Once everyone who wasn’t going to be living in the house had left, Nym retired to his new bedroom to rest. His sleep schedule was all sorts of wrong thanks to the abduction and time spent in the mage cell. Even though there were still plenty of hours of daylight left, he just couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.
When he got back up, he found Navarim sitting on a couch idly flipping through a book while Analia had claimed the entire kitchen table. She had seven different books spread out around her and was furiously scribbling notes down on a loose sheet of paper.
“What are you doing?” he asked through a yawn.
“Working on breaking your geas,” she said.
Nym tried to thank her, only to find his mouth refused to move. She saw him frowning to himself and nodded. “It’s fine. I know what you want to say,” she told him.
“Do you two want to get dinner soon?” Navarim asked. “I got a message an hour ago saying they want us back on site soon, so this’ll probably be your only chance to eat tonight.”
“I guess we should eat then. What are we having?”
“There’s a restaurant a few blocks over from here,” Analia said absently, not looking up from her notes. “I had an air golem look around a bit ago. It seems decently popular, perhaps a bit on the pricy side, but since we’re not renting two rooms at the Silver Gilder anymore, I think we can afford a single meal out.”
“Since when do you pay attention to how pricy something is?” Nym asked.
“Since I’m down to my last three crests,” she told him. “Though I suppose it doesn’t matter at this point how much I use the family line of credit. I might as well just go to the bank and refill my purse with as much gold as it’ll hold.”
“Why’s that?” Nym asked.
“Because my dad got to you, which obviously means he knows I’m here. It doesn’t seem like there’s much reason to hide anymore.”
“Oh. Um, what makes you believe that?” he asked.
“Mostly the exotic pet store next door,” she said. “He knows how much I love menageries, which means he knows I’m here with you, probably both because they are spying on us and because of my foolish hopes about spending his money going unnoticed.”
“You… uh… you don’t seem too upset about this,” Nym said.
“I’ll worry about it more after I figure out how to break this geas. When you go ‘back on site’ tonight, please let him know to stay away from me. I’m not ready to talk to him yet.”
There was nothing the geas would let Nym say to that. After seeing what Analia’s father was working on, he thought he had a little better understanding of the man’s motivations for doing what he did to his daughter, which wasn’t the same as condoning it. Jaspar Feldstal had still performed extremely dangerous experiments on his own infant daughter, experiments that could have easily killed her. Previous versions of those experiments probably had killed quite a few people working in the Collective.
“Someone’s approaching the house,” Analia said suddenly.
Nym noted Navarim’s aura flaring up while he cast a scrying spell to see. A young man, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, was standing in front of the house. He peered around, seeming uncertain, but then shrugged and finished walking up the path to knock on the door.
“I’ll get it,” Navarim said. He crossed the room while casting a quick spell that Nym couldn’t quite catch, then jerked the door open.
“Oh, hello,” the teenager said. “Uh… Navarim, right? You’re the other bodyguard?”
“I am. Are you with…” Navarim trailed off, his own geas preventing him saying anything else.
“Yeah, that,” the teenager agreed. His mouth worked for a second like he wanted to say more, but nothing came out. Finally, he said, “God that’s annoying.”
“Agreed. Worth it though.”
“Oh, absolutely. Would you mind if I came in and introduced myself? Hard to do the job from the front door, you know?”
Navarim shot a glance back over his shoulder to Nym, who just shrugged in response. If ever there was a time for an assassin to attack, it was right there while Navarim wasn’t looking, but nothing of the sort happened. The teenager stepped through the door and gave a slight bow to them.
“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jharn. I am dual specialized in fire and air magic, with a standard array of utility spells that skews slightly towards first circle enhancement spells.”
“That’s impressive,” Navarim said. “I’m more of a generalist myself, got a little bit of everything to keep me flexible.”
“We should make a good pair then,” Jharn said. He looked over towards the kitchen. “You must be Nym.”
“That’s me.”
“Great. Good to meet you. We’ll be working closely for a little while. Anything I should know?”
“Uh, I’m an air mage, I guess? Maybe air and water. I have a lot of general elementalism.”
There was more, but Nym wasn’t about to reveal his full kit any more than he expected Navarim and Jharn had told him everything they had. He could make some claim to having a divination utility set of spells and a small variety of short-duration curses, if he wanted to be honest.
“Air mage, huh? That’s good. It means you’ll be able to get away from trouble much easier while we hold off whatever’s attacking.”
Nym thought about how easily the abduction squad had piled on him and locked him down with a barrage of arcana injections. Five against one wasn’t exactly a fair fight, and hopefully in a similar situation in the future, having a pair of bodyguards would help. Also having a fully repaired matrix would help.
“Well anyway, they sent me over to get you so we can go to work,” Jharn said. “So, let me know when you’re ready and we’ll head over to the teleportation platform. Navarim, you can do the spell to get us back, right?”
“I can,” he said slowly. “Can you not?”
“Not yet. I can only do outbound teleports. Quite annoying, so don’t be surprised if I pester you to teach me.”
“I’ll have to get clearance first,” the mage said.
Jharn shrugged, unconcerned. “I guess we’ll be relying on you for the time being.”
“I guess so.”
Nym’s two new bodyguards weren’t exactly unfriendly towards each other, but Jharn had come on kind of strong, in Nym’s opinion. Maybe he’d mellow out in the coming days and settle into a routine. For the time being, Nym decided to just take things as they came and not rush to judging the teenager.
“Shall we go?” Jharn asked. “Unless you need to do something else first? We’ve got a bit of time still I think.”
“We were going to have dinner,” Navarim told him.
“I can get behind that,” Jharn said. “As long as it doesn’t take too long.”
“Bring me back something,” Analia said, still not looking up from her books.
Jharn flinched and spun to face her. “Damn, I didn’t even see her there. Some bodyguard I am, huh?”
“You should probably work on that,” Nym said. “Come on, let’s go get some food before we go to work.”
* * *
‘Going to work’ made for a thoroughly boring evening. In much the same way his first night had gone, a bunch of mages ran a variety of tests and scans on him, commented on various techniques they wanted him to use, and observed his own matrix repairing technique in real time using a complex and expensive looking magical scanner.
They were stuck there until late into the night, but thanks to a stimulant spell Jharn taught him, Nym was still wide awake. It was a bad idea to rely on it too much, but just one all-nighter to get his sleep schedule fixed wouldn’t cause any problems. It was either that or resign himself to going to sleep around the same time the sun started rising.
Nym expected to spend a long, boring night working some of the new techniques the Collective wanted him to try. Failing that, he planned to find something quiet that wouldn’t disturb anyone. That was why he was surprised when they got back and Jharn said, “You were a freelancer, right?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure if I can still take on jobs though.”
“It’s the army. They’re big on paperwork. If you didn’t receive any forms revoking your position, you probably still can. Want to go do some overnight jobs?”
“Really?” Nym asked. “That doesn’t seem very safe.”
“It’s good money, and I don’t know how much they’re paying you, but I need to supplement my income. A few night shifts every week help. You just have to prove you can maintain a spell to see in the dark and they’ll let you take night missions.”
“Are… you know… the people in charge of our day job… are they fine with this?” Nym asked.
Jharn shrugged. “What they don’t know won’t hurt me.”
Ten crests a month was a decent rate, especially since he wasn’t going to be spending any of it on housing. He still had some money in reserve, but the longer he was a mage, the more he realized that it was expensive. It was no wonder the Academy’s tuition was so high. Books were expensive, instructors even more so. Then there were supplies of various types needed to enchant anything or do alchemy, or write new rune sequences, everything from equipment to raw materials to expensive catalysts and reagents. Finally, practicing magic meant not having time to work while still needing a place to eat and sleep.
He had a full library now, thanks to Analia. It was a small one, but it was theirs. There were probably a hundred spell books available to him. All he had to do was pull one off the shelf and start reading, but there were things that were far easier to learn with an instructor to teach him. And even if he didn’t find an immediate use for it, he hadn’t yet encountered a scenario where having more money in reserve was a bad thing.
Besides, he’d spent the last six hours poking at his matrix. He wanted to do something else. “Let’s do it,” he said. “Uh… Navarim? I know you’re also doing body guard stuff, so are you coming?”
“No thanks, I’m off duty according to the schedule Jharn and I worked out. We overlap during the day and alternate who’s staying up at night. Tonight’s my night to sleep. Also I am not a freelancer, so I couldn’t participate without registering first.”
“Alright. We’ll be back before… dawn?” Nym looked over at Jharn, who nodded.
The pair left together, quickly exiting the town and flying northwest to forward command. They arrived at the freelancer’s administration office in under twenty minutes, with Jharn easily keeping up with Nym’s pace. Nym was somewhat frustrated with his slow speed. He knew he could do better, but it was hard to give the spell the arcana it needed to really get him moving.
He reminded himself that they’d made good time regardless, and that the flight was stable even if it wasn’t as fast as he wanted. He would recover eventually; he just needed some patience. He could be working on that right now, but he’d wanted a break, so he really had no one to blame but himself.
Nym didn’t recognize the clerk, but considering how few jobs he’d gone out on before his involuntary retirement from the field, that didn’t surprise him. Jharn leaned on the counter and chatted with the guy like they were old friends, and quickly got a job lined up. “Easy work. Wall patrol for the first half of the night, then a sector sweep. What’s your range on undead detection spells?”
“Depends on what spell I use,” Nym said. “The one I’ve got that specifically finds undead is only good for maybe five hundred feet. I’ve got a wide range general scry that can see farther, but it won’t help me spot undead specifically. If I use a combination of spells, I could do maybe… maybe half a mile?”
Jharn nodded. “Sounds expensive though. How long can you keep it up?”
Nym wanted to say he could do it as long as needed, but with how much harder it was to keep channeled spells going anymore, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do a whole night straight. “I could do an area a few times an hour, I suppose.”
“Alright, let’s get going. I’ll show you the patrol route and we’ll plan on alternating scans while we travel.”
Before they could leave, the clerk took Nym into a pitch-black room and had him describe the decorations, which were several paintings. There was a range of styles which stress tested his ability to see shapes, colors, and fine details. It only took a few minutes to satisfy the clerk, and then they were on their way.
Once everyone who wasn’t going to be living in the house had left, Nym retired to his new bedroom to rest. His sleep schedule was all sorts of wrong thanks to the abduction and time spent in the mage cell. Even though there were still plenty of hours of daylight left, he just couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.
When he got back up, he found Navarim sitting on a couch idly flipping through a book while Analia had claimed the entire kitchen table. She had seven different books spread out around her and was furiously scribbling notes down on a loose sheet of paper.
“What are you doing?” he asked through a yawn.
“Working on breaking your geas,” she said.
Nym tried to thank her, only to find his mouth refused to move. She saw him frowning to himself and nodded. “It’s fine. I know what you want to say,” she told him.
“Do you two want to get dinner soon?” Navarim asked. “I got a message an hour ago saying they want us back on site soon, so this’ll probably be your only chance to eat tonight.”
“I guess we should eat then. What are we having?”
“There’s a restaurant a few blocks over from here,” Analia said absently, not looking up from her notes. “I had an air golem look around a bit ago. It seems decently popular, perhaps a bit on the pricy side, but since we’re not renting two rooms at the Silver Gilder anymore, I think we can afford a single meal out.”
“Since when do you pay attention to how pricy something is?” Nym asked.
“Since I’m down to my last three crests,” she told him. “Though I suppose it doesn’t matter at this point how much I use the family line of credit. I might as well just go to the bank and refill my purse with as much gold as it’ll hold.”
“Why’s that?” Nym asked.
“Because my dad got to you, which obviously means he knows I’m here. It doesn’t seem like there’s much reason to hide anymore.”
“Oh. Um, what makes you believe that?” he asked.
“Mostly the exotic pet store next door,” she said. “He knows how much I love menageries, which means he knows I’m here with you, probably both because they are spying on us and because of my foolish hopes about spending his money going unnoticed.”
“You… uh… you don’t seem too upset about this,” Nym said.
“I’ll worry about it more after I figure out how to break this geas. When you go ‘back on site’ tonight, please let him know to stay away from me. I’m not ready to talk to him yet.”
There was nothing the geas would let Nym say to that. After seeing what Analia’s father was working on, he thought he had a little better understanding of the man’s motivations for doing what he did to his daughter, which wasn’t the same as condoning it. Jaspar Feldstal had still performed extremely dangerous experiments on his own infant daughter, experiments that could have easily killed her. Previous versions of those experiments probably had killed quite a few people working in the Collective.
“Someone’s approaching the house,” Analia said suddenly.
Nym noted Navarim’s aura flaring up while he cast a scrying spell to see. A young man, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, was standing in front of the house. He peered around, seeming uncertain, but then shrugged and finished walking up the path to knock on the door.
“I’ll get it,” Navarim said. He crossed the room while casting a quick spell that Nym couldn’t quite catch, then jerked the door open.
“Oh, hello,” the teenager said. “Uh… Navarim, right? You’re the other bodyguard?”
“I am. Are you with…” Navarim trailed off, his own geas preventing him saying anything else.
“Yeah, that,” the teenager agreed. His mouth worked for a second like he wanted to say more, but nothing came out. Finally, he said, “God that’s annoying.”
“Agreed. Worth it though.”
“Oh, absolutely. Would you mind if I came in and introduced myself? Hard to do the job from the front door, you know?”
Navarim shot a glance back over his shoulder to Nym, who just shrugged in response. If ever there was a time for an assassin to attack, it was right there while Navarim wasn’t looking, but nothing of the sort happened. The teenager stepped through the door and gave a slight bow to them.
“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jharn. I am dual specialized in fire and air magic, with a standard array of utility spells that skews slightly towards first circle enhancement spells.”
“That’s impressive,” Navarim said. “I’m more of a generalist myself, got a little bit of everything to keep me flexible.”
“We should make a good pair then,” Jharn said. He looked over towards the kitchen. “You must be Nym.”
“That’s me.”
“Great. Good to meet you. We’ll be working closely for a little while. Anything I should know?”
“Uh, I’m an air mage, I guess? Maybe air and water. I have a lot of general elementalism.”
There was more, but Nym wasn’t about to reveal his full kit any more than he expected Navarim and Jharn had told him everything they had. He could make some claim to having a divination utility set of spells and a small variety of short-duration curses, if he wanted to be honest.
“Air mage, huh? That’s good. It means you’ll be able to get away from trouble much easier while we hold off whatever’s attacking.”
Nym thought about how easily the abduction squad had piled on him and locked him down with a barrage of arcana injections. Five against one wasn’t exactly a fair fight, and hopefully in a similar situation in the future, having a pair of bodyguards would help. Also having a fully repaired matrix would help.
“Well anyway, they sent me over to get you so we can go to work,” Jharn said. “So, let me know when you’re ready and we’ll head over to the teleportation platform. Navarim, you can do the spell to get us back, right?”
“I can,” he said slowly. “Can you not?”
“Not yet. I can only do outbound teleports. Quite annoying, so don’t be surprised if I pester you to teach me.”
“I’ll have to get clearance first,” the mage said.
Jharn shrugged, unconcerned. “I guess we’ll be relying on you for the time being.”
“I guess so.”
Nym’s two new bodyguards weren’t exactly unfriendly towards each other, but Jharn had come on kind of strong, in Nym’s opinion. Maybe he’d mellow out in the coming days and settle into a routine. For the time being, Nym decided to just take things as they came and not rush to judging the teenager.
“Shall we go?” Jharn asked. “Unless you need to do something else first? We’ve got a bit of time still I think.”
“We were going to have dinner,” Navarim told him.
“I can get behind that,” Jharn said. “As long as it doesn’t take too long.”
“Bring me back something,” Analia said, still not looking up from her books.
Jharn flinched and spun to face her. “Damn, I didn’t even see her there. Some bodyguard I am, huh?”
“You should probably work on that,” Nym said. “Come on, let’s go get some food before we go to work.”
* * *
‘Going to work’ made for a thoroughly boring evening. In much the same way his first night had gone, a bunch of mages ran a variety of tests and scans on him, commented on various techniques they wanted him to use, and observed his own matrix repairing technique in real time using a complex and expensive looking magical scanner.
They were stuck there until late into the night, but thanks to a stimulant spell Jharn taught him, Nym was still wide awake. It was a bad idea to rely on it too much, but just one all-nighter to get his sleep schedule fixed wouldn’t cause any problems. It was either that or resign himself to going to sleep around the same time the sun started rising.
Nym expected to spend a long, boring night working some of the new techniques the Collective wanted him to try. Failing that, he planned to find something quiet that wouldn’t disturb anyone. That was why he was surprised when they got back and Jharn said, “You were a freelancer, right?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure if I can still take on jobs though.”
“It’s the army. They’re big on paperwork. If you didn’t receive any forms revoking your position, you probably still can. Want to go do some overnight jobs?”
“Really?” Nym asked. “That doesn’t seem very safe.”
“It’s good money, and I don’t know how much they’re paying you, but I need to supplement my income. A few night shifts every week help. You just have to prove you can maintain a spell to see in the dark and they’ll let you take night missions.”
“Are… you know… the people in charge of our day job… are they fine with this?” Nym asked.
Jharn shrugged. “What they don’t know won’t hurt me.”
Ten crests a month was a decent rate, especially since he wasn’t going to be spending any of it on housing. He still had some money in reserve, but the longer he was a mage, the more he realized that it was expensive. It was no wonder the Academy’s tuition was so high. Books were expensive, instructors even more so. Then there were supplies of various types needed to enchant anything or do alchemy, or write new rune sequences, everything from equipment to raw materials to expensive catalysts and reagents. Finally, practicing magic meant not having time to work while still needing a place to eat and sleep.
He had a full library now, thanks to Analia. It was a small one, but it was theirs. There were probably a hundred spell books available to him. All he had to do was pull one off the shelf and start reading, but there were things that were far easier to learn with an instructor to teach him. And even if he didn’t find an immediate use for it, he hadn’t yet encountered a scenario where having more money in reserve was a bad thing.
Besides, he’d spent the last six hours poking at his matrix. He wanted to do something else. “Let’s do it,” he said. “Uh… Navarim? I know you’re also doing body guard stuff, so are you coming?”
“No thanks, I’m off duty according to the schedule Jharn and I worked out. We overlap during the day and alternate who’s staying up at night. Tonight’s my night to sleep. Also I am not a freelancer, so I couldn’t participate without registering first.”
“Alright. We’ll be back before… dawn?” Nym looked over at Jharn, who nodded.
The pair left together, quickly exiting the town and flying northwest to forward command. They arrived at the freelancer’s administration office in under twenty minutes, with Jharn easily keeping up with Nym’s pace. Nym was somewhat frustrated with his slow speed. He knew he could do better, but it was hard to give the spell the arcana it needed to really get him moving.
He reminded himself that they’d made good time regardless, and that the flight was stable even if it wasn’t as fast as he wanted. He would recover eventually; he just needed some patience. He could be working on that right now, but he’d wanted a break, so he really had no one to blame but himself.
Nym didn’t recognize the clerk, but considering how few jobs he’d gone out on before his involuntary retirement from the field, that didn’t surprise him. Jharn leaned on the counter and chatted with the guy like they were old friends, and quickly got a job lined up. “Easy work. Wall patrol for the first half of the night, then a sector sweep. What’s your range on undead detection spells?”
“Depends on what spell I use,” Nym said. “The one I’ve got that specifically finds undead is only good for maybe five hundred feet. I’ve got a wide range general scry that can see farther, but it won’t help me spot undead specifically. If I use a combination of spells, I could do maybe… maybe half a mile?”
Jharn nodded. “Sounds expensive though. How long can you keep it up?”
Nym wanted to say he could do it as long as needed, but with how much harder it was to keep channeled spells going anymore, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do a whole night straight. “I could do an area a few times an hour, I suppose.”
“Alright, let’s get going. I’ll show you the patrol route and we’ll plan on alternating scans while we travel.”
Before they could leave, the clerk took Nym into a pitch-black room and had him describe the decorations, which were several paintings. There was a range of styles which stress tested his ability to see shapes, colors, and fine details. It only took a few minutes to satisfy the clerk, and then they were on their way.
