Private Eastern Brisshal Celestine Officially Does Azykia A Claim As Her Imouto: The Super Official And Very Much Legally Binding Tale Of New Sisters!

[Celestine]

Celestine and Azykia had been traveling for several minutes now in relative silence, as she carefully tried to memorize every last piece of the mastery UI for her precious new sister friend. It was hard enough to create such a detailed-- and, more importantly, correctly positioned --illusion already, but navigating the UI at the same time would be even harder.

It also didn't help that she had to remember what it started as, not what it looked like for her specifically. After all, she'd already filled all 5 slots, and had unlocked tons of special features that weren't exactly available the first time you selected them.

...She hardly even remembered selecting them; it'd been 4 years...

"I am almost the ready, I am thinking," she assured her new sister friend. She wasn't ready. Not at all. But she couldn't leave her waiting forever, or they'd end up parting ways and someone else would have to show her new sister friend how they worked!

Unacceptable!

She was going to plant her flag on this fantasy if it killed her! Literally! (But maybe not IRL death literally, that was a bit too far).

"What did you a decide to do Terrasphere a play, anyway?" Celestine asked as they continued travelling down the gravel path. Maybe that'd buy her a few more minutes. Also bonding! Bonding was important for sisters friends.

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

"What did me a decide to-" She forced a few coughs, as if trying to unwrite those words from existence. "I don't- You won't really like my answer to that..." She continued to walk along with Celestine, though her gaze was mostly on the surreal imagery of the ground as she walked along making sure not to trip and embarrass herself to death more than she already had.

"Hm. Actually... I guess it isn't so bad in summary." She took a deep breath before inhaling again just enough to start speaking. "I know it won't be easy to understand, though. You see, I-... My life outside of this game is perfect. I've never had to worry or struggle for anything in my life. Now that I'm an adult, I have no ambitions, no reason to better myself, and no ability to endure the associated depression." Since she was admitting this much, she decided to allow herself to show through all the way, speaking in a dull, monotonous voice with clear pronunciation. Even her higher pitched voice in this world didn't really subtract much from how out of character it really was.

"So before I could turn to something uncouth like drug abuse, I received an advertisement for Terrasphere and decided it was... a good first step."

@Celestine

 

[Celestine]

Celestine kept pouring through the menu. Admittedly, it might've been a mistake to ask such a deep question, because now she was caught in-between giving a good answer to her friend sister opening up to her, and actually memorizing the menu.

The dream won; every time!

"Nope, that is of easy to do an understand," she shrugged, struggling hard not to die inside as the dull tone spoke, "Now that I'm an adult." Boo. Then again, what had she expected!? She wasn't a star mage IRL either. IRL didn't count in fantasy land! But as long as they were speaking frankly, Cel would continue to explain...

"A lot of people do a come here for the challenges and the struggles. You do not be logging into an illegal unless you are already a risky person. And... honestly... I have a pretty comfy life outside, too." She winked, before realizing that was kinda useless, and instead summoned a magic eye icon to wink for her. Wait, would a sudden eye in her face scare Azzy? Better let her know that was her. "Wink~!"

Enough dumb IRL stuff! She wanted her friend sister back!

"Anyway, let us be taking it the slow. Do your menu an open, and then..." she only showed the button she wanted Azzy to press: the mastery screen! And then, she began to create several colorful icons in front of Azzy's face, one by one, referencing her own menu.

"Okay, so... you need to be doing 3 of these a choose... wait, there should be the confirm button here, I think... I guess do them a select and I will do the screens of explanation the copies for you."


@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

She was at least glad to not have Celestine tell her that she was spoiled and misguided for wanting to throw away a life most would consider dream-like, but didn't say much else on it. It seemed as though the mood had shifted thusly anyways.

Azykia did as instructed and carefully felt around for the buttons, hitting them with the natural gaming reflexes of a total boomer that had at least been using a smart phone for a few years. Not the slowest, but not exactly a multi-fingered typist either. As she clicked onto the first one on the page, Arcanamancy, her eyes widened as Celeste (presumably) did the screen of explanation a copy for her. "Oh, jeez. I didn't expect there to be a whole lot to this game. What does 'Save: Will' mean? And... Expertise?" Even though she asked questions, she was still scanning about with her eyes.

@Celestine

 

[Celestine]

Celestine watched as Azzy’s hand slowly traveled the menu. She might’ve had to fight yet another delighted squee if not for the fact that this whole process required SO MUCH FOCUS! If anything though, her sluggish menuing gave Celestine time to mess with her own menus and copy things over. Maybe she was going slow on purpose to help?

"Well, each of the masteries does you the help of certain tasks, and that is the expertise. All mine do a boost of presence, so I can be the very flashy when I am needing to~" In hindsight, maybe that had something to do with Azzy shielding her eyes when they’d first met. Presence magic being blinding…… huh.

"On the other hand, there is the save, which helps… uhm… do you the saves." She felt like that one was kinda obvious, especially when one saw Reflex or Fortitude. Will was probably the least obvious, so Arcana was maybe an unfortunate first choice. "So if something tries to… uhm… maybe do you a mind attack or something, the Arcanamancy would give you a help. I say just do the picking of the ones you are liking of the themes, though. It does you more of the fun that way!"

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

As she listened to the much more experienced player talk about this like it were taught to all peoples of the world alongside walking and eating as a child, her lips twisted in a painful mixture of focus and concern. "A... mind attack?" She tried to imagine what in the world a mind attack could be, and decided that outside of some pretty terrible movies she had seen, a Will Save might help prevent migraines and gave a nod to show not so much that she understood, but that she was ready to continue anyways.

She read more of Arcanamancy, then actually started coming up with ideas. "Sooo, you said I have magic sight, right? And this thing, Arithma-... Arc...ana...mancy? Makes things that are made of magic." She tilted her head up as she actually began to visualize what she was thinking before blurting out her half-baked ideas to the illusionist supreme. "Doesn't that mean I could make objects that I'd be able to see? That sounds pretty useful..."

She nibbled at her lip as she tilted her head to the left, showing some inner indecision. "Erm... What do you think?"

@Celestine

 

[Celestine]

"Arithma-... Arc...ana...mancy?"

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee~!"
Some squees just couldn’t be stopped.

The similarity to a kid learning to read was just too powerful.

Was Arcanamancy really that hard to say? She never had trouble with it, but then again, saying weird things was her forte. Also, it wasn’t like Azzy was that young! Obviously, she should know quite well how to read at that age. And obviously, she wasn’t a kid at all! She probably just had trouble with the weird name of the mastery.

"Oh right! Uhm... ahem," Celestine opened the eyes that she’d previously shut tight for maximum squee. "That is actually sounding the plausible! If you do it a good enough training, maybe you could be making a magic dust to do things the seeing! Be making much of the dust, then do it a blow on things so it does the stick, and you can be seeing them!"

That sounded like a neat way to navigate, actually. She kinda wanted to try it herself… maybe she could figure out a way to fake it with illusions later. On to her Terrasphere bucket list it went.


@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

Still too caught up in the morass of the mastery system, she had yet to take any sort of note of Celestine's apparent weakness about her and decided after a few more seconds of thoughtful consideration to lock in her choice of Arcanamancy. Being able to see using magic dust was undeniably priority number one in terms of what to do with any of these masteries, she could already tell that much.

As she continued through the list, she started to think of this less in terms of some sort of super power list and more like she was being offered tools to get by in this new life. If she would one day be able to see, then that which had her the most frantic at the moment would be dismissed one day. So what else did she have to worry about? After a long silence and a curled knuckle against her lips on that face of deep, glaring concentration, she finally spoke again.

"Let's say I... fell down a flight of stairs, or something. Is there something that could help me... not be in horrible agony?" She expressed her next greatest fear in this life as platonically as she could, which is to say not nearly as much as she hoped.

@Celestine

 

[Celestine]

Celestine’s neck began to tire from frantically turning between her illusion of Azzy’s menu and her own menu. Thankfully, it seemed to be working, and she was glad to be able to help her friend sister.

"Oh wait, did you do it the choose!? Waitwaitwait!"

Mastery Selected

You have done Arcanamany the select!
Yay~!

Celestine was like 99% sure that wasn’t at all what the window actually looked like (even ignoring her weird language patterns), but she also had no way of checking for herself. It wasn’t really that important anyway, though, so she’d just have fun making something up.

Back to the list. Celestine began to breathe heavy as they continued, but she reassured herself that she could manage just two more. Suddenly, a concerning question was asked.

"I will not let you be having a harm!" Celestine wanted to say, but her mouth froze in open position, the words caught in her throat. That wasn’t super realistic, was it? Would their play schedules match up? And what about the game itself? Celestine loved all those harder dungeons, but there was no way she was dragging her blind lil’ sis into such dangerous places with her!

"Well… any of the masteries of blue would— oh. Uhm…" she created a little arrow illusion toward the support category, "…these ones can do yourself the healings."

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

Okay, that pop-up did get a quickly smothered giggle out of her. How whimsical this can be...

She let her eyes be ever so forcefully redirected by the illusionist to the circles having blueness. The support category, that was. She carefully poked at a couple of them, not sure at all what to think about any of them.

For starters there was alchemy. She could readily suppose that this would allow her to study drug formulae in order to eventually be able to patch herself up first-aid style. It wasn't very appetizing.

Taking a closer look at Animancy left the young one with a concerned furrow of the brow. "Wwww...wait... This game has undead? Like, z-zombies?" Her hand started trembling as she, perhaps quicker than the illusionist in command of the visuals would prefer, hit the back button several times (though she failed many times in between due to her sudden unsteadiness).

She shivered a bit and continued glancing about her other options as she took the time to calm back down. Granted this wasn't the same kind of panic Azykia had displayed earlier which could almost be described as an outward explosion of frustration and confusion. Instead it was more like the issue came from deep within and she was doing her best to keep it there. This led to an admittedly long silence where the girl stared at a menu she could barely think about anymore.

And after a long silence, she muttered something along the lines of "can I pick later?"

@Celestine

 

[Celestine]

Celestine drank in the giggle like refreshing cold water. How delightful. That was the whole reason she spoke this way in the first place: it was silly fun! Sometimes she could get a chuckle! Mission does the success!

Azzy's reaction to the "zombie" mastery was pretty peculiar, though. Cel was overwhelmed for a short moment as Azzy's crazy button pressing frantically swapped the menus around. "Slow! Slow! Do the slowing!"

Did she think that zombies were just casually strolling around like some sort of post-apocalyptic game? "W-well... yes, Terrasphere has itself the zombies, but they are not being the common sight. They usually do a wander around the dungeons and things. If you are staying out of those places, you should be the okay."

Though technically, someone with Animancy could probably make them just about anywhere. She'd leave that part out for now. They tended to be friendly in those cases, so no need to worry her unnecessarily.

"Sure, you can do a pick later. Maybe be practicing with the one first and do another a pick when you are the used to it."

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

"Dungeons and... things..." She had to stop and think for a minute about what exactly that meant. A dungeon was usually a buried place off the beaten path, not something you'd find in a village. Given they were going to a place called Honeyhome, she felt at least somewhat confident it wasn't just a very pretty name for a hole full of walking corpses. As for the 'and things' part, she probably meant things similar to a dungeon. Far out of the way, off the beaten path, and in every sense of the word, not here right now.

After taking in the newly dispensed comfort her mentor had provided, she took a deep breath. She was no longer really shaking, but she still seemed plenty worried as she gripped her left wrist with her right hand. "R-Right, right. I can try it out first. Thank you."

She bent and uncurled her fingers a couple times. "Sorry. I... Hah, I have a phobia of things like that." She forced a laugh. "It's pretty pathetic, right? It's like being scared of a Halloween witch." She reached up with her right hand and rubbed each of her eyes one at a time with the back of her wrist. Oh no, she almost cried in front of this nearly-a-stranger.

"Anyways, yeah! Why don't we go try out this Arith-ma- Er, Ar-can-a-mancy."

@Celestine

 

[Celestine]

Glancing Azzy over, Celestine felt that warm, comforting "big sister" sensation inside again. Sure, for a while it was clear this was an adult, but the more she traveled with this girl, the more she honestly felt like this was an actual middle-schooler beside her. The tears, the shaking; plus the obviously young appearance and sweet-sounding voice. If it was an illusion, it was more convincing than all of hers put together.

...maybe it was just because she was sheltered? That'd make sense. Sheltered people tended to be afraid of basically everything. Note to self: responsible big sisters should be clingy... but not too clingy.

"I do the fears of the darks, myself," Celestine admitted. "That is the niceness of having the illusions: you never do the seeing of a darkness... unless you are in the control of it." The fact that Azzy mostly saw darkness just dawned on her now. Yeesh, good thing she didn't pick Azzy's racial trait. Cel would've logged off and never come back...

"Yes! Well. If you are a new, you should have the auto-assist on because of the defaults. So... hm... let me do Arcana's guide a check..."

Once again, she copied the guide window over so Azzy could see.

"The simplest of the skills is to do a cube a create. With the auto-assist, you do that first part a speak, and then your mouth will do the spell the finishing for you. You can do the harder skills a peek too, if you like what you can be doing later!"

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

It was a profound thing to hear from this admittedly bubbly girl. You never do the seeing of a darkness, unless you are in the control of it.

Maybe she should go into illusion magic as well. If the view of the wilderness she had been graciously given by Celestine earlier was anything to go off of, it certainly would give her more control of the bleak, dark chamber she felt trapped inside of right now no matter how much she walked in any direction. As yet another window came up, she began to fear just how much reading she should have done before signing her soul away to the randomize button.

"Mh. It says here that it also makes me perform hand gestures, but that's-" She took a deep breath, tilting her head to the left in thought. "It makes me think of being possessed, or like I'd be cheating instead of learning." She looked in the general direction of the tutorial illusionist. "Do you think I should do it anyways?"

@Celestine

 

[Celestine]

"It is not the cheating," Celestine shook her head. "Everyone has to do themself a learn somehow, and it is the much easier if you are are having the game do you a move instead." It certainly gave the term muscle memory a whole different meaning when the muscles weren’t even moving by your own mind’s will.

She continued with a smile, "You should not be having it of active forever though. If you do yourself a learn of the motions and the words, you can then be doing an improvisation! There are the many of the things you can be doing with the improvises that you cannot be doing with the auto cast. But until you do the basics a learn, you should probably let it do you the guiding."

Cel nodded a few times to reassure Azzy, which was, of course, kinda useless. "Do it a try!"

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

After looking back and forth between the current explanation window and the vague direction of Celestine a few times, her eyes fell on the 'cube' explanation for about seven seconds. After that, Azykia took a deep breath and held out one hand with her finger and thumb in an 'L' straight out. She did her best to line her eyes with the hand that she couldn't see, but from what Celestine said, the most important part was saying whatever wharrgarbl fantasy language the game had aloud, so she didn't spend too much time hanging herself up on the details.

She said the beginning of the incantation just well enough, and as the auto-assist forced her shoulders and arms to make the proper gestures, her youthful voice fell into the most natural it had ever sounded up until now, suggesting that the video game was better at using Azykia's in-game voice than she herself was. Lo and behold, several feet in front of her, a translucent, bright blue cube of magic formed in midair just in front of both of them. Even as it fell to rest upon the ground a few seconds later, Azzy stared at it in total wonder. She leaned this way and that to get a better look at it, and even took a couple steps around it to the left. She paused and looked a few too many degrees off to be 'at' Celestine towards her for just a moment before looking back down at the cube that was about 2/5ths her height.

"Is it safe to touch it?"

@Celestine

 

[Celestine]

Celestine watched Azzy as she slowly followed the instructions. While Celestine had a bunch of magic, Arcanamancy was actually kinda new, and she wasn’t super familiar with how it worked, so it would be a learning experience for the both of them.

The voice noticeably shifted as the game made the adult sound more like the girl she was made to be, and Celestine secretly hoped this would rub off on her as she used the auto-speech. Azzy’s character was really cute and sweet, while the person behind her felt a little more jaded with age, or perhaps professionalism. That said, the characters had a tendency to rub off on people… one could hope.

"Hm…" Cel wandered over to the cube. "There is the easy way to do the finding out…"

Poke.

"It is the safe to do it the touchings!" She already kinda knew that, but some Arcanamancers she’d seen did like to combine their craft with things like Pyromancy that made them… well… less safe to touch. After you saw one of these constructs explode, it tended to leave lingering doubts in the mind.

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

With her fears dismissed, her curiosity was quickly sated as she stepped closer, knelt down, then poked the cube with her right index finger a couple times. She began to feel the top of it with her whole hand moments after, seeming mesmerized for a long time as she did so.

In truth, she was actually just taking the time to consider everything she had learned up to this point. The further back she recalled her time since Celestine approached her, she finally remembered something that she found peculiar and felt enough of a need to ask. Once she found the proper angle of approach, she spoke up.

"So, earlier on, when I said I thought something was wrong with me..." She tried to pick up the cube, pleased to find that it was light enough to lift as she rose all the way back to a more comfortable standing position with the box sandwiched between each of her hands in front of her. "You spoke normally for a second, then corrected yourself. Doesn't that mean the way you've been talking is... an act?" She didn't dare call someone so helpful a 'liar' even if that had been her intention. She simply sincerely didn't understand why someone would go through the trouble to speak and write in such an abnormal and flashy way. It seemed like a lot of trouble and effort to Azykia.

@Celestine

 

[Celestine]

Cel watched patiently as Azzy played with her magic cube, thankful for the break from rigorous menu weaving it offered her. "Hm?" She hadn't expected this next question, though. It came... almost out of nowhere. Pausing a brief moment to try and decipher what was going on in Azzy's head, Celestine simply shrugged and went on to answer.

"Celestine does herself the talking this way, and her player does herself the talking of a different way. Sometimes, they do themselves a confusion." The most long-winded way possible to basically just say 'yes.' That said, she felt the need to clarify...

"In the Terrasphere, people often like to be living themselves a different person. It is the big part of the fantasy! Although..." she grew serious for a moment. "It can get very real, sometimes. You'll worry about people dying... you might lose yourself to your character..."

Celestine took a deep breath.

"You know, I like you, and I would love it if you kept playing with me, but... I feel like I should warn you..." just say it, Maya, "...people really shouldn't be playing Terrasphere unless they have a very strong grasp on reality. I learned to balance what's real and what's imaginary, but I nearly got killed doing it..."


@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

Her eyes widened, her brow furrowed, and her gaze fell to the natural angle of curiosity: a bit down and slightly to her right, as she processed Celestine's warning. Despite the time taken to do so, she didn't really seem all too phased by it for some reason. "In other words, this game's realism is enough to cause some people to... get lost in it, for lack of a better phrase." She let out a light chuckle, showing very clearly she didn't truly grasp what the longtime player was trying to warn her about. After all, who would hear about dying in a video game and immediately consider it the same as dying in the real world?

"As if I could forget the difference between being able to see or not." She cleared her throat softly, smiling a bit as her head lifted to face Celestine a little more dead on as a show of courtesy. "Truthfully, I find 'reality' difficult to... want to maintain a grasp on, but I'm not going to forget to take care of myself outside of the game, so don't worry."

@Celestine