those who like such things | Glowfic Constellation

Sure, sounds great, can they come to Sydney or should she make a trip?

He'll definitely come to Sydney, if she turns out to be legit he wants to be in the party that goes in with her.

Nice. Here's where to find her office on the campus.

So about one month after Elisabel's trip to that one dungeon this French adventurer shows up on her doorstep.

She doesn't speak a lick of French (she took Chinese in school and can pronounce some eight words of Hindi in her now-dead grandmother's accent) so hopefully it's fine for the conversation to be conducted in English. "Come in, come in, have a seat. Shouldn't have any students pop in to bother us, I'm very heavy on the research over the teaching."

He does. "Hello, Dr. Swan, I'm Philippe Montigneaux," says an unassuming man in accented but understandable English. "Very surprised to find an adventurer who is also a researcher," he adds.

"Well, if I want to experiment, I need the mana, and if I want mana..." Shrug. "Usually I go less than once a quarter, but this last time there was the surprise psychic immunity. I didn't feel anything, it looked more like my party members had been targeted and it had just skipped me."

"And you'd never encountered psychic phenomena to have had it tested before?"

"If I did, they weren't so noticeable in their absence."

"I see. Well, if you would be okay with it, I could try some effects on you and see if you resist them?"

"Whaddaya got?"

"Emotions, illusions, mind reading, and mind control. ...that last one has never been tested on humans, it was developed for monsters, I don't know if it even would work."

"...start with illusions, I guess, I don't want any of this to land and will be more willing to try spookier things as other things fail."

"Very well. May I?"

"Ready."

"I will start with something small, then." He first casts a spell that allows him to temporarily draw sigils in the air with floating magic lights, then he draws some more sigils to cast something that Elisabel might recognise as using sigils that are plausibly for illusion spells (at least if the fact that they're mirrored from her perspective doesn't impede understanding too much).

Once the sigils for the actual illusion spell vanish from the air, nothing happens, as far as Elisabel can tell.

...except there is a little feeling, now that she's paying attention, like someone's knocking on the metaphorical door...

"I don't see anything but I'm getting a - ping, is that what you called it -"

"Well, it was more like a, what is it called, un bélier... battering ram? Right before it overwhelmed my defences."

"It did not feel overwhelming, but I guess I can imagine the sensation getting that way if it were a loooooot stronger?"

"It ought not have felt like anything at all, really, even if you had a defence up... Normally if you had defences up it would simply fail to register, it was not shaped as an attack. This is peculiar."

"The field is young!" she chirps.