She’d traveled in the guise that she’d inhabited since leaving Scalvoris. With anima’s female human form and blending from Woe to make her distinct enough from Anima herself, she’d not yet stepped outside of this body with her newfound magic. In truth, she dreaded the painful transformation, and the feeling of being lost that came in the middle of transformations, between herself and her destination, where the ecstasy of simply being and not any particular person or thing… it’s allure couldn’t be denied, and explained why so many becoming initiations failed.
Although hers had been anything but typical, in the absence of a emean parasite infecting the host. This magic was all her own, so she was assured by the one who’d triggered the change.
Woe walked the way through Korlasir under a new assumed name for this blended form. She was Winfreda for now, a priestess of Moseke if anyone asked. Nobody scorned her for being a priestess of life and nature in the Empire, as she would expect they’d do in Yaralon. They mainly just thought it a curiosity, and had questions for her when she was of a mind to share. It was a good guise to have, as she arrived at the border of Korlasir and the Sacred Forest. Surely one touched by Sevrath would be welcome there. And no doubt she’d have her share of plants to question as she went along, collecting information as she walked the land.
She stuck to the roads for the most part, following them down toward the Yaralon border generally. But eventually, coming to a large establishment. She blinked when she saw it, to ensure she was not seeing things. It was night time and festive torches and braziers were lit all around the smallish castle (by Imperial Standards). People were reveling in demonstrations of physical ability, martial ability.
There were soldiers, but none of them were engaged in any serious fighting, she could tell. These were mainly for demonstration and entertainment purposes, it was clearly obvious.
Curious, and wondering if she should join in, since part of the point of this trip was to expand the reach of her circle of informants, she insinuated her way into the crowd, using shadow cloak to go unnoticed for a time, until she sought someone out.
The first person she asked, was a soldier. “What is this, some sort of holiday?”
He turned his head to regard her with an odd quirk of the brow, “Not from the Empire! It’s the Founding. Surely it’s known the world over! The Birthtrial of the Empire!”
She opened her mouth as if to say, ‘ah’.
She wanted to get involved, feeling a strange compulsion to join up. Winfreda summoned a shadow whip, more like a rope dart actually. Once she did this, she found her way toward an open area, and began dancing with the flexible weapon. With a flourish, she used shadow illusion to give the shadow weapon a flaming aspect, flashy and ostentatious for the people all around as she danced, coiling it around her body and then whipping it out in one direction then the other. It began forming a circle around her as she wheeled it around, alternatively wrapping and whipping it into the area all around.
People began gathering around, soldiers, patients of the Medical Academy, doctors, nurses, and other caregivers who called the facility home. They all began watching and gasping as she dramatically flourished with a dance, and then a flare with the rope dart.
Her concentration was fixed on the business end of the rope dart, careful not to hit anyone or herself, as it flew out and above, relinquishing it and then gathering it up again deftly to circle around herself as she did a sort of solo waltz around the encampment in front of the Medical Facility.
