...Right.  If he doesn't do something at least as smart as this, his hat is forfeit.

"There are times for consideration, and there are times for action. Please be mindful that Galasa's call to righteousness stirs brightly in every heart. It is ideals, love, hope, and glory, that stir folk to heroism- And for all that battle is glorious and ruinous both, if I am forced to find vagabonds and adventurers to fulfill this task while Shen Farok stands idle, what would they think? I have heard tell of your wise stewardship and the strong backing of the Shen family, but that is merit for times of peace. A frontier lord should also have merit in war, which you have all but completed already in raising such a fine force- All that is needed is for the blade to be unsheathed."

"...Oh, very well. You make a fine point, priestess. There are times to act. It is good to be cautious and thoughtful before sending men and women to fight and die, and it is expensive to sustain them outside of a town in terms of supply and risk. Other threats might find the wealth and prosperity of the town unguarded... But if a kitsune and a priestess, messengers of the gods, say it is necessary, who am I to decline? I will not be joining them myself, of course. You mentioned Captain Yhal- Good man, excellent soldier, mediocre officer. And we haven't had much trouble with crime and rowdy adventurers lately... Very well, yes, I plan to order Yhal to take forty soldiers of his choice to take a watch on that place. I would ask you to guide and support them. A proper assault will have to wait for my response from the Earthroot Sect. Magic is a gift from the gods and the blessings of a priestess and might of an earth-sorcerer or two used to fighting will truly solve this problem."

Megi smiles (only looking a little strained and diplomatic; This is good if not as good as it could be) and nods happily.

She yips agreeably.

...Still gonna do something to his hat if she has the opportunity, though.  (But not in the middle of negotiations.  That would just be uncouth.)

The rest of the meeting is petty stuff- When will they leave, him trying to get her to promise to help with the shrine and Megi demurring. Repeatedly. She makes some sort of veiled insult or reprimand that Alicia doesn't get- A reference to something, probably. This kicks off a small rant from him about how wizardry is the noblest art as it depends only on talent, not circumstance.

...Can she manifest the power to speak in human tongues out of sheer indignance at this man's hypocrisy?  No?  Shame.

"Education opportunities are themselves circumstances, you lead-tongued lackwit."

(But because she cannot speak to him, she does not bother speaking very loud.)

...Megi takes this as a cue to bait him into 'displaying such talent', given he bears the flat-topped hat of a mid-level wizard from... Which academy, precisely?

Shen Farok scoffs. "I was always far more on the theoretical and academic side of studies than the practical one- It would take quite some time to arrange the tools of such work. And would you even understand it, immersed in the lore of the Light Gods instead?"

She fixes him with her best look of indignant bafflement and yips.  "Perhaps you can tell him that I saw someone who lives in the village of Kua cast a spell with sticks and dirt."

"It was my understanding that small spells can be performed with very limited tools, if one has the skill? Drawings in the dirt or freehand in the air, in extremis."

"For the more practical-minded, perhaps. But as I said, I was involved in theory work. Specifically in exploring permutations of the Hasook Structure- The heart of certain kinds of wards. It's not some- Some sort of parlor trick, throwing sparks and smoke to please the masses!"

"...Ooh, that sounds like geometry.  Not that I know how that interacts with magic yet.  Unless I do, because I have my guesses, but even then I still wouldn't know the specific details..."

"...If we're trying to bait him into apoplexy, we could always ask him what he discovered in permuting it.  You would, after all, presumably have some interest in wards, professionally speaking."

"I'm getting a bit tired of this whole meeting, if you're not going to add any excitement let's be on our way," Megi admits, speaking in more fox noises this time.

Then she continues back in regular Atsosi, "A shame, my young friend here would have loved such a demonstration. The first proper wizard she's seen is you, after all!"

"...I repeat again that it is decidedly not flashy. If you truly insist I could prepare something in an hour or two, if you wish to visit again later today. I have been wanting to try a new flight formula that has been spreading, invented by some southerner. But it will take a while to lay out." (--For some reason Megi is very amused by this. She chokes down a splorfle and her hands tighten on Alicia's fur a bit as she shifts in her chair.)

"I think we'd both be fascinated! And truly, who doesn't want a bit of a flight of fancy once in a while? Maybe it can be useful for scouting. Well, at any rate, I think we have discussed everything important already? I can wait for Captain Yhal at the shrine."

"If I'm gonna steal his hat because he's a crappy wizard, I want him to know he deserves it, and that I know that he knows he deserves it," she fox-murmurs.  "Also he hasn't actually cut orders for the cleansing yet.  Better we have that done before pissing him off, no?  So yes, let's go."

Off they go then. With one more bow along the way.

"If my suspicion is correct, I know what spell he's going to try drawing out. It's... Unforgiving of mistakes. Like the difference between a kitchen cleaver and a carpenter's finishing knife. I sense a miscast in our future, which would be supremely embarrassing for him."

"Oh, goodness.  His hat is forfeit.  If he doesn't explode it all by himself!  Random question - is the author one of our sisters?  I don't know why, but that was the first thought that came to mind as why you'd know all that.  Well, no, I do know why, but I don't know why, you know?  ...That makes absolutely no sense, don't mind me."

"Oh, she absolutely is. 'Sinnah's Fly', a variation of Fly that, in her words, cuts out all the stupid parts and if you screw it up that's a skill issue. I don't follow wizard spell design, really, but it has about fifty percent fewer runes than the Fly spell she showed me for comparison and apparently requires much tighter timing and skill to successfully cast."

She giggles, as best she can.  "She sounds like my kind of people.  Tools should do one thing, well.  Don't get me started about enterprise software design.  Though I do think it's worthwhile to validate inputs, I suppose.  ...Oh damn, I wonder if you could get magic to compute.  I've never done anything low-level enough to have more than the faintest idea of how to begin from signals, though, and that was all games, but then again it's not like magic is silicon...  Might have different primitives.  Well, I mean, it definitely does, because my guess about how the runes do the thing is 'interference patterns from the refraction of magic through the medium', but either way the runes surely mean things - but I mean, in terms of what happens after that and whether it can be stateful in a way that lets it hold and process information.  ...Gonna have to think about that one.  Once I know more.  Doubt I can actually do - practical implementation stuff, I'm not remotely - some genius who could devise a fully functional computing machine's blueprint before several of the prerequisite technologies for its implementation in a reasonable fashion existed - but I feel like I might have interesting ideas to throw at the people who actually know the minutiae.  ...By the time I learned any of this stuff there were like half a dozen layers of abstraction between me and the actual physics, and, well.  Wizardry seems like it has approximately one, if not none."

Megi listens to the ramble with one ear and retreats to the shrine for more tea and brushing Alicia's tail and fur, if she'll have it. After about twenty minutes, a big and strong dude with chainmail armor, a steel helmet, greaves and armguards, and a polearm type weapon shows up. Captain Yhal. He leaves the weapon and helmet on a rack by the shrine entrance.

...The way he and Megi chat while planning the expedition definitely includes flirting.

Alicia is certainly up for tea and brushing!  Of her fur, at least, she's a bit twitchy about her tail.

As far as the flirting goes, she just has a little giggle when it starts up, unless it starts getting serious.  (In which case she'll ask if she should give them some privacy.  She's still got some Earth norms left.)

Oh, not that serious. For now. Megi is dishing out the teasing and Yhal is blushing, mostly. But she quiets down and goes serious mode when he cuts her off after a bit.

The Captain is familiar with Light God blessings, it seems, and would prefer one of Galasa for morale and one of Alteri for diligence. This operation shouldn't be a matter of luck, but of careful preparation and routine execution. In the 'work' and 'of enemies' sense, both. He'll be arranging pack animals and lots of supplies and taking a slightly long way around the river after consulting a sketched map to avoid a deep ford. When he leaves, he tells Megi that he wouldn't object to another 'blessing of the goddess of pleasure', and Megi just smirks and sips tea, saying- 'maybe later'.

(Alicia doesn't have anything to add to all that; these are two professionals doing their things.)

"Hmm... Shall we go see our friend Shen Farok again, or give him a little more time to stew in anxiety over the demo?"

"Oh, best not give him more time to prepare, I think.  He might get it right."

"Good point!"

Back through town they go again, with only a minor detour to bless someone's kid and receive a sweetroll in return. She shares it with Alicia. It's good, if sticky. And then to bother the castle staff again, ostensibly to provide an update on the battle plan relayed from Yhal, but everyone knows they won't back down from the magic demo. Even if Megi is saccharinely polite about it.

He has a slightly dusty workshop; It was maybe cleaned in a hurry, and recently. There's a large chalk circle on a chalk board with a couple dozen runes around it at irregular intervals, and a similarly sized spot on a neighboring one that was recently erased.

"You can never be perfectly sure on the first cast, you know," he says, trying to hide his uncertainty. "It's a matter of practice to get them down for use on a regular basis. That said, I will attempt 'Fly of Sin Nah' now..."

He puts a hand to the bottom of the chalk circle and takes a deep breath and focuses. There's a - thing like seeing something just out of the corner of your eye. There's a few moments of silence. And then-

"Damn!" The lordling swears and pulls his hand back, even as the circle scrunches inward like a misshapen soda can made of soap bubble, before briefly flaring bright white.

There's a wave of warmness that washes over all three of them. It makes the touch starvation worse in a very specific way. Regardless of current body shape.

Shen looks like he wants to disappear. Megi takes a deep breath, then sighs and shakes her head. "Performance problems. It happens to the best of us. suppose you must be out of practice, or perhaps this spell is just very difficult?"

...It is time for the downfall of Shen's hat.

And then for aggressively cuddling Megi in a rather platonic way despite the specifics of the overtones of neediness, she supposes, but first - hat.  She is a fox on a mission.  And that mission is to remove Shen's hat like a cat gleefully introducing something to gravity.

There's a path bouncing up a pile of books and onto a chair and onto a desk and past his head! The hat: Is grabbed. Shen Farok goes bright red in the face when Alicia returns to Megi's arms with it in her jaws, then storms out of the room, muttering something about casting unfamiliar spells.

Megi waits until he's gone to break out in a grin. "Eeeee! The look on his face!" She rubs Alicia's ears fairly aggressively, just shy of too hard! "Oh, that was definitely worth the setup. He won't be forgetting it any time soon, but it wasn't public, so he has no reason to make it public by giving us grief... And it might even inspire him to do better in the future!"

Alicia just grins.  And enjoys the ear rubs.

"Glad I could help~!"