Training, Round 2

Despite the rather thought-provoking revelation they had, the trio slept well that night - after all, it was only conjecture, and there was no real proof nor any immediate desire to find proof. And in the end, even if their theory was correct, it really didn't change much. The gods were still gods, and Ahsch was still someone with the potential to become a god. That Phashak may have once been a mortal didn't change her current power and interest in the hrafthi 'godling.'

Truth be told, the trio were more concerned with Kira's next move than any potential divine interference. Ahsch hoped that she would simply keep her distance, not bother him anymore, and that at some point down the road he'd figure out how to undo what Phashak had done. Unlike many of his Boons, Dominant's Tithe didn't seem to have much in the way of hidden 'extra' benefits or features, at least none that Office Lady hadn't pointed out at the time he'd been choosing things. As far as he was aware, even the original version didn't have an 'unbind' option, the mage/familiar bond notwithstanding (though that was more a feature of Familiar of Flesh, not Dominant's Tithe). Trying different methods of undoing the bond with Ariin - much to her annoyance - led nowhere, and even if it was as simple as 'I release you from your oath,' there was no guarantee that would work on the divinely-created bond between the Dominant Mage and Kira.

Ahsch just hoped that he didn't need to become a god-level being before he was able to sever the bond. If that was the case, there was a good chance that Kira would be dead of natural causes by the time he was powerful enough to do it. Though, when he'd shared that fear with his girls, Ariin had simply smirked and suggested he try and rush making a cult dedicated to himself. An idea that simultaneously excited and concerned the boy.

After breakfast, and with another day of nothing planned - guides usually worked one expedition a week, though Ahsch often took on extra work to try and push his growth - the three headed back into the woods to practice. Once again, Ariin worked on her magical capabilities, Mahat practiced her actual skills, and Ahsch worked on understanding his new spells.

He again decided to swap between the more complicated process of turning his familiar's abilities into proper spells and the much easier process of incorporating his twin's spell and Boon into his repertoire, while still working his way up the chain of difficulty. So he started with Mahat's fighting 'style.'

On the one hand, a fighting style wasn't a magical ability, but a combination of memory and conditioning of the body. On the other hand, familiars were magical creatures at their core. Suffice to say, merging the two into a functioning spell was complicated. Ahsch knew going into the project that it would be a 'passive buff' type spell, something he would cast on himself and that would guide his physical combat style from there out. But at the same time, the spell wouldn't truly be able to override his mental faculties and **** him into the appropriate motions - he couldn't mind-control himself to be a master fighter.

It took over an hour and a half for him to figure out that animals - even intelligent familiars in animal form - didn't have proper techniques like martial arts. They relied on instinct. And so this spell wouldn't affect any higher mental processes - something he almost slapped himself for thinking in the first place, he knew that if you were _thinking _about what to do next in a fight, you were probably about to lose, it should be automatic, conditioned. He had to get the spell's benefit of a fighting 'style' to integrate into his instincts, bypassing any proper knowledge of what he would do with it and just... let it work. Another half-hour went by before he actually got it to work.

That prompted Mahat to come over and spar with him, which hardly surprised the hrafthi boy. While things went better than he feared - he didn't instinctively try to grow spines physically, but automatically cast the spells to grow and harden them when appropriate - his instincts were out-of-tune with his body, both from a conditioning standpoint and a structural one. Mahat's fighting style belonged to a quadrupedal greater spined fox, and while she had adapted it to humanoid form over time, the base spell Ahsch now had wasn't so up-to-date. Where he was most stable in a wide stance on his feet, the instincts of the spell insisted he get on all fours. Where he was only capable of jumping a few feet at a time, the spell expected him to leap through the air like an animal.

Perhaps over time it would adapt to me - they are my instincts its affecting, after all, the Dominant Mage thought. But for now, it's probably not worth the hassle.

Too bad, Mahat pouted as she made her way back into the woods. I was looking forward to sparring with you more, Master. The sultry purr of her mind, and the lust that was communicated over their bond, suggested a different sort of physical exertion would be included with such sparring.

Between the last two of Ariin's abilities, Ahsch decided to start with the proper spell - while both were unique to her, Edge of Glory being a Boon would likely make it more difficult to incorporate into his own capabilities. He was able to figure it out in a bout forty-five minutes, and realized a few other things about the spell while he did. Mainly, he couldn't use the stat increases without some kind of 'cost' beyond mere Mana expenditure - the boosts were intrinsically tied to the sexual nature of the spell. Perhaps if he ever became an archmage or ascended to true godhood, he'd be able to override it, but by that point there was a good chance he'd have discovered something more effective than Arsenal of Ecstasy. Though there was still that feeling that his Innate Magics were more suited to him than the spells he'd learned from books, teachers, and practice...

Regardless, his success with the spell led him back to Mahat's final ability, shapeshifting. The one he was most concerned about. While the rest of the familiar's abilities were either magical in nature - such as growing and hardening spines - or affected something that Ahsch himself also had - his senses and instincts - the way that her shapeshifting capabilities functioned was particularly alien to the hrafthi's own capabilities. As a being composed of, powered, and held together by magic - by mana - a familiar's shapeshifting was a restructuring of their underlying 'mana-soul' to achieve the desired shape. Ahsch, while an outsider that could be born and was largely magical in nature, was different on a fundamental level. His own soul wasn't the same as a familiar's - his form was, at its core, immutable. Permanent. A familiar's was amorphous. Changeable.

So it was hardly surprising when three hours passed with no success. The spell started by changing that fundamental essence of a familiar, something Ahsch simply lacked. He'd tried bypassing that, seeing if he could apply the transformation to his flesh directly, but the mana cost has become just shy of infinite - whatever method a familiar's shapeshifting used to change the shape of mana, it simply wasn't effective on physical matter.

The hrafthi started to reach out to Mahat for her help, but his familiar sent back regret. Sorry, Master, but your spellcasting is alien to me, and I don't know how to fix the issue.

Disappointed, but not very surprised, Ahsch sighed, put aside the troublesome ability, and went on to the final one. Edge of Glory was refreshingly straightforward compared to the shapeshifting, and the conversion from a Boon to a spell was something he'd already figured out with Sexual Amplification and Mystic Domain. An hour later, he had a new spell, and no idea where to go with shapeshifting.

"You'll figure it out eventually," Ariin reassured her brother as they took a break to eat lunch. "I don't think Sexual Learning would give you a spell if it didn't think you'd be able to make use of it."

"Yeah, but maybe it somehow knows all the various potential spells I could get, knows there's one that turns me into a mana-based creature like a familiar, and _that's_ how it'll work." The Dominant Mage shook his head. "Or maybe it's just a matter of power. Of potential. Office Lady had said I could have exponential growth, and if that's the case, not-quite-infinite is still possible, so brute-forcing the issue and just dumping that much mana could eventually work."

"Or there's just another angle you haven't thought of," his sister pointed out. "You might be a prodigy, but you're only 18. Cut yourself some slack."