Shelendri stood considering the Tower, she hands on her hips. Well, it was certainly an impressive looking tower, standing there by itself in the rokcy ground. From the outside it looked like no-one had been inside it for years, but looks could always be deseving. Which meant one thing. She'd have to go in there and look for herself.
Striding up to the old wooden door set deep in the stone of the tower, she turned the handle and gave the door a push. It opened surprisingly easily, making her suspisious that people actually had visited it in recent times. If that was so, then there was no telling what she'd find. Which only made the tower more interesting. Stepping inside, she let the door close behind her and looked around. It was dark, with a thick layer of dust covering the ground. There were footprints in the dust, confirming that there had been people here recently. But all the footprints had a thin layer of dust in them, so it didn't look like anyone was here now. There was the sound of dripping water off somewhere, but it didn't really interest her. Her eyes and her interest were on the winding stairs to the right. Now, where did those lead to?
Walking over to the base, she looked up. There were a number of empty torch holders lining the wall next to them. Well, she'd just have to do without a torch. She started climbing, her fingers trailing along the wall. It felt cool and smooth.
Coming to the top of the stairs, she found herself at a hallway lined with doors that she guessed led to chambers. She stepped into the hall, but didn't go further because she heard someone climbing the stairs behind her. Frowning, she turned and glanced down them, but couldn't see who was there because of the top wind in the stairs. Who could also be here?

He started his asent up the staircase, noticing the footprints in the dirt, he began getting angry and wondering who was in his oldest treasure, who dared to invade his sacred place and defile the lab where he and his former wife had made many successful experiments and advanced his people in the ways of magic hundreds of years in just a single decade? As his wonder grew, so did his anger. "WHO DARES ENTER MY ARCANE SANCTUM?" He had made his biggest mistake by shouting towards an unknown number of people, although it seemed to just be one by the look of the prints, as well as an unknown ammount of power behind them. He had hoped that they would not be too powerful for his liking or he would surely perish as he was still learning his newfound abilities in the ways of darker magics over his lost love of the arcane kind. "SHOW YOURSELF AND SPEAK YOUR NAME AND REASON FOR BEING HERE HUMAN" he had reached the top and was staring the girl down darkly. "Well, i wont wait forever, now speak"

Shelendri jumped slightly when the voice shouted up the stairs. Well, someone was angry. Didn't he know it wasn't smart to shout at people you couldn't see? For all he knew, she could be someone intent on killing him and he'd just given himself away. She shook her head, then raised a brow when he did some more yelling. Anyone would think she'd broken into some sacred place, rather than an abandoned tower. When he came to the top of the stairs and glared at her, demanding the answers to his questions, she simply gave him a silent look. He looked like a drow, and an angry one at that. And he looked a bit familiar.
She considered him for a minute, than decided she might as well answer him. "My name's Shelendri and I came here because I wanted to see inside this tower. And you had no need to shout at me. It's rude. Now, was there something you wanted? Or are you just after shouting at me some more? Because if that's the case, I'll just go back to exploring."

"This is my Arcane labratory, this is where i work, how did you stumble upon this desolate tower?" His words started to calm down as he assessed the situation with a cooler head after the long winded walk up the stairs. He looked her over and decided that should she attack, he may only be a match if he could figure out his old spells once more. "If you are looking for shelter, you may use the first room on the right, but do not enter any other room, those are my labs and my bedroom, the one i shall let you stay in is the only guest room in this building. please respect my wishes if you wish to remain here"

Shelendri tilited her head in interest. "Archane laboratory? That's interesting." She looked around again. You would never guess a laboratory was here. He mentioned a room she could stay in if she was looking for shelter and she shook her head. "I came here because I was curious, not because I was looking for shelter." He mentioned the other rooms, and she frowned. Surely he couldn't be using all of them? Wouldn't he just need one room for his laboratoyr? She waved her hand at them. "You're using all of them? That's a lot of rooms. It your laboratory so large?" That made her curious. If the lab was so big, it must very interesting and definately something to see.

"All of these doors lead to seperate labs, and yes i use them all because some of the chemicals and experiments are not to even be in the same room or it could cause many problems, certain rooms are for certain elements of controle, maybe if i get to trust you more, then you can hear about the rest of the details of these rooms, possibly even see them as i work one day. But that is not to be decided now" He turned and went into a door with a blue drowish symbol on the door and locked it tight, light could be seen dimly through the gap between the doors bottom and the floor.

Shelendri resisted the urge to huff out a breath. Well, he'd certainly hadn't minced his words, or blunted them. Normally, she'd appresiate that, but she wasn't feeling very appressiative at the moment. Darn it, she was curious, and he'd pretty much said flat out that she couldn't even have a peek behind any of the doors. It was enough to make anyone grumpy.
She crossed her arms and frowned at the door. "Well, you're certainly secretive."

An hour passed and he came back out of the room, covered in ice and snow, and shivering a little bit. He saw the girl and realized she hadnt left yet. "Well since its obvious you arnt going to leave i guess ill have to make use of you then, my name is Valmyr Kilsek of the Kilsek clan, and you are now able to see the inside of my labs for you will be aiding me in my work, or you will be leaving in ten minutes, whichever suits your interests more"

Shelendri looked up when the door opened. She was sitting with her back against the wall opposite it, frowning at it. She'd already looked around and tried to open the doors. All had been locked, much to her dissapointment and annoyance. She'd even tried using magic on a few, but that hadn't made they budge even an inch. So she had given up and sat herself down opposite the door the drow had gone through, to wait him out. No way was she going to leave without giving him a piece of her mind, or something like that. To pass the time she'd practised with her two news spells, both of with created arrows. She'd found she liked the ice arrow better and had amused herself by plastering the wall around the door with gleaming ice.
She was about to send out straight at the door itself when it opened at he came out, covered in ice and snow. She found that interesting, given what she'd been doing. Dropping her hand, she stood as he introduced himself and said that he was going to put her to use. She had an urge to snip at him, but pushed it down. After all, she was going to see inside at least one of these labs of him. Lifting her chin defiantly, she sailed past him into the lab. She stopped inside the door and looked around with a frown. "So, this is a lab?"

OOC: I'll let you describe it.

The room was glowing with a blue light and was extremely cold, with beakers, test tubes, and arcane objects as well as piles of snow with labels at their base stating where they are from and from what year they were collected. Many other objects that seemed unique but uninteresting lay all around, who knew what they were for and how they were used. Valmyr walked in behind her "This is the ice lab, i study and create new types of ice and frost spells in here for people to use, they are mostly defensive ones such as making an ice wall or prision to protect yourself from oncoming attacks or frozen armor that will never melt and can take massive ammounts of damage before breaking, but i have made some other spells in here that were used to kill as well. So what would you like to learn about the arts of freezing one-hundred degree weather instantly to make your weapons and sheilds more powerful?

Ice lab. The name fit. Her breath created faint clouds of fog in front of her face every time she breathed out and she felt her nose tingle slightly from the cold. Sniffing, she rubbed it, and turned to Valmyr. "Well, everything, of course. Anything you're willing to teach me. I'm curious in most things I come across, and this is no different." She stepped further into the room. Her gaze moved around the room, as she tried to take everything in at once. While she had an urge to pick some of the things up, she kept her hands by her side. There was no telling what would happen if she touched something. She would hate to have something stuck to her hand.
Her gaze fell on one of the archane objest. She wanted to examine it, without touching it. She decided to use her new ability. Extending her hand toward the object, she concentrated. Slowly, the object rose into the air toward her hand. It stopped a few inches below it. She grinned. Telekenesis was certainly a useful ability to have.
She looked over at Valmyr. "What's this?"

He grinned and laughed "thats a thermometer, it measures how cold it is in this room and its specail because i use it to test the temperture of how hot or cold my ice spells get in here, so far iv managed to get it to measure down to negative 5000 degrees fahrenheit. if your using your power to pick it up without touching, dont worry, it wont kill you, nothing in here will except maybe whats in the beakers and test tubes, just be careful not to touch their contents."

Shelendri chuckled slightly and took hold of the thermometre. "I'll remember that. Negative 5000 degrees? That's impressive." She placed the thermometre back on the table and ran her gaze over the other things. Then she turned to him. "Where shall we start? And what do you need me to do? I do have an ice spell, if that helps any." She rubbed her hands together. The cold was making the tips of her fingers feel slightly numb. The winters at home were cold enough that she knew numb hands and feet could be dangerous. While she doubted she was going to get frost-bite, she didn't want to chance it. Anyway, she didn't like having numb fingers. It made her clumsy, and this wasn't the kind of place you wanted to be clumsy.

"Lets start in the death lab, i know how the name sounds but it is a lab for necromantic creation and practice" He walked out of the ice chamber and into one with a black and purple light coming from it. Inside the room was a line of puppets hanging from hooks and gases looming inside air tight jars and vents leading up to the outside. "I use the puppets instead of corpses for two reasons, one is it isnt illegal and i dont get attacked for it, and the other is that they are reuseable"

She followed him reluctantly. As a druid, she found necromancy repungent because it upset the balance of nature and went against most, if not all, of nature's laws. And she found the practice just plain disgusting. She cleared her throat slightly, doing her best not to look around the lab. "Um, I thought we were going to work in the ice lab. And I don't think I can help you in here. I'm a Druid. My magic comes from nature. No offence, but necromancy goes against nature and I dislike it." She shrugged. "I can help you with pretty much anything else. Just not anything that goes against nature."

"Now now, how can this go against any kind of nature if we are only making puppets come to life? its made of wood so its the same as making a tree move around to defend its home isnt it? i use this practice as a way to communicate with the dead when i start to move onto corpses, so that people may have a closure with a lost loved one, not to do my bidding and kill my foes. i never found purpose in using the dead to create more dead"

Shelendri frowned at the row of hanging puppets. Well, if that was what he planed to do, not practice any magic in which life was forced back into a corpse and the corpse was force by the spell caster to do their bidding, then she supposed it was all right for her to help him.
She turned back to him. "All right, I'll help you with this. But no spells that bring corpses back to life." That clicked a memory in her head. "Corpses. That's it. I knew I'd seen you before. You were that drow who brought a corpse back to life, and the creature got away from you and reeked havoc in a village. The villages wanted to kill you, but I stopped them. And then the creature went after my friend and I killed it." She frowned at him and put her hands on her hips. "Let's get one thing straight before we do anything. You're not to cast any spells like that while I'm here and helping you, got it?"

"I am afraid you have me mixed up with another drow young one, the only place i have ever practiced this magic is in this room. I am usually using fire and ice spells all over Arda to defend myself or to test them in the open, i have never brought a soul into its original casing before, just lost ones into a puppet, that is all. I do not raise the dead yet, not for any reason, i do not wish to raise them any time soon"

She frowned at him. "Are you sure? It was at Lake Aelin." She considered him for a moment, and then shrugged. "Ah well, I guess it isn't important. Just as long as we understand each other. No bringing people back to life." She looked over at the wooden puppets again. "So, what are we going to do with those things? And what do you want me to do?" She found the faceless puppets a bit creepy, especially considering what they were going to be used for, but she kept her gaze steady. She could handle being creeped out.

"I am sure, now let us begin work, i have been trying to get a spell that will summon them to life and make them last longer than just a few minutes while also building their strenght to ten times their regular power, but to get all of that in one spell is tough on a novice necromancer such as myself, and so much strain on the mind and body as well. I will be lucky to even write it onto a scroll without the user of the little parchment bursting into flames himself while reading it. Maybe i should try something a little less just for practice, please fire and ice arrow at one of the dolls and a fire arrow at another." He waited for her response to it and prepped a spell to cast on both of them to raise the dolls as they were frozen and burned at the same time in hopes it would combine the spells into one making the creature either immune to the element that it was struck by or give it the power and properties of the fire and ice spells.

Shelendri nodded and considered the dolls. This would be interesting. Raising her palm, she spoke the word Eigh and then quickly shifted to another doll and spoke the wordLasair. An ice arrow, then a fire arrow shot out of her palm. The ice arrow covered the torso of the first doll in a layer of glinting ice, while the fire arrow set the torso of the other doll to flame. The doll was made of wood, and dry wood at that, so the fire wouldn't take long to spred to the rest of it.
Shelendri turned to Valmyr. "I could put the fire out with an ice arrow, it you like. I doubt you want to loose one of your dolls. And as they're strung up so close together, the fire could spred." She didn't reaslly care. The dolls were creepy, and as long as the fire didn't threaten her, she was willing to leave it to him.

"trust me they will not burn at all." He turned and shouted "BELDRO ELGLUTH" and quickly the dolls came to life but sputtered back out again at the failed attempt of a new time necromancer. He frowned and looked at Shelendri "You can put the fire out if you want, they wont spread, they are magical dolls that dont burn at all so they will not be wasted, and this room becomes air tight as soon as i close that door when we leave so the fire will die anyway" He started heading for the door and waited as he opened it for her to go "ladies first"

Shelendri yelped and jumped back when the dolls came to life, and then went inert again. She sent Valmyr an agreived look. He could have at least warned her before doing his spell. The hair on the back of her neck was still standing on end from watching the dolls suddenly come to life.
When he said that the fire wouldn't spred, and would be extinguished when they left, she shrugged and headed for the door. They were his creepy dolls. She stepped out of the room with a feeling of relief. If she ever went in that room again, it would be too soon.
She turned to frown at Valmyr. "Next time, warn me before you bring anything to life. I nearly jumped out of my skin." Shuddering slightly, she rubbed her arm. "That has got to be the creepiest thing I've ever seen."

He smiled and laughed lightly "o that is as bad as it gets i promise you. Let us head into the room of animation" He walked across the hall and opened the door into a room filled with metal daggers, swords, axes, armor, and other metallic objects. "the purpose of this room is to bring metal objects to life, or animate them through different spells without the use of souls, instead it is the casters own life force that is put into the object and as soon as the objects time has expired, the object is out of range of the caster, the caster unsummons the object, or the object is destroyed in combat or by other means, the life force used is returned. What i am trying to do is make it so that if the caster is killed, what little life force they put into the object will return and bring the cast back to life, just with a few less years left in their life."

Shelendri tilted her head and considered the weapons. It was an interesting idea alright, but also one she couldn't quite get her head around. A spell like that would please, and also annoy, many people. To kill someone and then have them come back to life would definately put some people's noses out of joint.
Raising her hand, she floated a large sword towards her and set it twirling an inch above her fingers. Telekenesis could be fun to use, she was discovering. She looked over at Valmyr. "It's an interesting idea. If you get it to work, you'll have many warriors and the like seeking you out for it. They would consider a few years of their lives a small price to pay for being able to come back to life after being killed without the aid of someone who knows who to reserect people. I do see a down side though. What happens when someone gets this spell, and then uses it so many time, that they use up all the life given to them. Will you make it so that they can only use it once, or warn them not to use it too many times?"

"Right now i am only worried about how the spell works and how to get it to work. it is no idea when it comes to raising golems from weapons and armor, and we all know that it is your life force going into it as well as some magical energy you have, but the point of raising a metal unit to defend you is realy just throwing an old rusty dagger into the feild, turning it into a self-using weapon, and running away when teh heat is too much, which brings us back to the caster being out of range. this is not ment to be one that creates so many golems and weapons at once that the caster dies in the process, however i do wonder what would happen at that point. if the golems would all fade and the life force would return to the caster, or if the life force used would just dissapear all together. That is what this science is all about. Discovering what could happen, realizing what might happen because of it, and then wondering what effects will come into play at that point" He smiled at the intellegent question and his just as intellegent, though somewhat confusing, answer. He looked at the weapons and tried to conceive how much life force would be needed to bring them to life long enough for any task they would be used for.

Shelendri didn't quite understand what he said, but she guessed it must make sense. At least, it probably would make sense to someone who knew about such things. As she wasn't one of those people, she let it be.
Flipping the sword floating above her fingers, she caught hold of the hilt and considered it for a moment. How would someone put a portion of life force into such a thing? And how much would they put in? She shifted her gaze to Valmyr. "With this spell you wish to create, will it put a set amount of life force into the weapon, or will it be a continuous stream? Say, like the weapon becomes part of the person?"

He turned and looked at her "Only a set ammount, the flesh golems, or blood golems that are summoned use a constant stream but that is a different experiment that i am working with. These golems will only be using a small set ammount of life force to keep them active. Why do you ask?"

She shrugged. "No real reason. I was just curious, that's all." She sent the sword floating back to its place on the wall. "So, what do you want me to do?" A thought occured to her. "You aren't going to experiment with my life force, are you?" That thought was worrying. She was willing to help, but letting him use her life force would be just a bit too much. After all, if something went wrong, she could die or have some years taken off her life. Not something she would want to happen.

"No, i will be using an artificial life force to see how it works. It should be simple if i just use death magic to raise a puppet and use that puppets life force which happens to be the death magic to bring the golems to life. So we are not in any danger, however if we are to die, we do not get our life back" He went into the death chamber and came back a few seconds later with a puppet in arms, placing it on the floor and shouting his words again, making the puppet come to life. "Puppet, speak" The puppet let out a muffled sound and then went limp, as one of the swords came to life for a breif second and fell to the floor. "hmm, that didnt go as well as i had hoped"

Shelendri considered Valmyr's plan as he left the room. Death magic, and a puppet brought to life. Just like the other things she'd seen since agreeing to help Valmyr, it was creepy. But maybe she was getting used to the creepy things here, because it didn't creepy her out as much as it should have. She shrugged to herself, and turned when Valmyr came back into the room, carrying a puppet. She winced slightly when he shouted his words at the puppet. Did he have to yell?
She watched as the puppet came to life for a second, then went back to its lifeless state. She noticed that a sword also came to life for a second and then raised a brow when Valmyr said that it hadn't gone the way he had planed it. "I doubt you would have planned to split your spell between the puppet and the sword." She moved closer and considered the puppet, then the sword. This was the second time his spell hadn't worked. There had to be a reason. She always found learning and using new spells relatively easy, but this drow was having trouble. There had to be a reason.
She rolled the problem around in her mind. He'd brought two things to life, when he'd meant for only one to come to life. Obviously, his focus and range of the spell were off. She looked over at him. "When you cast that spell just now, what were you focusing on, and what were you thinking?"

"I was thinking of my late wife, and how to contact her." His sadness showed when he turned his head. His frustration shown easilly trying to figure things out. His temper started to grow and he shot a fireball from his palm followed by lightning and ending with a shot of ice, all being flung at the doll, each one sending different parts of it into nothing more than dust, until there was nothing left. "You do not understand what i am trying to do, but i suggest doing research on me before we continue little one"

She watched silently as he shot at the doll. He had lost some he loved, like she had. But where she was seeking her father's killer, he was seeking a way to contact his wife. Same pain, different ways of dealing with it.
Her gaze met him, her eyes sympathetic and with some of her own sadness in them. "I do understand. My father was killed last year. If he hadn't raised me to let the dead stay dead, I would probably be doing the same thing you are." She turned to the now mangled down. "Now, for this spell of yours. When I'm doing magic, I think of the spell, and my target. I don't think about what I want the spell to accomplish or my reasons for casting the spell. Try thinking only of the spell you're casting, not of your wife. It'll fix your concentration, and therefore your magic. If your mind's in three places at once, so will your magic. First you'll need to get a new doll. This one seems a bit worse for wear." A half smile tilted one side of her mouth.

He cringed at the thought "That would work if it werent for the fact of i need my mind in several places for i am casting several spells at once, my animation for the doll as well as a spell for the doll to cast spells then another spell for the doll to cast the animate metal spell. That kind of ends my concentration now dont you think?"

She nodded. "Yes, I guess it does. But why do you have to cast them all at once? Can't you cast them one after the other? Or maybe you should create a spell that does all those things at the same time." She frowned down at the doll, then sighed. "I really have no idea what to do in this situation. I've never had to even think about this stuff before. But there has to be a way to do it." She crossed her arms and tilted her head in thought. If she could just get her mind around what it was that Valmyr wanted to do, she might be able to come put with a solution. or maybe she should get him to teach her one of the spells he was trying to cast, so she could help him. She rejected that thought almost as she was thinking. This was related to necromancy, and she would rather cut her arm off then use that.

"Creating a new spell to do all of those things takes much time and more concentration to cast than casting all three at once. Maybe if i actually rose something that used to have a life force it may work better, but finding a skeletal structure of a former mage that hasnt put a curse on their own body would be almost impossible"

Shelendri's face showed her disgust at what he'd just said. "It would also be disgusting, and I'd be forced to stop you, to uphold the balance of nature." She sighed. "I'm all out of ideas. I can't think of any way that your spells could work. Maybe we should move onto something else. I sometimes find that when you're not fixated on a problem, the answer will come to you by itself. Anyway, the whole thing of bringing things to life is just a little bit too creepy for my liking."

He smirked "And yet, would you not cast a spell to ressurect a fallen ally in the heat of battle? would you not wish to be brought back to aid your fellow allies from impending doom? i am in the same bussiness as priests and holy casters when it comes to spells, however the use is just a little different, while they use it on bodies that have fallen only a few moments ago i use it on creatures that have fallen up to twenty years ago."

She wrinkled her nose at him. "I'm not quite sure about that.Firstly, I don't know how to bring people back to life, and secondly, I was raised to believe that everyone has a set time to live and bringing them back to life would be wrong." No matter how much that hurt or how wrong it seemed at the time. Had she had the power, it was likely that she would have been tempted to bring her father back to life. But he wouldn't have wanted to be brought back, even with the pain his death had caused his family. Bringing someone back to life when they were happy being dead seemed very wrong to her.
She frowned at Valmyr. "What good would bringing someone back to life if it was likely they'd be killed again? That's how it is in a battle. It's a test to see who is better. The weaker person looses, and usually dies. That's the way it is." She knew it sounded cold, but she couldn't help it.

"Ah but that is where you are wrong my friend, you see it is not the weaker person who is killed, but the less skilled and less intellegent person, a mage much weaker than a warrior or swordsman, however the mage will win almost every time for the mage has many powerful spells to aid them in battle, and when it comes to who can kill the most, once again the mage wins with his chain and forked lightning spells as well as some other ones that cause extreme ammounts of damage in a very large area. so you see, the mage is fighting smarter, now if we pit two warriors together, one as strong as the other, but the one has only seen battle in training sessions and the other a veteran of several wars, the veteran wins, not because he is stronger, but because he has the knowlegde of how to move around a battlefeild, use the terrain to his advantage, and defeat his opponent in a very simple way while the less experienced warrior would just charge in and attack instead of get to higher ground and strike lower"