Solitary Training in the Desert

It was hot. A definite change of pace from that of the other places in Vescrutia... The sun was still beaming, the air was still dry and the heat was blazing... Priere wasn't enjoying herself here.

Inside the depths of her mind...


Priere: .. GodDAMMIT, Signis! Tell me again why we're in the desert!?

Signis: To build up a resistance to heat, dryness and the light, among other things.

Priere: ... Woah, all of that!? I mean, my god, I'm DYING OUT HERE.

Signis: Such training shall ultimately help you in the future, dear. You already know how to change the temperature and absorb heat in a limited way, but that is only when in low concentrations. I feel it is best to learn how to control your entire area. Besides that, you need to strengthen your ice and water abilities in such conditions, anyway.

Priere: ... Damn you for making sense...

Signis: I am always right, child. In addition to that, you'll be able to hold your own against pesky Light and Heat users if you practice correctly... And lastly, you'll be able to use your ice and water even in arid conditions without a single water molecule in the air after this training. All of these are useful, yes?

Priere: ... Yes...

Signis: Most definitely.

Priere: ... How come you and Blue don't have to train...?

Signis: Because technically, we have a majority of our abilities already. We just need to fight every now and then to keep ourselves sharp. YOUR capacity is what restricts us. I shall say this again; once your body becomes more powerful, our powers shall gradually return to us. And then you will attain your goal as greatest sorceress of all time, I shall be able to kill freely and bathe in blood once more, and Blue will be able to consume souls and assassinate to her hearts content, just as she used to. So, until you are strong enough for this to happen, you must TRAIN!

Priere: ... Dammit. I wish I weren't born a human...

Signis: Well, luckily, you aren't one now. So move. Your parameters now FAR exceed that of any human, demon or even angel, since we are here as well. We just need to unlock said potential...

Priere sighed and waved her hand at Signis in an uncaring fashion. Guess it was time for her to train in the wretched desert... which had everything she hated in it... Oh well.


Now exiting Priere's mind...


"Alright... If anything happens, Blue will get me out of here, so I'm fine on that account... I guess I'd better get to it then before Signis starts bitching about how I need to 'unlock my potential' and all that crap some more..."

She started to conjure up a little bit of magic... she noted that it was exponentially weaker in these conditions. Hm. Signis was definitely right...

It took Priere more effort to conjure up her magic in these conditions, but she knew that eventually, if she did it more and more, it wouldn't be a problem.

"... Crap, I forgot to bring some sort of water just in case I get low on magical power..."

She continued to fluctuate her magic, as if it were a stress ball. Water would be in the left hand, ice would be in the right. Both were formless and couldn't really be differentiated until Priere actually caused them to take shape, as they were basically the same form of magic. She could definitely already feel the strain of doing this, yet at the same time, she could already feel herself getting gradually better with conjuring the magic in these conditions.

"Well, this is a desert after all... I could easily locate an oasis... Or just drain the water from a cactus or something. Hell, there's more water in the desert than most people realize..."

She started to snap her fingers, attempting to transfer each of them to the opposite hand and then back. Basic warm up routines, ya know? It was still pretty stressful, even though she was progressing fast.

"Heehee... But there won't be after I'm done here!"

After a while, Priere began to walk, continuing her routines until it felt like nothing to her, as she did at normal temperatures. She was already over the strain of conjuring her magic up in dryness as well as in head. Using her magic in humidity and heat was easy, but dryness and heat was something else. But now, it felt natural again.

"Ah, that's what I'm talkin about... But man, the drain of being here is kinda getting to me... Eh. What else did Signis say for me to train with...?"

She remembered that Signis said something about light and heat users... Perhaps that meant to learn how to counteract those abilities using only her ice and water? She could already counteract the heat with her ice and water by changing the temperature, easy... But maybe there was something more? Perhaps to increase the durability of her ice in heat and the ability to control evaporated and/or heated waters... Yeah. That's it.

"Alright, alright... That's next on the agenda... But before that, I'm gonna have to make sure there's an extra water reserve nearby, just in case this drains me all the way..."

Lucky for her, there were a few cacti nearby... Sweet.

Once the cacti were located just in case she would be in need of a recharge, Priere looked up at the beaming, blazing sun.

"You son of a bitch..."

She sneered at it with squinted eyes before conjuring up some water.

"Okay, let's try increasing the durability of my ice..."

She generated a small icicle above her head, which would drip downward and cool her off a bit. The ice melted rather swiftly.

"Gotta start small... I guess this heat is more intense than I imagined. Alright, let's put a little more magical prowess behind it this time..."

She created an icicle of the same property as before, however this time it seemed to melt a slight bit slower. The more magical influence she put behind her ice, the more resistant and durable it became, she now realized. This icicle melted completely as well.

"Hm... More magical influence, more resistance... How about we try to make it a bit larger now, too?"

She created a large rectangular block of ice above her head, the light of the sun still shining through it. It started to drip on her head, yet she pushed herself to have it stop melting as fast. She was stressing herself so much, she had to actually stop floating.. she floated, it alway did. Whenever she floated, it always drainedd her power a bit, but also increased her overall 'chakra pool.' Thus, she was always getting better the more she floated. Her feet touched the sand and caused it to cool a bit, almost turning it into frozen sand right then and there. This really showed how much she was straining.

"Nnngghh... I think it's working.. I don't think this thing's gonna... Ngh... Melt anytime soon.."

And she was right. The droplets became slower as the ice started to melt less and less.

"Gh... I wonder how long I can hold it before I get totally drained..."

The wait was on.

Several tens of minutes passed and the ice didn't seem to be melting as fast anymore. It was halfway melted by the time the thirty minute marker hit, but Priere was ever so tired from doing this.

"God... dammit... This... is... tough..."

She tried to hold out a little longer, but she felt like she couldn't. Even though she probably had another half hour before the rest of the ice melted, Priere was pooped. The ice dissipated into thin air now and Priere fell to one knee.

"... Ugh... I'd better use... what little strength I have... To pull out that water from those cacti over there..."

Weakly, her hand was raised and a little pulse of magic was sent toward the cacti. Three of them would suddenly shrivel up as every last inch of water that was within them was forced out and brought over to Priere. She would drink half of it, already feeling a might bit replenished... At least, enough to start floating again.

"Oh, yes! Cactus water is friggin SWEET!"

The remainder of the water was enough to create a tiny kiddie pool, which Priere would form in the air out of the water, then float into it. She increased the temperature of the water to that of what would be a hot spring, rejuvenating her body and magic gradually. Any escaping water vapor/steam would be taken in and absorbed by her. She soaked in it for the next... oh, hour or so, until all of the water was gone.

Once done replenishing herself, she felt like she was almost back at her original power.

"Man, that cactus water does WONDERS for me~! Hahahahaha~!"

She looked up at the sun, smirking condescendingly.

"And you thought you had me... You son of a bitch."

Priere was already very much... contented with the resistance of her ice to heat so far, so next was... light? That one was a bit odd. She wasn't exactly... Sure how she could make her ice and water more resistant to light... But, then it hit her.

"Hmm..."

She generated another rectangular block of ice above her head, the light from the sun becoming not only tinted, but refracted just a bit.

"Aaah! So that's what you meant, huh? Well, I know how to get rid of light with my water abilities... But that Ice is what strikes me as difficult to do. How do I...?"

She started to play with the icy block, turning it at different angles and whatnot. It worked to an extent, but not the extent that Priere was satisfied with.

"Hmmm..."

Priere had tried several different ways to make this work, but it still wasn't up to expectation. She wanted no light to shine through this shield... and even if some did, she wanted to ensure she could control the direction of it as it passed through the ice...

"... Well, if the positioning isn't the problem, what about the structure...?"

She started to alter the interior structure of the ice, which, as she predicted, started to change the direction in which the light was refracting through it.

"Oh~?"

She was rather excited about her new discovery! She'd abuse this to its fullest advantage... but now was the time to get better with it, now that she found out how to do it.

"... So... I want the light to shine left, so I have to do...?"

She started to wave her hands about, meddling with the interior of the ice. The light coming through shone upward this time around.

"... Hmph! Alright, I want it to go LEFT..."

She waved her hands around again, still meddling with the interior of the ice. This time, she was a bit closer... for the light shone through the right side this time.

"... GRR. Alright, ONE more time... I think I know what I'm doing wrong..."

She waved her hands around yet again, meddling intricately this time with the interior of the ice. Finally, to her amazement, the light would shine out of the left, as she wished for it to do the first two times.

".. Yes! Now, I want it to shine right!"

She waved her hands, the ice shining through the right side, just like before.

"Now... Down!"

She waved her hands again, this time the ice shining upward again instead of downward.

"... Eh. I'll... get the hand of that in time. What's important right now is... I know how to control light through my ice! Haaaahahaahaha! Maybe this training isn't so bad after all!"

What Priere wasn't taking note of was that the longer she was in the desert, the less strain she would feel on herself when using her ice or water techniques, unlike when she first came in. It had been quite a few hours that she'd been in here already... about 3 or 4... so the training was paying off rather rapidly. Perhaps because of the fact that she wasn't a human anymore, so her general potential and parameters were way above that of a human, making this easier for her.

Whatever the case was, Priere was almost done with her training, she thought, as Signis had only instructed a final thing... Which was what? To learn how to control the temperature in the area rather than just in one concentration. Area temp control. Maybe the hardest one to learn of them all.

So, the final portion of her training here in the desert... But how exactly did Priere want to do this one?

"... Changing the temperature of a whole area...? I mean, it's already pretty intense to change the temp in one spot if it's this hot out..."

Priere could naturally sense the temperature... it was around 63 degrees Celsius in the desert, so it was damn sure hot out... Ugh, changing this heat to coldness that Priere liked? Oh, that was a huge task within itself.

"... Well, this is gonna take a lot of my power, but... Here we go."

Priere started to wave her hands about slowly... controlled... elegantly. Naturally, it was easier to lower the temp nearest to her, so that's what would start to lower first.... The temp around her would drop drastically from 63 degrees down to 33 Celsius... A rather major drop, of course, but that wasn't taxing to Priere that much. She started to make larger motions with her hands, letting her temp control have a wider range. This is where it started to get tricky. The wider it got, the slower her arms moved, the wider her radius got of control, but the more pained of a look was on her face. The temperature was dropping... 61... 58... 50... 39... 21... 10... Priere was somehow doing it. Though, even so, there was a fluctuation in the temp because of how difficult this was... 10... 15... 36... 21... 44... 25.. 33... 9... 57... 45... 44... 33... 32... 10...

It was definitely more difficult to control than it seemed.

Priere continued to wave her hands around, lowering the temperature as much as she could... No matter how straining it was on her. She continued to wave her hands around, becoming more and more stressed... The temperature seemed to be at a constant of 15 Degrees Celsius... Pretty damn good, actually. She had lowered it about 50 degrees.

"Gh... I think I'm doing... pretty damn well..."

However, after a few more minutes of trying to maintain the temperature, or even make it lower, the temp started to rise once again...

"... Wh.. What?! 20 degrees...? No... no... 41 degrees...?! Eh... Eh.. 46 Degrees..."

She was trying her very hardest to at least keep the temperature at least maintained... But.. Sadly... it rose right back up to the original, Priere almost completely drained ever so quickly. She fell to a knee once more, panting hard.

"Gah... Ugh... Shit... No good... Aaaah... Maybe that's a little bit out of my power right now..."

She was a bit disappointed, but was sure that she was going to get it again eventually... After another test of her skill, that is.

"... Signis... That's all the training I'm doing right now... I'm... gonna go rest for a while... Then test myself to see how I've grown..."

Priere was still talking between pants, taking the water from the remainder of the cacti and drinking it, replenishing herself enough for her to float.

"Ah... And I'm taking this good ass cactus water back with me, too. It replenishes me much better than normal water ever could, for some reason! Ha! In fact, drinking this water makes me feel a little more... resistant to this atmosphere."

Perhaps cactus water effected her magic and general ability positively... She'd be drinking a lot of that.

Well, with her training completed, she started off toward the exit of the desert and back to the inside of the village, where she could rest before she found some sap to fight...