The refugee camps were functional at best. They were made completely from earth magic, which was fine for making thick walls and large buildings, but didn’t do much for insulation. Nym understood why they’d raise twenty long halls each capable of holding fifty or more people, but keeping that warm was going to be impossible and the people stuck living in them would be getting little to no privacy.
Hopefully, the forest would soon be completely clear of undead. With the tear no longer open and no new ghouls pouring out, the army had finally started to take control of the area. Nym had flown over it himself and scried for undead, and he’d been pleasantly surprised at how few he’d found. He’d left the ghouls for the army to kill, but had gone out of his way to execute three wights and a geist he’d spotted.
A squad of soldiers were manning the gate into the camp when Nym flew up, and one of them waved him over. He saw arcana wash out of a soldier and recognized it as an undead detection spell. That was a reasonable precaution to him, considering the surprise attack the wights had pulled where they’d come in wearing army uniforms and no one had realized they weren’t humans until they started killing.
“Nature of your business?” the soldier asked.
“Visiting a friend,” Nym said.
The soldier looked over at the one who’d cast the undead detection spell. She nodded back, and he said, “Go on in.”
Nym flew over the wall rather than go through the tunnel, mostly because he’d scried the camp as he approached and knew there were a few traps in there. It wasn’t that he expected the soldiers to activate them, but he really needed to be better about leaving himself vulnerable to ambush. His talk with Lord Feldstal had reminded him of exactly how he’d ended up getting dragged into the Collective in the first place, and it wasn’t something he was eager to repeat.
So he’d scried the entire camp before entering, used perfect sight to help him see it from far away, and then took a few minutes to look at the active magic, if only to try to gauge how strong it was. It was honestly kind of exhausting and he wasn’t sure he could keep up that level of paranoia and caution for any conceivable length of time.
But for the next few weeks at least, especially after having turned down Lord Feldstal’s request, he fully planned on being vigilant. He wasn’t even completely sure he trusted his safety in Archmage Veran’s sanctum, but if his mentor decided to bind him with a geas and hand him over to the Collective, there wasn’t much Nym could do to stop him.
Nym decided that he was extremely ready to be done with the entire kingdom of Delvros. As soon as Archmage Veran fulfilled his half of the bargains they made, he was moving somewhere far, far, far away from all of those people. He could teleport now; he could live wherever he wanted and still visit his friends regularly.
Cern was in one of the smaller workshops at the edge of the camp. It seemed that someone thought it was worth investing in Cern, since he was still doing alchemy. His equipment and supplies were pitiful compared to what he’d had in his old shop, but at least the workshop included an attached room for him to live in.
Nym landed in front of it and walked in. The alchemist glanced up from where he was grinding up some sort of moss with a mortar and pestle, a scowl already on his face. The look transformed to one of confusion when he saw Nym.
“What… can I help you?” he asked, studying Nym closely.
“More like I can help you,” Nym told him.
Cern had put on some weight and lost the bushy beard, though on closer inspection, it appeared to have been burned off. Well, it wasn’t the first time that had happened. He studied Nym with a tilted head, his face going from confused to incredulous.
“Nym?” he asked. “They said you’d grown taller, but…”
When he’d first met the alchemist, he was barely up to his chest. Now, Nym could look him in the eye without tilting his head. He’d grown more than a foot and a half in the last year, and filled out as well. Nym had been decidedly scrawny when he’d first arrived in Zoskan. He wasn’t muscular by any means, but his limbs were much thicker and his shoulders much broader.
“Bit of a growth spurt, I guess,” he said. “How are you doing?”
Cern snorted. “Bit of a growth spurt,” he repeated. “I’d like to know what fertilizer they’re throwing on you. And how’s it look like I’m doing, stuck in this stone ice box mixing up grubby little bottles of medicine? Life savings is gone, completely tied up in my shop, which is a big pile of charred logs.”
“Right, that’s why I’m here. Babkin told me you were looking to get out of the refugee camp before winter sets in. I thought I might be able to help.”
“Hmm.” Cern scratched at the remaining stubble of his beard as he thought. “I would like to, yes, but I’m lacking in coin right now, and I’m honestly not sure how far I could get before the snow starts coming down. Even if you were to plop a sack of crests on the table, there’s no teleportation platforms anywhere near here now.”
“I can teleport you,” Nym said.
“You can do what now?”
“I can teleport. It was the first third circle spell I learned.”
The alchemist just stared at Nym, his hand still raised to scratch as his face but no longer moving. Finally, he let out an almost puzzled, “Huh.”
“Yeah. Anyway. I have a friend who’s taken an interest in alchemy and could use a good tutor. I thought maybe you two could meet and see if you can work something out. It’d be a chance to get some seed money to start up a new business plus get you out of the camps over the winter months.”
“I could do that,” Cern said slowly. “When and where?”
“As soon as you’re ready to go,” Nym told him. “In a town east of here called Geldrin.”
Cern just snorted and shook his head. “Teleportation,” he muttered. “Give me a few minutes to finish this and get it packaged.”
When he was done, Nym teleported them both into the air about Geldrin and brought them down to street level outside the inn everyone was staying at. Cern staggered when they landed and clutched at Nym’s arm. “God’s balls, don’t do that!”
“Sorry, it’s easier to teleport into the air. No chance of landing inside a wall that way.”
“Is… is that a common risk?”
Nym shrugged. “Hasn’t happened to me yet.”
Cern gave him a less than complimentary look, then took a deliberate step away and straightened his clothes. “Alright, let’s meet this potential student and see where it goes from there.”
One habit Analia had never fallen out of, no matter how much she’d changed in other ways, was stitching those anti-scrying runes into her clothing and keeping them fully powered. It made it a pain to find her, and he once again bumped learning how to overpower them up his priorities list, where it would surely be pushed back by a dozen more pressing issues.
“I’ll send her a message to meet us here,” Nym said. “We can get lunch while we wait.”
He didn’t quite understand how the message spell managed to find her through the anti-scrying runes, considering that it used scrying magic itself to locate the intended recipient. One day he’d have to get a look at the rune sequences again. He suspected it was something on her side that specifically let certain types of magic through while blocking others.
Perhaps he’d just gotten lucky, or maybe she’d kept herself limited to the workshop she’d rented near the edge of town because she knew Nym would be showing up with Cern, but either way it only took a minute or so for her to come flying over. She was dressed in pants and a blouse again today, with her hair tied up and pinned back. Her hands had little pink burn marks across the back of them, and two of her fingers were bandaged.
“What happened?” Nym asked.
“Splashed myself with an acidic solution trying to make a potion earlier. It’s fine. My mistake for being clumsy.”
“Do you want me to heal that?”
“Do you know how to?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’ve gotten surface wounds pretty much down. It’s internals that I’m still having problems with. The diagnostic spells are really complicated, not just to cast, but to understand what they’re trying to tell you.”
“Not to interrupt,” Cern said, interrupting, “but perhaps you could introduce us while you work.”
“Right, sorry! Cern, this is my friend Analia, a second circle mage and budding alchemist. Analia, this is Cern, a master alchemist I used to scrounge various flowers, mosses, and herbs for when I first got to Zoskan and needed some money.”
“A pleasure, miss,” Cern said. His gaze moved down to her burnt hand. “You’ll forgive me, but you’re a little on the young side still. Not to brag, but I am a highly accomplished alchemist and my services don’t come cheap. You might be better off seeking someone less… experienced to teach you the fundamentals of the field.”
“I am far past the fundamentals,” she said somewhat icily. “I am in need of an accomplished alchemist to teach some of the more esoteric techniques.”
“Indeed? Why don’t we head inside for lunch, and we can discuss your current skills and what branches you intend to develop further. Then we can discuss the compensation for my services in assisting you.”
What followed was a lightning barrage of questions back and forth across the table, almost all of which went right over Nym’s head. He didn’t even know what most of the terms meant, what any of the technical names for the equipment were, or why it would matter that the ectoniamic regulator was kept isolated from all thaumatergic reactions, lest the runes get overcharged and ignite into a Scalinger’s Cascade.
Presumably, it was bad.
Analia slowly thawed out as they talked shop, and Cern certainly warmed up to her almost instantly. As soon as it was clear that his prospective student was not someone who needed to be taught the names of basic ingredients and lectured on the best way to store them, he started getting excited.
Then they hit a snag. “I definitely think I could teach you quite a bit. There is, however, the matter of the money,” Cern told her.
“Yes, of course. There is also the matter of travel. I’m not planning on remaining in Geldrin for much longer. My friends are all going south of the border for the winter. I’m still determining where exactly I’d like to go, but I do not intend to stay here.”
“Ah. Moving an alchemy workshop is a pain. So much delicate equipment. Are you leaving soon? It might be better to wait until you’ve settled in at your new residence.”
“That will depend on Nym, I think,” she said. “I am still waiting for him to decide where he wants to go.”
“You are?” Nym asked. He’d thought she was joking.
She let out an exasperated sigh. “Yes, dummy. I thought you might want to have some input on where we go next.”
“It’s all the same to me,” Nym said with a shrug. “I can do a thousand miles in an afternoon of flying now, assuming I can’t just teleport straight to my destination. Plus I’ll be staying with Archmage Veran for at least a few more weeks I think.”
Though the more he thought about that arrangement, the less he liked the idea of living there. Perhaps it was time to find his own place again. He wasn’t sure exactly where he wanted to go, other than that he would like no one from the Collective to know where he was, or from the army for that matter.
“Ahem. As I was saying though, we need to talk about my fee,” Cern said.
“Right. Sorry. Money. That’s important.”
“It is, but I have… an alternative idea that the two of you might find acceptable.”
The refugee camps were functional at best. They were made completely from earth magic, which was fine for making thick walls and large buildings, but didn’t do much for insulation. Nym understood why they’d raise twenty long halls each capable of holding fifty or more people, but keeping that warm was going to be impossible and the people stuck living in them would be getting little to no privacy.
Hopefully, the forest would soon be completely clear of undead. With the tear no longer open and no new ghouls pouring out, the army had finally started to take control of the area. Nym had flown over it himself and scried for undead, and he’d been pleasantly surprised at how few he’d found. He’d left the ghouls for the army to kill, but had gone out of his way to execute three wights and a geist he’d spotted.
A squad of soldiers were manning the gate into the camp when Nym flew up, and one of them waved him over. He saw arcana wash out of a soldier and recognized it as an undead detection spell. That was a reasonable precaution to him, considering the surprise attack the wights had pulled where they’d come in wearing army uniforms and no one had realized they weren’t humans until they started killing.
“Nature of your business?” the soldier asked.
“Visiting a friend,” Nym said.
The soldier looked over at the one who’d cast the undead detection spell. She nodded back, and he said, “Go on in.”
Nym flew over the wall rather than go through the tunnel, mostly because he’d scried the camp as he approached and knew there were a few traps in there. It wasn’t that he expected the soldiers to activate them, but he really needed to be better about leaving himself vulnerable to ambush. His talk with Lord Feldstal had reminded him of exactly how he’d ended up getting dragged into the Collective in the first place, and it wasn’t something he was eager to repeat.
So he’d scried the entire camp before entering, used perfect sight to help him see it from far away, and then took a few minutes to look at the active magic, if only to try to gauge how strong it was. It was honestly kind of exhausting and he wasn’t sure he could keep up that level of paranoia and caution for any conceivable length of time.
But for the next few weeks at least, especially after having turned down Lord Feldstal’s request, he fully planned on being vigilant. He wasn’t even completely sure he trusted his safety in Archmage Veran’s sanctum, but if his mentor decided to bind him with a geas and hand him over to the Collective, there wasn’t much Nym could do to stop him.
Nym decided that he was extremely ready to be done with the entire kingdom of Delvros. As soon as Archmage Veran fulfilled his half of the bargains they made, he was moving somewhere far, far, far away from all of those people. He could teleport now; he could live wherever he wanted and still visit his friends regularly.
Cern was in one of the smaller workshops at the edge of the camp. It seemed that someone thought it was worth investing in Cern, since he was still doing alchemy. His equipment and supplies were pitiful compared to what he’d had in his old shop, but at least the workshop included an attached room for him to live in.
Nym landed in front of it and walked in. The alchemist glanced up from where he was grinding up some sort of moss with a mortar and pestle, a scowl already on his face. The look transformed to one of confusion when he saw Nym.
“What… can I help you?” he asked, studying Nym closely.
“More like I can help you,” Nym told him.
Cern had put on some weight and lost the bushy beard, though on closer inspection, it appeared to have been burned off. Well, it wasn’t the first time that had happened. He studied Nym with a tilted head, his face going from confused to incredulous.
“Nym?” he asked. “They said you’d grown taller, but…”
When he’d first met the alchemist, he was barely up to his chest. Now, Nym could look him in the eye without tilting his head. He’d grown more than a foot and a half in the last year, and filled out as well. Nym had been decidedly scrawny when he’d first arrived in Zoskan. He wasn’t muscular by any means, but his limbs were much thicker and his shoulders much broader.
“Bit of a growth spurt, I guess,” he said. “How are you doing?”
Cern snorted. “Bit of a growth spurt,” he repeated. “I’d like to know what fertilizer they’re throwing on you. And how’s it look like I’m doing, stuck in this stone ice box mixing up grubby little bottles of medicine? Life savings is gone, completely tied up in my shop, which is a big pile of charred logs.”
“Right, that’s why I’m here. Babkin told me you were looking to get out of the refugee camp before winter sets in. I thought I might be able to help.”
“Hmm.” Cern scratched at the remaining stubble of his beard as he thought. “I would like to, yes, but I’m lacking in coin right now, and I’m honestly not sure how far I could get before the snow starts coming down. Even if you were to plop a sack of crests on the table, there’s no teleportation platforms anywhere near here now.”
“I can teleport you,” Nym said.
“You can do what now?”
“I can teleport. It was the first third circle spell I learned.”
The alchemist just stared at Nym, his hand still raised to scratch as his face but no longer moving. Finally, he let out an almost puzzled, “Huh.”
“Yeah. Anyway. I have a friend who’s taken an interest in alchemy and could use a good tutor. I thought maybe you two could meet and see if you can work something out. It’d be a chance to get some seed money to start up a new business plus get you out of the camps over the winter months.”
“I could do that,” Cern said slowly. “When and where?”
“As soon as you’re ready to go,” Nym told him. “In a town east of here called Geldrin.”
Cern just snorted and shook his head. “Teleportation,” he muttered. “Give me a few minutes to finish this and get it packaged.”
When he was done, Nym teleported them both into the air about Geldrin and brought them down to street level outside the inn everyone was staying at. Cern staggered when they landed and clutched at Nym’s arm. “God’s balls, don’t do that!”
“Sorry, it’s easier to teleport into the air. No chance of landing inside a wall that way.”
“Is… is that a common risk?”
Nym shrugged. “Hasn’t happened to me yet.”
Cern gave him a less than complimentary look, then took a deliberate step away and straightened his clothes. “Alright, let’s meet this potential student and see where it goes from there.”
One habit Analia had never fallen out of, no matter how much she’d changed in other ways, was stitching those anti-scrying runes into her clothing and keeping them fully powered. It made it a pain to find her, and he once again bumped learning how to overpower them up his priorities list, where it would surely be pushed back by a dozen more pressing issues.
“I’ll send her a message to meet us here,” Nym said. “We can get lunch while we wait.”
He didn’t quite understand how the message spell managed to find her through the anti-scrying runes, considering that it used scrying magic itself to locate the intended recipient. One day he’d have to get a look at the rune sequences again. He suspected it was something on her side that specifically let certain types of magic through while blocking others.
Perhaps he’d just gotten lucky, or maybe she’d kept herself limited to the workshop she’d rented near the edge of town because she knew Nym would be showing up with Cern, but either way it only took a minute or so for her to come flying over. She was dressed in pants and a blouse again today, with her hair tied up and pinned back. Her hands had little pink burn marks across the back of them, and two of her fingers were bandaged.
“What happened?” Nym asked.
“Splashed myself with an acidic solution trying to make a potion earlier. It’s fine. My mistake for being clumsy.”
“Do you want me to heal that?”
“Do you know how to?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’ve gotten surface wounds pretty much down. It’s internals that I’m still having problems with. The diagnostic spells are really complicated, not just to cast, but to understand what they’re trying to tell you.”
“Not to interrupt,” Cern said, interrupting, “but perhaps you could introduce us while you work.”
“Right, sorry! Cern, this is my friend Analia, a second circle mage and budding alchemist. Analia, this is Cern, a master alchemist I used to scrounge various flowers, mosses, and herbs for when I first got to Zoskan and needed some money.”
“A pleasure, miss,” Cern said. His gaze moved down to her burnt hand. “You’ll forgive me, but you’re a little on the young side still. Not to brag, but I am a highly accomplished alchemist and my services don’t come cheap. You might be better off seeking someone less… experienced to teach you the fundamentals of the field.”
“I am far past the fundamentals,” she said somewhat icily. “I am in need of an accomplished alchemist to teach some of the more esoteric techniques.”
“Indeed? Why don’t we head inside for lunch, and we can discuss your current skills and what branches you intend to develop further. Then we can discuss the compensation for my services in assisting you.”
What followed was a lightning barrage of questions back and forth across the table, almost all of which went right over Nym’s head. He didn’t even know what most of the terms meant, what any of the technical names for the equipment were, or why it would matter that the ectoniamic regulator was kept isolated from all thaumatergic reactions, lest the runes get overcharged and ignite into a Scalinger’s Cascade.
Presumably, it was bad.
Analia slowly thawed out as they talked shop, and Cern certainly warmed up to her almost instantly. As soon as it was clear that his prospective student was not someone who needed to be taught the names of basic ingredients and lectured on the best way to store them, he started getting excited.
Then they hit a snag. “I definitely think I could teach you quite a bit. There is, however, the matter of the money,” Cern told her.
“Yes, of course. There is also the matter of travel. I’m not planning on remaining in Geldrin for much longer. My friends are all going south of the border for the winter. I’m still determining where exactly I’d like to go, but I do not intend to stay here.”
“Ah. Moving an alchemy workshop is a pain. So much delicate equipment. Are you leaving soon? It might be better to wait until you’ve settled in at your new residence.”
“That will depend on Nym, I think,” she said. “I am still waiting for him to decide where he wants to go.”
“You are?” Nym asked. He’d thought she was joking.
She let out an exasperated sigh. “Yes, dummy. I thought you might want to have some input on where we go next.”
“It’s all the same to me,” Nym said with a shrug. “I can do a thousand miles in an afternoon of flying now, assuming I can’t just teleport straight to my destination. Plus I’ll be staying with Archmage Veran for at least a few more weeks I think.”
Though the more he thought about that arrangement, the less he liked the idea of living there. Perhaps it was time to find his own place again. He wasn’t sure exactly where he wanted to go, other than that he would like no one from the Collective to know where he was, or from the army for that matter.
“Ahem. As I was saying though, we need to talk about my fee,” Cern said.
“Right. Sorry. Money. That’s important.”
“It is, but I have… an alternative idea that the two of you might find acceptable.”
