Nym sat on the wall and watched the forest night life move around him. Wide range scrying combined with night vision gave him the most coverage, but unfortunately did very little to actually find anything hiding in the foliage. He switched back to his old targeted scry with a mobile anchor, though he’d made a few tweaks to get it up to about twenty feet in diameter now.
There were a lot of small animals hidden away, going about their lives uncaring of the upheaval in the forest. If anything, things seemed to be going better than usual for them, since many of the larger animals that would have preyed on them had been hunted by humans or killed by roaming undead. Nym hadn’t seen anything larger than a raccoon since he’d started really looking, and even those were rare.
Jharn landed next to him and yawned. “See anything?” he asked.
“Nothing we’d care about. You?”
“Couple of ghouls a quarter mile down the wall on the wrong side. I took care of them.”
“Burned the bodies?” Nym asked.
“Of course,” Jharn said, sounding mildly offended. “What kind of an amateur do you take me for?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Nym told him. “I just didn’t see any light from the fire.”
“Ah, I see. Sorry. I should explain, I guess. I burned them from the inside out, so it’s mostly heat coming out of them as they start to fall apart.”
That was a spell Nym was interested in learning. His own fire magics barely qualified as functional, and he kept meaning to do something about that. There were always so many other topics to spend his time on though, and no strong reason to work on elemental fire spells over healing magic or learning runes.
“That’s an interesting take on fire magic. Does it help destroy them while they’re still whole or is it just for clean up after they’re down?” Nym asked.
“It doesn’t hurt, I guess, but you know nothing really slows them down except chopping them up. I think it more speeds up the aftermath if I’m already burning them from the inside out while I cut them apart,” Jharn explained. He paused for a second, then added, “Plus I really like setting stuff on fire.”
“How are you cutting them apart though? I don’t see a weapon.”
“Mage blades,” Jharn said.
“Oh, that makes sense. I saw a mage once with ten or twelve swords floating around her. She chopped apart anything that got near her.”
“I’m not as good with it as the mage you’re describing, but I do know how to do it. I only use two small blades though,” Jharn said, pulling open the side of his coat to reveal a short, thick blade sheathed in a pocket stitched into the lining. A second one was opposite it, and with a brief surge of arcana, both rose into the air. They were each about eight inches long and maybe three inches thick, sharpened all the way up and down both sides and coming to a tapered point.
The blades started spinning in place until they were going so fast that they were just a blurry metal circle. Jharn sent them off into the woods to slice through a few tree limbs before they zipped back. “They get dull fast,” he said. “I’ve got a couple spare sets at home and it seems like at least once a week I’m sharpening the whole lot of them. There’s a spell to use arcana to cut things directly, but I don’t know it, so this is what I make do with.”
“Oh, I know that one!” Nym said. “It’s useless though. Good for making papercuts and not much else. It might cut through a shirt, if it was thin enough.”
“I don’t think we’re thinking of the same spell,” Jharn told him.
“Here, I’ll show you.” Nym snagged one of the severed branches with telekinesis and brought it over to hold in his hand. Then he cast the kinetic cutting spell he’d learned months ago from that spellbook in the Feldstal library and watched it slice right through the branch cleanly.
Nym stared at the severed limb for a second. “Huh. It doesn’t normally do that.”
Jharn started laughing. “The spell you’re using, does it have one part of the construct that looks kind of like a face? And right next to it is a spot that looks like skeletal hand that’s missing a finger?”
“Now that you mention it, yeah, it does.”
“That’s a craftsman spell, Nym. It’s designed to work primarily on inanimate objects. You could carve through stone with it if you’re patient enough, but it’s not something you’d use against another person.”
“What!” Nym was outraged. “The book never said that!”
Jharn kept laughing while Nym gave him a sour glare. Now that he thought about it, he remembered it had worked just fine on some rope once. He should have made the connection instead of just writing it off as a useless spell. Nym couldn’t think of any immediate use for it now, as he didn’t have any crafting projects in mind, but it would definitely come in handy sooner or later.
“Remind me to get a couple mage weapons tomorrow,” Nym said. “I went shopping for them once, but I didn’t know there were special spells to use them and I had a lot of trouble using just straight telekinesis to do any damage.”
“Will do. If you don’t mind me asking, how exactly were you killing ghouls as an air mage?”
“Earth magic,” Nym said honestly. “It was slow and messy, but also relatively safe, at least as long as there were only a few ghouls.”
As he was speaking, his scrying spell picked up two ghouls moving towards the wall about a hundred feet away. “Speaking of a few ghouls, there’s two of them right over there. Want to go take care of them with me?”
“Sure,” Jharn said. “I’m curious about how you slowly and messily dismember a ghoul with earth magic.”
The pair flew down the wall and settled into place. Nym pointed out where the ghouls were so that Jharn could watch them with his own magic, then spent the time to carefully create two earth golems. That was about as much as he could manage at the moment. His conduit could manage another set easily, if only he could get his arcana output back up to where it used to be. Nym examined it critically, trying to tell if it was any better after the last two days of exercises.
“What the hell are those?” Jharn asked.
“Earth golems,” Nym said. The two golems advanced on the ghouls, which promptly attacked them. The ghouls did far more damage than the golems did, but the golems just pulled up more earth and kept regenerating from the attacks. Eventually, both ghouls were battered down and had their limbs ripped off, though it was really more like the limbs were punched repeatedly until they tore.
“Okay, I can see why you would say that’s both messy and slow,” Jharn said. “Let’s get these torched and do another lap. I’ll show you how I do a ghoul next time we find one.”
Nym let the earth golems collapse back into piles of dirt and reshaped the ground into a small pit while Jharn ignited the wiggling body parts. It was somewhat gratifying to see that he also used arcana as fuel for his fire spells, but he was far more efficient than Nym, and the arcana didn’t need to be aimed. His just popped into being right where he wanted it to be and ignited immediately. The ghouls blacked and started falling apart within a minute, far quicker than they would have on a natural fire.
Jharn kept the fire completely under control the whole time. Anything that tried to spread got infused with raw arcana and pulled back under his control. There were barely even scorch marks on the grass when he finished. Nym swept the remains into the pit with telekinesis, then pushed all the dirt back on it. An effort of will packed it down smooth.
“Nicely done,’ Jharn said. “I can’t even tell anything is buried there. That… uh… kind of has some disturbing implications.”
Nym rolled his eyes. “I’m not burying bodies in the woods,” he said.
“Right, right. I believe you. I just need to send a quick message spell… and… done. Don’t worry, it’s nothing related to anything we’re doing out here.”
“Let’s just go find the next set of ghouls,” Nym told him.
They flew a few hundred feet down the wall and started scouting again. Jharn’s scrying spell didn’t have Nym’s range, but it worked better for finding undead in that he was able to sweep for any ghouls within a few hundred feet around him. It meant he had to fly back and forth over the canopy and then cast a few extra spells to get a visual on a ghoul when he found it, but he was still quick to spot new targets.
“Got one,” he said, landing back on the wall.
“North of here, in that weird tree that’s missing half its branches and is growing kind of sideways?”
“That’s the one. You want to watch from here or head over?”
“I’ll come with you,” Nym said. He was interested in seeing the arcana being constructed into the spell, which wasn’t something he could do through scrying.
The pair flew over and Jharn unleashed his two blades. They whipped through the air on currents of his arcana, flashing through both of the ghoul’s arms in one swift motion. Nym studied the spell as it cut its target apart in a matter of twenty or so seconds.
It wasn’t quite the same as Yura’s, but it accomplished similar effects. Hers had strands of arcana linking her to the weapons so that she could move them around, even if she couldn’t see them. Jharn’s version created lines of arcana that the weapons flowed across. If someone could see that arcana, it would be trivially easy to predict their paths.
While Jharn was slicing it up, he was also casting a second spell that infused the ghoul’s body with arcana. It built up inside the limbs especially, and Nym found himself casting the nose-blindness spell he’d learned to keep the stink away from him. He flew back about ten feet farther to avoid the smoke that was starting to come out of the cooking limbs and waited for Jharn to finish burning the ghoul.
The pair went on like that all night, flying back and forth over three miles of wall and killing any ghouls that got close to it. They got five shields for their trouble, which wasn’t really enough in Nym’s mind, but the job was supposed to be performed by a single person, so he found it hard to complain about having to split the pay.
The sun was just coming up when they returned to Ebalsan. A second jolt of stimulant got his eyes open again. Nym was peppy enough that he decided to make a quick run to the bakery and spent his new two shields five on some pastries while Jharn watched, amused.
“Come on,” Nym told him. “I want to go see some friends of mine. You should probably get to know them too if you’re going to be my bodyguard.”
“Sure,” Jharn said. “I’ve got another four hours left before I’m off for the day. Where do they live?”
“They were near the third outpost. I’m not exactly sure where they’re at right now, but I’ll send a message and double check.”
“Why did we come back to town if we were just going back out to the forest?” Jharn asked, annoyance plain in his voice.
“To get the pastries, of course! You can’t just go visiting people unexpectedly and not bring breakfast.”
Nym sat on the wall and watched the forest night life move around him. Wide range scrying combined with night vision gave him the most coverage, but unfortunately did very little to actually find anything hiding in the foliage. He switched back to his old targeted scry with a mobile anchor, though he’d made a few tweaks to get it up to about twenty feet in diameter now.
There were a lot of small animals hidden away, going about their lives uncaring of the upheaval in the forest. If anything, things seemed to be going better than usual for them, since many of the larger animals that would have preyed on them had been hunted by humans or killed by roaming undead. Nym hadn’t seen anything larger than a raccoon since he’d started really looking, and even those were rare.
Jharn landed next to him and yawned. “See anything?” he asked.
“Nothing we’d care about. You?”
“Couple of ghouls a quarter mile down the wall on the wrong side. I took care of them.”
“Burned the bodies?” Nym asked.
“Of course,” Jharn said, sounding mildly offended. “What kind of an amateur do you take me for?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Nym told him. “I just didn’t see any light from the fire.”
“Ah, I see. Sorry. I should explain, I guess. I burned them from the inside out, so it’s mostly heat coming out of them as they start to fall apart.”
That was a spell Nym was interested in learning. His own fire magics barely qualified as functional, and he kept meaning to do something about that. There were always so many other topics to spend his time on though, and no strong reason to work on elemental fire spells over healing magic or learning runes.
“That’s an interesting take on fire magic. Does it help destroy them while they’re still whole or is it just for clean up after they’re down?” Nym asked.
“It doesn’t hurt, I guess, but you know nothing really slows them down except chopping them up. I think it more speeds up the aftermath if I’m already burning them from the inside out while I cut them apart,” Jharn explained. He paused for a second, then added, “Plus I really like setting stuff on fire.”
“How are you cutting them apart though? I don’t see a weapon.”
“Mage blades,” Jharn said.
“Oh, that makes sense. I saw a mage once with ten or twelve swords floating around her. She chopped apart anything that got near her.”
“I’m not as good with it as the mage you’re describing, but I do know how to do it. I only use two small blades though,” Jharn said, pulling open the side of his coat to reveal a short, thick blade sheathed in a pocket stitched into the lining. A second one was opposite it, and with a brief surge of arcana, both rose into the air. They were each about eight inches long and maybe three inches thick, sharpened all the way up and down both sides and coming to a tapered point.
The blades started spinning in place until they were going so fast that they were just a blurry metal circle. Jharn sent them off into the woods to slice through a few tree limbs before they zipped back. “They get dull fast,” he said. “I’ve got a couple spare sets at home and it seems like at least once a week I’m sharpening the whole lot of them. There’s a spell to use arcana to cut things directly, but I don’t know it, so this is what I make do with.”
“Oh, I know that one!” Nym said. “It’s useless though. Good for making papercuts and not much else. It might cut through a shirt, if it was thin enough.”
“I don’t think we’re thinking of the same spell,” Jharn told him.
“Here, I’ll show you.” Nym snagged one of the severed branches with telekinesis and brought it over to hold in his hand. Then he cast the kinetic cutting spell he’d learned months ago from that spellbook in the Feldstal library and watched it slice right through the branch cleanly.
Nym stared at the severed limb for a second. “Huh. It doesn’t normally do that.”
Jharn started laughing. “The spell you’re using, does it have one part of the construct that looks kind of like a face? And right next to it is a spot that looks like skeletal hand that’s missing a finger?”
“Now that you mention it, yeah, it does.”
“That’s a craftsman spell, Nym. It’s designed to work primarily on inanimate objects. You could carve through stone with it if you’re patient enough, but it’s not something you’d use against another person.”
“What!” Nym was outraged. “The book never said that!”
Jharn kept laughing while Nym gave him a sour glare. Now that he thought about it, he remembered it had worked just fine on some rope once. He should have made the connection instead of just writing it off as a useless spell. Nym couldn’t think of any immediate use for it now, as he didn’t have any crafting projects in mind, but it would definitely come in handy sooner or later.
“Remind me to get a couple mage weapons tomorrow,” Nym said. “I went shopping for them once, but I didn’t know there were special spells to use them and I had a lot of trouble using just straight telekinesis to do any damage.”
“Will do. If you don’t mind me asking, how exactly were you killing ghouls as an air mage?”
“Earth magic,” Nym said honestly. “It was slow and messy, but also relatively safe, at least as long as there were only a few ghouls.”
As he was speaking, his scrying spell picked up two ghouls moving towards the wall about a hundred feet away. “Speaking of a few ghouls, there’s two of them right over there. Want to go take care of them with me?”
“Sure,” Jharn said. “I’m curious about how you slowly and messily dismember a ghoul with earth magic.”
The pair flew down the wall and settled into place. Nym pointed out where the ghouls were so that Jharn could watch them with his own magic, then spent the time to carefully create two earth golems. That was about as much as he could manage at the moment. His conduit could manage another set easily, if only he could get his arcana output back up to where it used to be. Nym examined it critically, trying to tell if it was any better after the last two days of exercises.
“What the hell are those?” Jharn asked.
“Earth golems,” Nym said. The two golems advanced on the ghouls, which promptly attacked them. The ghouls did far more damage than the golems did, but the golems just pulled up more earth and kept regenerating from the attacks. Eventually, both ghouls were battered down and had their limbs ripped off, though it was really more like the limbs were punched repeatedly until they tore.
“Okay, I can see why you would say that’s both messy and slow,” Jharn said. “Let’s get these torched and do another lap. I’ll show you how I do a ghoul next time we find one.”
Nym let the earth golems collapse back into piles of dirt and reshaped the ground into a small pit while Jharn ignited the wiggling body parts. It was somewhat gratifying to see that he also used arcana as fuel for his fire spells, but he was far more efficient than Nym, and the arcana didn’t need to be aimed. His just popped into being right where he wanted it to be and ignited immediately. The ghouls blacked and started falling apart within a minute, far quicker than they would have on a natural fire.
Jharn kept the fire completely under control the whole time. Anything that tried to spread got infused with raw arcana and pulled back under his control. There were barely even scorch marks on the grass when he finished. Nym swept the remains into the pit with telekinesis, then pushed all the dirt back on it. An effort of will packed it down smooth.
“Nicely done,’ Jharn said. “I can’t even tell anything is buried there. That… uh… kind of has some disturbing implications.”
Nym rolled his eyes. “I’m not burying bodies in the woods,” he said.
“Right, right. I believe you. I just need to send a quick message spell… and… done. Don’t worry, it’s nothing related to anything we’re doing out here.”
“Let’s just go find the next set of ghouls,” Nym told him.
They flew a few hundred feet down the wall and started scouting again. Jharn’s scrying spell didn’t have Nym’s range, but it worked better for finding undead in that he was able to sweep for any ghouls within a few hundred feet around him. It meant he had to fly back and forth over the canopy and then cast a few extra spells to get a visual on a ghoul when he found it, but he was still quick to spot new targets.
“Got one,” he said, landing back on the wall.
“North of here, in that weird tree that’s missing half its branches and is growing kind of sideways?”
“That’s the one. You want to watch from here or head over?”
“I’ll come with you,” Nym said. He was interested in seeing the arcana being constructed into the spell, which wasn’t something he could do through scrying.
The pair flew over and Jharn unleashed his two blades. They whipped through the air on currents of his arcana, flashing through both of the ghoul’s arms in one swift motion. Nym studied the spell as it cut its target apart in a matter of twenty or so seconds.
It wasn’t quite the same as Yura’s, but it accomplished similar effects. Hers had strands of arcana linking her to the weapons so that she could move them around, even if she couldn’t see them. Jharn’s version created lines of arcana that the weapons flowed across. If someone could see that arcana, it would be trivially easy to predict their paths.
While Jharn was slicing it up, he was also casting a second spell that infused the ghoul’s body with arcana. It built up inside the limbs especially, and Nym found himself casting the nose-blindness spell he’d learned to keep the stink away from him. He flew back about ten feet farther to avoid the smoke that was starting to come out of the cooking limbs and waited for Jharn to finish burning the ghoul.
The pair went on like that all night, flying back and forth over three miles of wall and killing any ghouls that got close to it. They got five shields for their trouble, which wasn’t really enough in Nym’s mind, but the job was supposed to be performed by a single person, so he found it hard to complain about having to split the pay.
The sun was just coming up when they returned to Ebalsan. A second jolt of stimulant got his eyes open again. Nym was peppy enough that he decided to make a quick run to the bakery and spent his new two shields five on some pastries while Jharn watched, amused.
“Come on,” Nym told him. “I want to go see some friends of mine. You should probably get to know them too if you’re going to be my bodyguard.”
“Sure,” Jharn said. “I’ve got another four hours left before I’m off for the day. Where do they live?”
“They were near the third outpost. I’m not exactly sure where they’re at right now, but I’ll send a message and double check.”
“Why did we come back to town if we were just going back out to the forest?” Jharn asked, annoyance plain in his voice.
“To get the pastries, of course! You can’t just go visiting people unexpectedly and not bring breakfast.”
