Moira
After her rather distressing conversation with Yulia, Moira waited until Ashley and Yulia had left to knock on Sarah's door. Sarah opened it with a certain amount of trepidation, and very obviously glanced around for Yulia before refocusing on Moira.
"Hey Moira. What's up?"
"What's up? Really? You know what, never mind. Do you want to see something cool? You'll need to be wearing clothes and shoes." Moira decided to ignore the minor impertinence coming from the girl more than 680 years her junior.
Sarah, for her part, looked down at herself in a somewhat obvious manner, blushed furiously, and slammed the door in Moira's face. Moira ignored this too, deciding that being able to share her collection with somebody who might actually have a tiny trace of enthusiasm was worth a few minor annoyances.
A few minutes later, the door opened again, revealing Sarah in a long sleeved shirt, jeans, and converse. Moira turned and walked away without commenting on her appearance, and Sarah followed.
Moira led Sarah through the gym, through a couple more passages, and then touched some brickwork, causing the bricks to rearrange themselves until a stairway was revealed. Sarah gasped in astonishment at this bullshit, and once again was ignored by Moira. The two girls proceeded down one of the longest and most winding staircases imaginable, which likely ended somewhere just about half a mile down.
At least, that's certainly how Sarah was acting after walking down those stairs. She was gasping for breath in a truly concerning manner. Moira patiently waited for her to get her shit together before proceeding forwards.
At the end of this hallway were two opposing doors. Moira withdrew a key and unlocked the door on the left. This immediately drew Sarah's curiosity towards door number two, but those questions were destined to remain unanswered.
Inside door number one, there were countless weapon racks displaying countless types of swords, spears, hammers, daggers, bows, and polearms, while above them were neat rows of firearms and below them were crates of ammunition. Covering an entire wall were various forms of armor, including one overly large set of plate armor that seemed to be made for a small giant…with wings. Surrounding that particular feature were what seemed to be countless steel feathers, neatly arranged to exactly form the shape of the wings they once were a part of.
While most of the weapons and armor here were held in a way that was spatially efficient and kept like items together, there was one example of each type of melee weapon on full display, as well as several bows. Above a certain wall of halberds, there were about 12 rows of shoulder mounted rocket and grenade launchers, with one of each displayed on its side instead. However, instead of having the crates of ammunition for those below the halberds, they seemed to be nowhere to be found.
"Hey, where do you keep all your rockets?" Sarah asked curiously. She may not know a lot about weapons, but she could extrapolate from known information just fine.
"I keep all high explosive munitions in a separate room guarded by multiple magical formations and a fairly high-tech security system. I hardly ever have a need for them anyways." Moira replied.
"Anyways, that's not what I brought you down here to show you. You see this?" Moira indicated a rather lengthy blade that seemed to have countless ripples throughout the metal.
"This is a zweihander replica. It specifically replicates many of the traits of the most famous example of the type, which is currently sitting in a Swiss museum to the best of my knowledge. The reason it is a replica and not considered a 'real' example is that it wasn't constructed by a specific armory near the Swiss-German border and it isn't formed from carefully pattern-welded crucible steel." Moira paused to see if Sarah had absorbed any of that.
"Umm, cool?" Sarah tried.
"I crafted this one from a combination of osmium and adamant in a carefully folded damascus pattern, and it is enchanted with swiftness, power, durability, and… well, perhaps it is easier to show you the last one." Moira carefully removed the large sword from the display case that she could barely reach even on the tips of her toes, and she handed it hilt first to Sarah.
"Try taking hold of it with both hands and focusing some of your magic into it." Moira suggested. The 6 kilo sword would have been too much for Moira and extremely difficult for Sarah if they had not just been forcibly awakened by a goddess.
Sarah dutifully obeyed, and a chaotic flame sprang to life around the edges of the blade. Sarah yelped and promptly dropped it, and Moira laughed even as it struck the ground. Moira was not especially worried that the highly durable blade would have suffered much damage from such misuse.
"That is called the chaos flame enchantment, also known as the fires of entropy. It increases the relative entropy of anything it strikes, by doing severe physical damage, lighting the object struck on fire, and directly advancing the total entropy in the system. You might notice that the poor stones you dropped it on are now showing a bit more wear and tear than one would expect from a relatively new installation, and certainly more than can be explained simply by your clumsiness. A severe enough hit with sufficient magic behind it might be able to disintegrate and disperse weaker targets. With the right comprehension of magic and souls, it can damage both the physical form and the soul at the same time. Worst of all, it can disturb or damage both mana links and qi channels, or meridians, which can cripple any practitioner or cultivator if left untreated." Moira finished this explanation sounding weirdly proud of her handiwork.
"Isn't that kind of mean?" Sarah asked.
"Mean? This is an armory. An armory is built to contain weapons, and weapons are fashioned to threaten, kill, or at least severely maim people. The bigger weapons are made to take out constructs and buildings. Everything in here is mean, from a certain point of view." Moira picked the sword up and carefully replaced it after checking its edge for burrs.
"Tell you what, I could expound on the value and relative benefits and downsides of everything in here for weeks on end. Why don't you tell me if anything catches your eye, and I can tell you all about it." Moira offered this sort of as a peace offering, both to Sarah and to Yulia
Yulia understood when Moira was training soldiers. She didn't categorize Moira's trainees as threats to her position. Sarah, on the other hand, was now terrified of Yulia. Moira's goal here was to find a weapon that Sarah had an interest in and train her in it, thus killing two birds with one stone.
Sarah, for her part, was not super interested in the overly large swords. She walked around the area containing shortswords, broadswords, rapiers, and finally curved swords, before moving on entirely. Next, she examined the polearms. The spear seemed boring to her, as it seemed to be a weapon primarily for stabbing. Daggers seemed cool, but there really only seemed to be one or two things to do with those as well, and she bet they were the kind of thing that you were either really good with or not worth mentioning with, no in between.
The quarterstaff seemed cool in movies, but also kind of basic. Finally, she found a weird one that seemed to have a blade instead of a speartip on the end, that was slightly shorter than the rest. She pulled it down, and found it to be neither too heavy nor too light.
"Ah, the naginata. Westerners call it the glaive, which is somewhat confusing because there are 5 or 6 weapons that all have that name attributed to them. It is actually a weapon designed and built for women. Japanese noble ladies would often be left at home for months on end by their husbands, who would take most of the other menfolk along with them to put down rebellions and hunt down bandits. In the meantime, rather than remain defenseless, they would train in the use of the naginata from a very young age, proving more than capable of defending themselves against most bandits and raiders and even small groups from rival factions. They would also train most of their maid servants and more trusted female household servants at the same time. This system wasn't fully fool-proof, but it did mean that without any of their men by their side they could withstand assaults and even a light siege until they could receive reinforcements from the same."
"Unfortunately, the Japanese strongly believed that you would need to start training with it from the age of 4 or you could consider your potential to be severely weakened. This is, of course, bullshit, but if all the people who could teach you aren't willing to give it much effort, you will of course not see much in the way of results. It is a simple weapon, and as long as I am teaching you, you should be able to be competent enough to be formidable with it after about 6 months, though it will take years to fully master."
"However, I plan on teaching you more than just the use of a polearm. Please select a melee weapon for close quarters combat and a bow in a style that interests you. Then we can begin."
"Why do you want to teach me all this? I thought you were just going to teach me hand to hand and witchcraft." Sarah asked in a confused manner.
"The truth is, Sarah, that your potential is great, and as I have previously mentioned, Gaia wants you for a high priestess. However, when you are trying to conserve mana, it is best to have something to fall back on, and quite frankly unless you become far stronger in the next couple of years your fists just simply are not it. As a potential high priestess for a goddess, there will be those who target you to ensure you never reach your potential and to weaken the goddess you serve. You will need to be able to protect yourself and the witches under you in the years to come."
"This is the 21st century. Noone targets witches anymore, at best they might just think I am weird." Sarah replied.
"The thinking you are weird thing is actually not a given. That is the product of a defense mechanism witches have developed throughout the years to avoid persecution. If the general populace thinks you're just eccentric and maybe a little crazy, then the stories that spread about you are unlikely to get back to the Vatican or the Knights Justiciar in a way that brings them knocking. However, you cannot afford to delegitimize yourself in this way, as you will represent the Earth Mother at the highest level. Therefore, you will need to be able to bring to bear the power to defend yourself. You can consider knowing magic but also knowing multiple martial and ranged weapons to be a force multiplier. One you will most certainly need."
"To be honest with you, as with all witches, there are two paths ahead for you. You can hide who you are each and every day, or pretend to be something you're not, or you can establish yourself as a power to be respected. This second one takes not only personal strength and discipline, but allies. You will technically not be a high priestess until there are priestesses under your authority, and that's just the beginning. It would be a mistake to only turn to other witches when you look for allies, because the people will need to see you as one of them for this to go well for you."
"What if I do want to hide?" Sarah asked in a mouse-like voice.
"Then you are neither the person nor the witch I thought you to be." Moira replied coldly. "Nor are you the witch the other witches awakening around this time need you to be. They won't go away just because you wish it. They will need someone to guide them even as you do now. I plan on training you for the next two years, but after that you will have to learn how to self motivate, because there will be no one to show you the way forward. The best you can expect is some minor guidance in the form of your conversations with Gaia. This, specifically, is why I offered to help you change your fate. There is still time, if that is what you wish, but not much."
"What about you? Can't you help all those people?" Sarah asked desperately.
"I will help many people in my life, should I get to live that long. However, you will have to take up that mantle here, if you proceed any further along this path." Moira's tone was frank and unyielding, and left no room for argument.
"Okay then. I guess I will do my best." Sarah replied stiffly.
The two girls spent the next hour or so quibbling over what weapons Sarah would train in, and finally they came down to the eye-roll-inducing choice of the katana and the Gohonhigo.