoping. He hadn't been taking advantage of his Essence Shift ability lately, and while his improvements could be called impressive for anyone else, he still wasn't satisfied with the speed of his progress.

Shaking his head, he carefully extracts his arm from Tiffania's bosom and climbs out of the tent. He pulls some food from his inventory and walks over to the smokeless campfire Riki had taught him to make. The assassin had thought such a thing would be useful, and he was correct in that as the lack of smoke would allow them to cook and warm themselves without alerting everyone nearby to their presence.

He stabs a few morsels of meat onto some shaved sticks to make some make-shift skewers and sets them atop the fire to slowly cook. While that's happening, he sits on a nearby stump and flips open Brimir's Prayer Book, wondering if he could glean anything from it before he handed it off to Tiffania.

Blank pages greet him, eliminating all thoughts of learning anything from it. With a sigh, he tends to the fire while waiting for Tiffania to wake up.

Eight minutes later, the smell of cooked meat envelopes the small clearing, eventually drawing a still tired-looking Tiffania out from the tent. "Good morning." she greets with a small, forced smile.

Michael returns it with a sincere one of his own, gesturing to the cooked skewers, "I've made breakfast, how're you feeling?"

She sits beside him and begins blowing on a skewer, "Tired, just tired... Even with the Arcane Ring you gifted me, using so much magic yesterday taxed my body... D-did you sleep well?"

"Better than usual, but I hope you don't mind if we continue our arrangement? The winter's cold enough without sleeping alone." he says, not really wanting to test if night terrors were still a factor.

She nods and begins nibbling on a skewer, her eyes afterwards drifting to the book on his lap, "Is that-?"

Michael holds up the Prayer Book, the thing looking more like a diary or a booklet than anything magic related. He knew that it had more pages than its size implied however, even if said pages were all blank to him. "It is," he says, offering it to her, "This is our ticket out of here, now it's up to you to learn the spell... Think you can do it?"

"I can-, I will." she affirms, quickly finishing her skewer and taking it from Michael's hand. The book glows slightly in her grasp before returning to normal, and once she opens it, she's greeted with many long lines of archaic-looking writing. It was written in the common tongue but used words that had long been made obsolete or replaced. Still, she thinks she could translate it fairly easily.

"What do you see?" Michael asks, leaning over but still seeing blank pages.

"It's a meditation technique," she says while flipping to the next page, which glows as words write themselves into existence before her eyes, "My Erase spell?" she mutters, seeing the many intricacies to the spell that usually comes instinctively to her.

Michael watches her expression become more and more excited as she flips through the book, "Induce Structural Weakness spell...? Elemental Fusion? Vacuum? I've never heard of any of these before." Tiffania utters.

"Is there anything in there concerning World Travel? Or Gates or any kind?" he probes.

Tiffania flips through some more pages before stopping on one, "This is a... Teleportation Gate? It says that it can be used to cross vast distances," she flips the te page to read more about it, but quirks a brow at the blank page, "It's blank...?"

Michael nods, remembering from the anime that the Book only reveals spells when the Void Mage is ready. "Maybe you need to learn the Teleportation Gate first before you can see any variations on it?"

"That sounds right... The book warns that improperly cast Teleportation Gates could instantly kill any who travel through it... Or dismember them, or send them somewhere random... Maybe it's best that I master this before trying its advanced forms... If all of that could happen to you with the basic version, I'd hate to imagine what the varients would do..." she shivers slightly at the thought.

Yeah, Michael could imagine many things worse than death if they entered an improper Dimension Gate. Teleported into the Eye of Terror in Warhammer 40k? Teleported into a literal hell ruled by Satan? Teleported into the Marvel Zombie universe? Teleported into the Carebear universe? Teleported into the Deadspace universe? Even just teleported into the vacuum of space itself... Yeah, not fun.

Still, that did create a question... Where would they actually go after this world? Did they have a choice? Could they return to his home dimension? Michael shakes his head, "How long do you think it will take for you to learn the Teleportation Gate spell?"

Tiffania chews her lip in thought, "If I spent all my time on it, maybe, a week? Maybe less? I usually have Ralf to help me but, I doubt even if he were here he'd know what to make of Void Spells."

Michael nods, "Well, if anyone was going to master them, it'd be you. Just remember that we need to take Charlotte and her mother away from here soon enough. The King of Gallia will probably be searching for her already, so the sooner the better... Still, without Sheffield working under him, I think we have enough time to get things done."

She smiles, "I hope so, it's a lot of pressure though. Having people rely on you..."

He chuckles and pats her on the shoulder, "You rely on me, I'll rely on you, seems like a good deal to me... Now, we should probably move further away from the capital before someone stumbles across us." he says, finishing his own skewer and getting up to pack up the camp.