Ash stayed by the small pond until night had fallen and she could see the stars reflected in it. No one had come to talk to her since Lucrum had taken his leave and the aches of the fixing he'd done within her magic had finally subsided. She felt as if she could likely wake and be fine, probably wouldn't even feel out of sorts doing so, but had no desire to either. More of the sleeping meditation that kept her out for months at a time would mean more repairs done naturally to her magic.
The god had given her the most valuable gift he could offer, that of time itself. In just one short day she'd gone from knowing she likely wouldn't make it to the next cleansing ritual to being relatively certain she had another two or three left in her again. He had been misguided about it and she wasn't quite certain how she felt about him in general but she was grateful.
She stood and turned, grasping hold of the tether of magic that led to the temple's starseeing pond and walking to it using her own magic. The world faded, stars surrounded her for a brief few steps, then she stood on the island in the middle of the pond. She heard a sharp inhale and managed to brace herself as Luna all but slammed into her, tears of relief spilling down her face.
"I'm so glad you came back. I was so very afraid that you'd hide in your grove forever," Ash glanced at her, wondering how much Sidus had mentioned of what had happened as only at his insistence would Luna leave her to her own devices for so long when so worried, "He said you needed some time to yourself," a small bitter smile told her that Luna had wanted to argue but didn't.
Ash took a moment to try to put her thoughts together before speaking, "I'm sorry for worrying you, Luri. Did Ro," she used his nickname, uncertain suddenly if they were friendly enough for her to call him by his proper name, "Make it to the temple safely?"
Luna glanced up towards the door, "Nia came by and dragged him off to make sure he ate something. He seemed determined to stand guard by the door until you showed up." She left out that she was quite certain he'd expected some sort of divine sanction for losing the daughter of a god even if it hadn't been his fault, "Do you want to talk about what happened, Ash?"
There was a lot to talk about, she knew quite well, considering how pale and pained Ash had looked to the people checking on her in person for Luna. All of the monitoring equipment in the capsule had gone haywire for a while, charting pain that was beyond even the spike that had already occurred earlier in the day that very slowly tapered off. As soon as Luna got the message, she'd had the guards check on her and send regular updates. The latest showed Ash's magic to be far more healed, far more stable, than it should have been in such a short time.
Ash remained quiet for a while before moving to seat herself on the ground. She let herself tell the events as they happened but kept most of her focus on her magic. The Spellweaving skill had seemed interesting, something that she naturally did in her own world turned into a skill for this one.
Reading the description told her that it paired with Unicorn Eyes to allow her to see the makeup of spells and manipulate them to form new formulas. The drawback was that she would not learn spells as others did anymore. She had to either find a teacher or grimoires for new spells or create them using the building blocks she had at hand.
Cycling through each of her spells, she found that they all had star attached as part of their structure. It made sense considering her magic was derived from Sidus' own and so everything in essence came from the stars. Curious, she removed star from heal watching as the spell snapped out of existence. While she might learn other magics later that did not come from Sidus, it seemed she was currently incapable of doing so.
She conjured and held the Starflame spell next, frowning at it and calling up the heal spell into the other hand. Despite being named with only two words, the spell for Starflame was made up of more parts than made sense for just star and flame. Ash pulled at the spell and removed what she felt was likely the word for flame.
That gave her more to work with and she found herself scowling slightly as she wondered what she could do with the spell pieces she had access to. She formed a spell by removing strike from Starflame instead, watching as a gently pulsing warm ball of fire appeared in her hand.
A wave of dizziness washed over her despite having not cast nearly enough spells to deplete her mana stores so far as the costs in her spell screen showed. She stopped speaking, done with the explanation anyway, and lowered her head onto her knees.
"What was that you were doing, Ash?"
"Using a skill called Spellweaving."
She called up the description for the spell and scowled as she found the source of her mana loss. Holding a spell, what she had been doing with the spells intended for immediate use, cost a bit of extra mana on top of the original casting cost. Weaving them actively drained mana. Combining the two, she'd drained her stores quickly even with the passive restoration the starseeing pond was giving her.
Glancing up at Luna, she asked quietly, "How long do you think you'll be kept busy? I'm thinking of trying some questing soon…maybe a dungeon if there's something nearby I don't need a ton of people for."
With a scowl, Luna said, "You mean something you can handle on your own once you've badgered someone to teach you more spells?" Ash grinned ever so slightly at Luna's knowledge of her, "I'm free now, for a few days at least. The paperwork can wait a bit since they know I need to help you out to get you properly settled. I should have been available today, should have been with you this whole time to help you through all of this but the representatives of the temples decided to call a meeting," she rolled her eyes, "I think they just like hearing themselves talk, honestly. Went on and on about how grand the Starlight Festival was last year with me in charge of it and foisted the duties off on me again as if I didn't already know they were going to. It's supposed to be a joint festival between all of the temples but half of them are ancient and refuse to let their apprentices start to step up, citing that they just aren't ready or something. It's infuriating."