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Through the haze that clouded her mind, a presence seemed to appear. Like someone was kneeling at her side. She thought, for a moment, she felt a hand resting across her brow… followed by a sharp shaking at her shoulder, and an equally sharp voice—
“Get up.”
With a groan and a swimming head, Nyvette came to. She was lying flat on the ground, and by the dim lighting filtering through the room it was well into the evening… which meant she’d been unconscious for several bells at least. She felt sick to her stomach. The hard, cold floorboards at her back hadn’t helped any, either. As for the shake she’d thought she’d felt, that had brought her round—
Well, that would be impossible. Nyvette was alone, after all. Mostly. The voice, on the other hand…
“Once again, I reiterate that I expected better from you.”
“Shut up,” Nyvette said blearily, sitting up and wincing as her back creaked. “What happened?”
“I feel I shouldn’t have to explain this to you at this point, but since you continue to surprise me at every turn— you were attempting a very simple spell of the black. A basic test that even an apprentice should be able to handle, but instead of drawing upon the aether without, you stubbornly drew from within and as such depleted your internal reserves beyond what they could handle.”
“Oh,” she said. Well, her memory was fuzzy, but she remembered that much. Yes, there was the rickety table she’d been standing at, and was now lying across from. Nyvette decided to try standing and regretted this almost immediately as her stomach lurched. Grabbing the table, trying very hard not to lose the remains of the morning’s meager breakfast, there was a cold tingle at the back of her neck and an answering glow from the black stone hanging about it.
“That would be aether sickness you currently feel,” the voice continued; disembodied, echoing about her mind, and extremely annoyed as it did so. “Though in this case not abundance, but void, upsetting your body’s balance on the other end of the spectrum. Anymore and you draw from your own vital life force, which you have just done perilously so— how many more times must I explain the concept of this to you? I’m sick of fair beating you about the head—”
“And I just feel sick. If you keep lecturing me I’m going to vomit,” Nyvette cut in, and the voice went mercifully quiet as she took deep, steadying breaths, to calm the worst of the nausea. Through the comfort of knowing her innermost thoughts were at least her own, the halfling once again rued ever having encountered the accursed crystal about her neck— and the equally accursed spirit that came with it. Even now, the ancient Machi ghost was projecting waves of irritability at her as he held his tongue. It took several moments for the worst of the sickness to pass, for now; her legs still felt like jelly, but the moment Nyvette managed to hold a mostly straight posture, the spirit launched into his tirade again without stopping for breath. Encouraged by not even needing to in the first place, even.
“Do you feel passingly well again, or must you coddle yourself for much longer?”
“I think,” she said with a flare of irritability of her own, “That I’m done trying, and I’d like to sleep. I don’t have any gil left for another night, so I might as well get my money’s worth out of the mattress, and not the floor.”
“You’ve made but one attempt!” He protested, as she wobbled over to said mattress.
“And that attempt just tried to kill me, you arse,” Nybette only croaked back. If a voice could throw up its hands in disgust, her ghost was surely doing just that right now.
“You would not have felt a thing at all if you’d actually listen to my instructions for once, you foolish, stubborn girl. In failing to follow the simplest of concepts, you turned the easiest of spells— not even a spell, an exercise! Into a waste of aether and energy, risking your entire person.”
“What instructions? All you tell me to do is ‘draw from without, not within’ and ‘just focus and put my mind to it;’ if it’s supposed to be so simple, I don’t think I’d feel like this, now would I?” Her head was pounding. A glass of water would do her some good, but she was so tired now she simply wanted to collapse back and sleep if not for the horrible, nagging irritation in her ear.
“And I repeat— channeling the magics correctly, you would not have felt this way.” More anger, more heavy frustration. “It’s not beyond your means; for a fact I know it is not so. Your reserves are far beyond the average thaumaturge, but if you intend to be a black mage of any repute—”
“I don’t want to be a black mage, Cianan!” Again, she cut him off— and her frustration came spilling out in a rush of words amidst her aching head. “I. Don’t. Want. This. I don’t want to be learning this. I want to go back to how I was, I don’t want to listen to you, I don’t want to be afraid to cast even a single spell anymore— I don’t! I don’t want to.”
Throb. Oh, her head. She gripped it between her hands, now regretting the outburst on top of it all. Her ghost had gone stonily silent again, before responding in a short, clipped tone—
“You must.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then you will be consumed from the inside out.”
“If I just don’t use thaumaturgy—”
“It will make no difference. No matter how onerous the task may seem, the floodgates are unleashed and you must learn to harness the black within you. You cannot return to the caster you once were.”
She wanted to tear her hair out.
“I wish I’d never found your stupid stone,” she whispered.
“Yes, well. Your fate was long sealed into your bloodline; but now! Consider the boon you have been granted. Now, you have the chance to control your own fate, descendent of mine. If I were only there to instruct you properly—”
“If you were here then it would be because your plan worked and you’d been possessing me— and I wouldn’t even exist as myself anymore,” Nyvette snarled, and then tore the stone from her neck and hurled it off the bed. The glow within it winked out as it clattered out of sight. She was still clothed, but the threadbare blankets across the ramshackle inn bed would hardly keep out all of the Ishgardian chill, and so Nyvette chose to curl up clothes and all, trying hard not to cry as darkness shrouded the room, and all was still.
“…You are emotionally compromised right now.” The ghost was quieter. “Strong emotions can cause even the greatest of mages to make mistakes. I will return to this subject on the morn, when you are in a better state of mind.”
Like a door closing between them, he was gone, for now. Not truly. Not ever since she’d woken him from within the soul crystal, currently lying on the floorboards at the foot of the bed. But at least she could pretend for now, as she shut her eyes tight and did her best to settle into an uneasy sleep.