"Are you sure they will survive that?"
Lydia shrugged.
"I have absolutely no idea, but that’s why you’re fighting only five of them - the loss of this many would be acceptable."
Well, at least if he burned them down by accident it wouldn’t be a problem.
Although now that he thought about it, he never used the fla directly in combat. He enhanced himself with it, or used it to finish off his opponents - but actually attacking with the fla? He hasn’t done that yet.
"Ready?" Lydia asked.
"Sure."
She recited the activation command, and the five puppets springed to life. This ti they didn’t wait for him to attack, but instead jumped at him all at once.
Calen didn’t have much ti to co up with an attack, so he gathered all the available power in his hands, and simply released it.
A beautiful fan of golden flas spread from his palms, swallowing his enemies completely. He couldn’t clearly see how big was the attack considering his position, but it was definitely bigger than he expected.
The fire roared for a few seconds, and then slowly died down - where the puppets stood before only five black orbs surrounded by puddles of ash remained.
Seeing the utter devastation of the attack, Calen felt stupid for not using it earlier.
Lydia approached one of the piles of ash, picked up the black sphere, inspected it, and then sighed in relief.
"The cores aren’t damaged, we can use the rest of the dummies without worrying."
"What about the shells?"
"We’re druids, and the shells are wooden - we can regrow them in a matter of hours."
Right, that was kind of obvious, he shouldn’t have asked.
"Okay Calen, we tested your physical strength and areal attacks - now it’s ti for ranged attacks. It would be stupid to waste the dummies for static shooting, so I’m gonna make so targets for you."
She put her hand on the ground, and a second later the plaza shook.
Five wooden pillars in equal distances raised from the ground, each farther from him than the previous one.
Calen raised his right hand, gathered the fla in form of a ball, aid at the target, and shot it out.
The brilliant sphere of light reached it’s destination in a fraction of a second, broke right through the first obstacle, and hit the second one, producing a small explosion.
He repeated the process, and cut the third target cleanly in half.
The results of the third try were less impressive - when the fireball got too far away from him, it’s power diminished swiftly, and the only damage he managed to inflict on the fourth target were barely visible scorch marks.
Lydia observed the smouldering remains of her creations.
"Well, the wooden targets to test fire powers weren’t my best idea, but at least we know your effective ranged distance. It’ll get longer as you grow more powerful, but for now it’s around thirty tres."
"Cool, what now?"
The Elder gestured at the remaining twenty-odd dummies and smiled.
"Now you’re gonna use all of your powers to fight the rest of these guys, of course."
"Shit."
***
Isara was making another masking cloak under the watchful eye of Alara, while simultaneously telling her what she discovered in the hollow. When she finished her tale, her tutor comnted:
"It makes sense they never let in there then. I knew that there were plans to make contingencies in case the tree becos corrupted, but I didn’t know they actually made any of them."
"What about that guy the guard ntioned, master Gareth, or sothing like that? I’m fairly sure I’ve seen this na in the context of this city before."
Alara humd in approval.
"Good mory - Gareth was one of the three mages that were trapped in the city when the Sun Kingdom was invaded. He’s also the only one from the trio whose notes were never found - now we know why, I suppose."
Isara stopped her work for a mont, and looked at the Elder.
"But why would he have sothing like that in his notes? Was he evil or sothing?"
Alara shook her head.
"From the scarce information I have about the man he wasn’t a villain. Gareth supposedly specialised in power sources and energy transfers - he made magical gadgets. It isn’t a far fetched idea that he had so theoretical research in his notes, that could be used for nefarious reasons by soone like Trent."
Isara started working again, but she kept the conversation going - it was rare for her teacher to be so forthcoming with information.
"What do you think about our plan?"
Alara chuckled.
"It’s not much of a plan if you don’t know how to execute it, is it?" She ran her fingers through her hair. "In all seriousness, I think it’s possible, as long as you get either Lydia or Baor to sohow gather all the druids in one place. But enough chit-chat, focus on your work."
***
Calen was beat.
He was laying in the stone pavent, covered in cuts and bruises, breathing heavily.
He managed to beat all twenty six puppets, but it wasn’t an easy victory. All around him were the ’corpses’ of his enemies - so dummies were turned into fine dust by his fla, but others managed to doge it and attack him.
The ones that ca to close weren’t destroyed completely, but their state wasn’t pretty - their limbs were broken or cut off, countless scratches lined their bodies, and one or two were even missing a head.
The biggest obstacle in the fight were the limitations of his fla, in its current state he had to wait at least half a minute between attacks, which was practically an eternity on a battlefield.
Like always, Lydia offered him food and water, and then started talking:
"You have to work on grouping enemies, for now your power cos in short, powerful bursts and you should learn to exploit that."
"Will there be a point where I can consistently use the fla to attack?"
"Sure, once you rge with that piece of a domain you’ll be able to freely exchange magic with the divine power and vice versa."
Calen looked at the mangled remains of the wooden puppets and sothing occured to him.
"Why don’t you use these guys to fight and hunt?"
"It’s because of how they’re made, they don’t know how to fight anything other than humans, and even then they’re not super effective since they emulate human injuries."
He nodded, and let his thoughts wander.
Calen thought about today’s training, and it felt like he was growing significantly slower than the fla - and he wasn’t sure it was a good thing.
When he said it to Lydia, she nodded her head with a serious expression.
"You’re correct, you might be only third of the way to being able to inherit the fla, but the fla itself is probably more than ready to be inherited."
The consumption of source elent affects the fla disproportionately more than its bearer
That was what the book about the Flabearers said, if it was really to that degree, he would have to stop consuming lifeforce, and try to catch up with his body.
"Right, now that we’re talking about strengthening the vessel, what do those herbs you found for do exactly?"
"The white jade mint is the simplest - it’s supposed to remove any and all impurities from your body, which is very helpful for the other herbs."
She paced around the plaza, as if trying to recall the detailed information on the herbs.
"The moon rose is supposed to strengthen will and body - whatever that ans."
Calen squinted at the Elder.
"...what do you an ’whatever that ans’?"
"I an that its description in all the books I’ve found is very vague, I know its beneficial, but I’m not sure exactly how."
"Do you know what the lotus does at least?"
Lydia smiled, as if she was expecting the question.
"Certainly! It’s a very famous and rather rare flower - anyone who consus it has their skin beco significantly tougher and much harder to puncture."
Aside from the fact that the effects of one of the herbs weren’t completely clear, it seed like a really good haul for sothing found at the bottom of an old storage.
"And you said we’ll get even better things if I can recharge the tree?"
"Sure, but you shouldn’t get ahead of yourself - it took you half an hour to charge a single source oasis, practically resurrecting a tree consecrated by a god will take you quite a while."
These words made Calen realise what he agreed to - recharging the tree was going to take at least a month of near constant ntally straining work, and just the thought of doing it made him shudder.
It’s not that he didn’t want to do it, he just felt like there could be a better way to do it than sothing akin to trying to fill a lake using a syringe.
His friends would surely have so ideas, right?
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