It didn’t take long to find the new hut with Ophelia’s help. Thankfully, she was, as always, an early riser. Nobody else was up yet, so the three of them sat at the stone table in the middle of their hut and talked quietly while the rest of the Earth Shapers slept in.
“Seems like there’s a new change every day,” she said, gesturing towards Jharn.
“I don’t know how long we’ll be working together,” Jharn said. “So far, it’s been an easy assignment and he’s been good to work with. I’ve got a little brother around his age who’s a damned menace, so it was nice to not have those expectations met coming into this. I will admit I was worried.”
“Sorry to disappoint. I could be more of a jerk if you like.”
“I would prefer if you didn’t,” Jharn said dryly.
Monick shuffled out of his room and yawned. “Thought I smelled Nym visiting,” he said. After sitting down and rooting through the basket of pastries, he looked around and added, “You are all way too perky.”
“I blame a stimulant spell I’m using to adjust my sleep schedule,” Nym said. “I don’t know what Ophelia’s excuse is.”
“Tormenting Bildar is all the reason I need.”
“There’s only one custard in here,” Monick said. “If he doesn’t get up soon, I’m just going to eat it myself.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Bildar said from across the room, having emerged from his own bedroom. He scooped up the basket and claimed the custard, then sat down and relinquished the rest of the spoils. “Nym, have I told you lately that you’re my favorite person?”
“Only every time I bring food,” Nym said with a smile.
“That’s when it’s most true.”
“What are you guys doing today?” Nym asked.
“Same thing we do every day: grind out a few thousand new feet of wall. Sometimes I wish they’d just burn the whole forest down instead,” Bildar grumbled.
“That would destabilize the whole region,” Ophelia pointed out. “It would be a huge loss of lumber for the entire country, not to mention a couple dozen towns that depend on the forest collapsing. They’re already struggling with this whole undead thing dragging on all summer.”
“I know that, but it would sure make this whole thing easier to do. Trees grow back.”
“If they did that, we’d be out of work again,” Monick said.
“Oh, yeah. That’s a good point. This whole wall would have been done months ago if the trees weren’t in the way.”
Nym wasn’t willing to fight his geas to participate in a discussion about what the military was planning on what was going on in the center of the forest. He didn’t think he was exactly forbidden from talking about it, but it would hit uncomfortably close to things he knew the geas would block, so he just kept quiet.
“Whatever they decide is all the same to us,” Bildar said. “We’ll keep building walls where they say to until the job’s done or they come up with something else to build. Sure does seem like a roundabout way to go about things though. I wonder what they know that they’re not telling us.”
Jharn’s jaw worked as his mouth opened and closed without any sound coming out. With a silent sigh, he gave up. No one remarked on it, though everyone knew what was happening. It wasn’t the first time the conversation had been derailed that way. By unspoken agreement, they shifted from speculating on what the military was planning to a more benign topic.
Half an hour later, Bildar shooed them all out the door. “It was nice to see you, and to meet your new friend, but we’ve got work to do. I’m sure you have something constructive to do with your time,” he told Nym. “We’ll come visit next time we’re in town. Should be… four days? Ophelia, when’s our next day off?”
“Six days,” she said.
Bildar started swearing. “Six days, then,” he said, a furious scowl painted on his face.
“Good bye,” the twins said, leaving with Bildar.
Ophelia made to follow them, but hesitated for a second. “It was nice to see you again. Have you given any thought to the apprenticeship yet?” she asked.
“Not yet. Things have been kind of hectic,” Nym told her.
“Understandable. Take your time. Have a good day, and tell Analia I said not to give up. Sometimes people don’t know they want something until it hits them in the face.”
“I… what?” Nym shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll tell her, I guess?”
“Thanks. Bye now. It was nice meeting you, Jharn.”
“You too,” the bodyguard said.
The Earth Shapers left to start their day, and Nym flew back to town. As they took off, he looked over at Jharn and asked, “What do you think that means?”
The other mage just started laughing.
* * *
Nym and Jharn stood inside a weapons shop, his coat’s inner pocket heavy with fifteen shields. The bodyguard’s display of magically chopping ghouls to pieces would have convinced Nym to revisit mage weapons if Yura hadn’t already done it over a month ago. He just hadn’t had the time or income to do so. Now that he was drawing a monthly stipend for what amounted to a few hours of work a night in addition to getting back into freelancing, a weapon seemed like a sound investment.
They hadn’t gone back to the one Nym had originally visited, but rather one that Jharn had purchased several weapons from and which he regularly returned to when he needed replacements or maintenance. The set up was nothing like what Nym was familiar with. While there were plenty of weapons on the walls, they were there primarily for display purposes, and the actual stockpiles were kept in the back.
A huge man walked out of the back room and looked at them. He was easily over six feet tall, heavily muscled and without a single hair on his head or chin. “What do you need today, Jharn?”
“Nothing for me. My friend here is looking to get his first mage weapon. You mind if we use the firing range to try a few things out for him?”
“Sure. Take your time. Come find me once you’ve picked something out.”
Nym hadn’t needed it, but he’d still asked Jharn to write out the construct for his mage weapon spell. Nym practiced it a few times using a loaner weapon to confirm he had the hang of it, then they’d hit the shop. He tried out a pair of spinning blades on display that looked like Jharn’s and found them to be identical, which was no surprise considering the store was probably where the bodyguard had purchased them.
Nym also tried out some of the heavier weapons and found that, even with his new magic, they were still exhausting to swing around. He could keep three or four spinning blades going for the same amount of arcana as it took to smack the target with one heavy spiked ball. Admittedly, the spiked ball did way more damage, but against a ghoul, it was a clear choice.
Plus, when he thought about the logistics, he had no idea how he was supposed to haul around the ball. Spinning blades were the way to go, at least for undead slaying. He also picked up a pack of thin metal needles, pointed on both ends. Those were more what he considered human-defense weapons, which hopefully he wouldn’t have any reason to use, but they were light and easy to store.
They paid the shopkeeper a full crest for the needles and four blades. Nym winced at the price and actually had to borrow a few shields from Jharn, but they swung by the house right after so he could restock and pay back the money. Then they hit a leatherworker’s shop so Nym could get his coat modified to hold them, even though he didn’t tend to wear it very often anymore unless he was going flying. It was just too hot in the middle of summer.
After that, Jharn switched places with Navarim. He borrowed the spare bedroom to sleep, much to Analia’s annoyance. She didn’t say anything out loud, but Nym could tell by the look she gave the closed door that she wasn’t impressed with the new arrangement.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” he said, “Ophelia asked me to pass you a message. I’m not sure why she didn’t just send it to you, but I said I would.”
“What did she say?” Analia asked.
“Um… something about not giving up, and not knowing what you want until it hits you in the face?”
Analia arched an eyebrow and said, “What do you think she meant by that?”
“No idea. I’m just passing on the message.”
“Let me know if you ever figure it out,” she told him.
“Why would I need to… It’s not even a message for me? Why are you laughing?” Nym demanded, spinning around to glare at Navarim. He wasn’t sure what the older mage was snickering about, but he knew it was at his expense.
“You’ll figure it out someday,” Navarim said.
“Or you could just tell me. Is this supposed to be some kind of secret?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
“How would I know!” Nym threw up his hands and stomped off.
* * *
Nym eyed the machine in front of him warily. “Are you sure this is safe?” he asked.
“Of course it is,” Doliar said.
“It doesn’t look safe. It looks… pointy.”
“Well, yeah, but it’s not like I’m going to stab you with it.”
The contraption looked something like a hollow, life-sized doll. It was currently cracked open down the middle, revealing a series of rune sequences carved into the interior. On the outside were about fifty spikes tacked on at various places. Nym couldn’t quite figure out what the logic behind their placement was, but something about it looked familiar.
“Hey, are the spikes mapping out arcana channels?” he asked suddenly.
“Close,” Doliar said. “It’s actually common pain points for arcana poisoning. The channels were designed to fill the places people most commonly bleed excess arcana into, so the positions are very close to the same, just with some slight adjustments for where it proved impossible or just too difficult to forge the channel.”
“And why am I in the same room as this thing again?”
“So I can get a reading on if your pain points have changed based on the new shape of your soul well.”
Nym thought about that for a second. “That sounds like you’re asking me to deliberately give myself arcana poisoning again.”
Doliar at least had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. “Just a little bit. You’ll hardly notice it, probably have it cleared out in under an hour.”
“I don’t like this plan,” Nym said.
“Oh come on. Don’t be a baby! I’ve almost got this calibrated now.”
“Did you get this approved?” Nym asked.
“Approved by who? I’m the head researcher!”
“Fine, I’ll do it. But in return, I want you to walk me through a few healing spells I’ve been trying to figure out.”
Doliar frowned and said, “My time is kind of valuable. I’m sure someone else could help you with this.”
“I’ve got the book right here.” Nym patted his pack. “It’ll hardly take any time at all. Plus you can monitor the arcana poisoning while I use other spells when I practice.”
The healer perked up at that. “That’s a good test. We should definitely do that. Okay, let me finish adjusting this. What spells were you looking at anyway?”
Nym pulled the book out and flipped to the first page he’d bookmarked. “Here, this one. It’s supposed to be a first circle spell that speeds up natural regeneration, but every time I make the construct, it collapses. I don’t see anything here saying I need to do an intent filter for the arcana, but I can’t think of why else the spell keeps failing.”
“That should be easy enough. There’s nothing too tricky in this diagram. We’ll look at it in a few minutes here. The sensors are all on, go ahead and start pulling in arcana now.”
Nym stifled a groan. The next hour or two was going to hurt.
It didn’t take long to find the new hut with Ophelia’s help. Thankfully, she was, as always, an early riser. Nobody else was up yet, so the three of them sat at the stone table in the middle of their hut and talked quietly while the rest of the Earth Shapers slept in.
“Seems like there’s a new change every day,” she said, gesturing towards Jharn.
“I don’t know how long we’ll be working together,” Jharn said. “So far, it’s been an easy assignment and he’s been good to work with. I’ve got a little brother around his age who’s a damned menace, so it was nice to not have those expectations met coming into this. I will admit I was worried.”
“Sorry to disappoint. I could be more of a jerk if you like.”
“I would prefer if you didn’t,” Jharn said dryly.
Monick shuffled out of his room and yawned. “Thought I smelled Nym visiting,” he said. After sitting down and rooting through the basket of pastries, he looked around and added, “You are all way too perky.”
“I blame a stimulant spell I’m using to adjust my sleep schedule,” Nym said. “I don’t know what Ophelia’s excuse is.”
“Tormenting Bildar is all the reason I need.”
“There’s only one custard in here,” Monick said. “If he doesn’t get up soon, I’m just going to eat it myself.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Bildar said from across the room, having emerged from his own bedroom. He scooped up the basket and claimed the custard, then sat down and relinquished the rest of the spoils. “Nym, have I told you lately that you’re my favorite person?”
“Only every time I bring food,” Nym said with a smile.
“That’s when it’s most true.”
“What are you guys doing today?” Nym asked.
“Same thing we do every day: grind out a few thousand new feet of wall. Sometimes I wish they’d just burn the whole forest down instead,” Bildar grumbled.
“That would destabilize the whole region,” Ophelia pointed out. “It would be a huge loss of lumber for the entire country, not to mention a couple dozen towns that depend on the forest collapsing. They’re already struggling with this whole undead thing dragging on all summer.”
“I know that, but it would sure make this whole thing easier to do. Trees grow back.”
“If they did that, we’d be out of work again,” Monick said.
“Oh, yeah. That’s a good point. This whole wall would have been done months ago if the trees weren’t in the way.”
Nym wasn’t willing to fight his geas to participate in a discussion about what the military was planning on what was going on in the center of the forest. He didn’t think he was exactly forbidden from talking about it, but it would hit uncomfortably close to things he knew the geas would block, so he just kept quiet.
“Whatever they decide is all the same to us,” Bildar said. “We’ll keep building walls where they say to until the job’s done or they come up with something else to build. Sure does seem like a roundabout way to go about things though. I wonder what they know that they’re not telling us.”
Jharn’s jaw worked as his mouth opened and closed without any sound coming out. With a silent sigh, he gave up. No one remarked on it, though everyone knew what was happening. It wasn’t the first time the conversation had been derailed that way. By unspoken agreement, they shifted from speculating on what the military was planning to a more benign topic.
Half an hour later, Bildar shooed them all out the door. “It was nice to see you, and to meet your new friend, but we’ve got work to do. I’m sure you have something constructive to do with your time,” he told Nym. “We’ll come visit next time we’re in town. Should be… four days? Ophelia, when’s our next day off?”
“Six days,” she said.
Bildar started swearing. “Six days, then,” he said, a furious scowl painted on his face.
“Good bye,” the twins said, leaving with Bildar.
Ophelia made to follow them, but hesitated for a second. “It was nice to see you again. Have you given any thought to the apprenticeship yet?” she asked.
“Not yet. Things have been kind of hectic,” Nym told her.
“Understandable. Take your time. Have a good day, and tell Analia I said not to give up. Sometimes people don’t know they want something until it hits them in the face.”
“I… what?” Nym shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll tell her, I guess?”
“Thanks. Bye now. It was nice meeting you, Jharn.”
“You too,” the bodyguard said.
The Earth Shapers left to start their day, and Nym flew back to town. As they took off, he looked over at Jharn and asked, “What do you think that means?”
The other mage just started laughing.
* * *
Nym and Jharn stood inside a weapons shop, his coat’s inner pocket heavy with fifteen shields. The bodyguard’s display of magically chopping ghouls to pieces would have convinced Nym to revisit mage weapons if Yura hadn’t already done it over a month ago. He just hadn’t had the time or income to do so. Now that he was drawing a monthly stipend for what amounted to a few hours of work a night in addition to getting back into freelancing, a weapon seemed like a sound investment.
They hadn’t gone back to the one Nym had originally visited, but rather one that Jharn had purchased several weapons from and which he regularly returned to when he needed replacements or maintenance. The set up was nothing like what Nym was familiar with. While there were plenty of weapons on the walls, they were there primarily for display purposes, and the actual stockpiles were kept in the back.
A huge man walked out of the back room and looked at them. He was easily over six feet tall, heavily muscled and without a single hair on his head or chin. “What do you need today, Jharn?”
“Nothing for me. My friend here is looking to get his first mage weapon. You mind if we use the firing range to try a few things out for him?”
“Sure. Take your time. Come find me once you’ve picked something out.”
Nym hadn’t needed it, but he’d still asked Jharn to write out the construct for his mage weapon spell. Nym practiced it a few times using a loaner weapon to confirm he had the hang of it, then they’d hit the shop. He tried out a pair of spinning blades on display that looked like Jharn’s and found them to be identical, which was no surprise considering the store was probably where the bodyguard had purchased them.
Nym also tried out some of the heavier weapons and found that, even with his new magic, they were still exhausting to swing around. He could keep three or four spinning blades going for the same amount of arcana as it took to smack the target with one heavy spiked ball. Admittedly, the spiked ball did way more damage, but against a ghoul, it was a clear choice.
Plus, when he thought about the logistics, he had no idea how he was supposed to haul around the ball. Spinning blades were the way to go, at least for undead slaying. He also picked up a pack of thin metal needles, pointed on both ends. Those were more what he considered human-defense weapons, which hopefully he wouldn’t have any reason to use, but they were light and easy to store.
They paid the shopkeeper a full crest for the needles and four blades. Nym winced at the price and actually had to borrow a few shields from Jharn, but they swung by the house right after so he could restock and pay back the money. Then they hit a leatherworker’s shop so Nym could get his coat modified to hold them, even though he didn’t tend to wear it very often anymore unless he was going flying. It was just too hot in the middle of summer.
After that, Jharn switched places with Navarim. He borrowed the spare bedroom to sleep, much to Analia’s annoyance. She didn’t say anything out loud, but Nym could tell by the look she gave the closed door that she wasn’t impressed with the new arrangement.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” he said, “Ophelia asked me to pass you a message. I’m not sure why she didn’t just send it to you, but I said I would.”
“What did she say?” Analia asked.
“Um… something about not giving up, and not knowing what you want until it hits you in the face?”
Analia arched an eyebrow and said, “What do you think she meant by that?”
“No idea. I’m just passing on the message.”
“Let me know if you ever figure it out,” she told him.
“Why would I need to… It’s not even a message for me? Why are you laughing?” Nym demanded, spinning around to glare at Navarim. He wasn’t sure what the older mage was snickering about, but he knew it was at his expense.
“You’ll figure it out someday,” Navarim said.
“Or you could just tell me. Is this supposed to be some kind of secret?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
“How would I know!” Nym threw up his hands and stomped off.
* * *
Nym eyed the machine in front of him warily. “Are you sure this is safe?” he asked.
“Of course it is,” Doliar said.
“It doesn’t look safe. It looks… pointy.”
“Well, yeah, but it’s not like I’m going to stab you with it.”
The contraption looked something like a hollow, life-sized doll. It was currently cracked open down the middle, revealing a series of rune sequences carved into the interior. On the outside were about fifty spikes tacked on at various places. Nym couldn’t quite figure out what the logic behind their placement was, but something about it looked familiar.
“Hey, are the spikes mapping out arcana channels?” he asked suddenly.
“Close,” Doliar said. “It’s actually common pain points for arcana poisoning. The channels were designed to fill the places people most commonly bleed excess arcana into, so the positions are very close to the same, just with some slight adjustments for where it proved impossible or just too difficult to forge the channel.”
“And why am I in the same room as this thing again?”
“So I can get a reading on if your pain points have changed based on the new shape of your soul well.”
Nym thought about that for a second. “That sounds like you’re asking me to deliberately give myself arcana poisoning again.”
Doliar at least had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. “Just a little bit. You’ll hardly notice it, probably have it cleared out in under an hour.”
“I don’t like this plan,” Nym said.
“Oh come on. Don’t be a baby! I’ve almost got this calibrated now.”
“Did you get this approved?” Nym asked.
“Approved by who? I’m the head researcher!”
“Fine, I’ll do it. But in return, I want you to walk me through a few healing spells I’ve been trying to figure out.”
Doliar frowned and said, “My time is kind of valuable. I’m sure someone else could help you with this.”
“I’ve got the book right here.” Nym patted his pack. “It’ll hardly take any time at all. Plus you can monitor the arcana poisoning while I use other spells when I practice.”
The healer perked up at that. “That’s a good test. We should definitely do that. Okay, let me finish adjusting this. What spells were you looking at anyway?”
Nym pulled the book out and flipped to the first page he’d bookmarked. “Here, this one. It’s supposed to be a first circle spell that speeds up natural regeneration, but every time I make the construct, it collapses. I don’t see anything here saying I need to do an intent filter for the arcana, but I can’t think of why else the spell keeps failing.”
“That should be easy enough. There’s nothing too tricky in this diagram. We’ll look at it in a few minutes here. The sensors are all on, go ahead and start pulling in arcana now.”
Nym stifled a groan. The next hour or two was going to hurt.
