Test Of Memory

So it was that another member of Sabertooth was preparing for their rank up exam, and Kiersa had been tasked with proctoring the exam. She hadn't had a chance to actually meet this Selah before now, so this would be a first for the both of them. What information she could gather about her though... the blonde nun was more interested in what state of sobriety the girl would arrive in. She seemed to have a penchant for getting drunk. Often, and rather loudly. So this was going to be an interesting experience either way...

Tests. Tests. Tests. Arguably the biggest fear of Sabertooths resident memory make mage, Selah Bell. She despised them, loathed every one that she had to take, the thought of failing constantly lingering in the back of her head and twisting her stomach into knots. While she avoided them every chance that she could, now was not the time to do so- Now was the time for her exam. She had been stressing on the thought of it for the pass few days, sleep escaping her grasp almost completely. Luckily Selah knew the best way to conquer her fears, and it was easy to do to- Alcohol. Wine, Sake, Whiskey, Booze, probably something of Selahs own concoction. Easy, fast, and fun. And so that is just what Selah had indulged herself in the morning of her exam- Glass after glass of strong liquor until she was stuck with a red face.

And now she approached her exam proctor, the only evidence of her heavy drunken spell being her red tinted face. Despite the incredible amount of alcohol she had drank last night, Selah was walking in a shockingly strait line- not even tripping once. Not only that, but she was able to keep her speech strait and had full control of her body. If there was anyone who could hold their alcohol after clearing out a bar, it was Selah.

"Heeeeey! Im here for the exam!" The purple haired mage shouted rather obnoxiously as she approached her proctor. While the Serene Cliffs were usually a beautiful place to visit, Selah was too focused on getting through the exam as fast as possible to appreciate it. "Come on let's get this over with, I wanna finish this before I'm sober again!"

Well, thought Kiersa to herself with a shake of her head, that answers that question. The blonde nun turned to look at the mage taking the exam, her hands on her hips like she'd seen the older Sister's do when they were about to give a lecture or reprimand to one of the novices, or just one of the local children who had misbehaved near the convent.

"Miss Bell is it?" she inquired of her, half-seriously and half-rhetorically. "This exam will take as long as it is necessary to take, and not a minute or even a second sooner." said the young blonde nun as sternly as she could to the older and taller girl, before she gestured to a nearby log. "Shall we have a seat?" Kiersa "suggested" as she made her way over, plopping herself down on the wooden make-shift bench.

She would return to looking out across the ocean whilst she waited for Selah to take a seat, making it clear that she was going to sit down, or this test was going to take much longer than the drunk woman would like. And thus the exam had begun, even if Selah didn't quite know it yet.

Selah grumbled something along the lines of "Fine. Whatever" under her breath. She hadn't noticed at first, but the proctor looked younger than her. Not by much, maybe one to three years younger. It was sort of hard to tell when your as drunk as Selah was. Taking a deep breath to steel herself against the creeping fear that was the test she was about to take (Which was showing up despite her drunkenness), Selah turned and sat down on the log next to Kiersa and stared blankly off in the direction of the sea as she lost track of her thoughts for a moment. Snapping back to reality she turned to Kiersa and spoke again.

"So, what exactly am I going to be doing for this exam? Fighting something? Delivering something? Come on tell me, what do I have to do." Selah asked rather haphazardly, tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for her proctor to answer her. "And what's you name anyways, You don't look like anyone I've seen around the guild hall." As she spoke, a gust of wind blew over the plains as a ship became visible in the distance. Looked like a cruise ship, nothing Selah had to worry about at the moment. Not that she would have noticed it anyways.

When Sella did finally sit, she immediately wanted to know what was going on with the exam and apparently before she regained her sobriety. She gave a light cough when the older woman asked for her name. "I'm Kiersa Bec, one of Sabertooth's Paragons." the blonde nun said, introducing herself to the mage.

"Before I set you any tasks, I'd like to get to know you a little better, so I can get a better grasp for who you are." said Kiersa. "So I can set you an appropriate test." she explained. "Why did you join Sabertooth in particular?" the blonde nun asked of the examinee.

Selah continued to tap her foot impatiently as she thought about the question she was asked. Why did she join sabertooth? She hadn't really put much thought into it when she joined, she just felt like it was the right guild for her. There had to have been something more. Selah thought about what else could have compelled her to join?

"I joined... For a challenge. To prove that I'm not just some little girl who barely knows how to use magic. To grow and learn as a person." She said. The first two reasons were true, the third reasons was debatable. Selah already considered herself fully grown on a person, but maybe she still had more room to grow.

"Oh?" said Kiersa as she looked at the girl sitting beside her, the wheels in her mind turning already for this exam and how to proceed further with it down the line. "And what so far have you learned in your time with Sabertooth?" she asked Selah. "And who are you trying to prove yourself to? Yourself, or someone else?"

"During my time in Sabertooth... I learned compassion. I learned comradery. I learned things I never would have from where I grew up. I learned what it's like to be in a family, a true family. Not a corporate machine of cold judgment." Selah said, her voice heavy. Her past was something she rarely brought up, the past that she had spent her whole life running from. "I learned whats it like to have friends, to protect my bonds with others no matter how small they may be." She wasn't sure why she was telling Kiersa this, maybe it was just her drunken stupor. Or maybe she was finally deciding to face her past, even if not intentionally.

"I'm trying to prove myself to my family and their business. I was told that I could never learn magic, that all I would ever do is copy someone else's in a pathetic attempt to impress someone. And so far, that's all Ive been doing. Taking other peoples magic and making it my own. But that's why I joined Sabertooth, to prove to my family that what I do isn't pathetic, its strong. I guess somewhere along the line I decided I needed to prove it to myself as well." She said, her hands clenched into a fist. The woman was slowly returning to sobriety, but right now that didn't matter to her. Right now all that mattered was that she passed this test.

The blonde nun smiled softly as the girl poured herself out to Kiersa about what she had learned and what she was doing it all for. She tapped her chin in thought about her conundrum about how to prove herself, to herself and this business family of hers, in regards with her magic.

"Well," she began to say, "have you tried mixing the magic's you've borrowed from others?" she asked her. "For example, you borrow a fireball spell, and a lightning bolt spell... mix the two together and make..." said Kiersa, trying to figure out what that combination could even make. "An exploding lighting bolt, or an electrical fire ball?" the blonde nun suggested with a shrug and a chuckle.

"I... No, I haven't tried that yet. I have been reading up on a few mages who did it in the past, but I can't seem to get it down just yet. There's just something about it that just slips away from me, I don't know what it is." Selah admitted, wondering what Kiersa was planning for her to do. At this point, the purple haired woman had become almost completely sober, her system processing the alcohol fast then most people could ever dream of doing. There was no hope to finish the exam drunk to begin with, but they hadn't even started yet!

"I think I came close once, but just as I cast the spell it just... poofed, for lack of a better word." Selah said, opening and closing her hands as she tried to remember how she had gotten close to mixing the spell last time. From what she knew, it was just like two mages mixing their own spells, but with only one mage casting it.

The blonde nun turned her gaze out to sea once more as she considered Selah's words, and her explanation of her attempts thus far to achieve what she had suggested. Kiersa gave a sigh and a shrug. "I'd offer you my own magic so you could try and combine it with something, but I doubt you'd like it very much." she said, half-offering with an apologetic smile. "Hardly anyone I've met so far likes what it does to me." mused the blonde nun before she shrugged once more.

"As for your attempts so far... it could be that you need to design the spell itself in advance perhaps for the moment, rather than trying to do it as spur of the moments." Kiersa suggested as an explanation for why she couldn't get it down just yet. "And for that... you need to get better at your magic, and increase your own strength wouldn't you?" she asked of the test-taker. "Tell me... what would be the first spell you would make if you could from all the ones you've memorised?"

"The first spell that I would make?" Selah asked, cycling through the thousands of spells she had memorized from training, books, and combat. King's Agility, Cloak of God's, Spirit Negation, Force Absorption, Iron Arm... So many spells, but none of them seemed right to mix. Selah decided, that instead of try to choose two spells- thinking up an entirely new one and then finding the two spells that would need to be mixed in order to create it. A summoning spell sounded like a good place to start, but she would need the summon to do it first. Then something popped into her head- a magic circle spell. She had read up plenty on how to cast them easily, and she knew exactly what kind of effect it would have and what spells to mix.

"I would make a Magic Circle spell. One that makes it so I could get around the battlefield easier by making me faster" She said finally, after thinking about it some bit. She knew what spells to mix, but she was a little bit worried about the downsides it would have due to the spells she was mixing.