Ascendant

Nym regretted coming to Abilanth, Academy or no. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why he’d thought this was a good idea. It wasn’t like he was going to get into the Academy. He was too young, too dirty, too poor, and too unknown. A part of him had thought it would be easy to waltz right in when he’d found out Amos had been admitted. After all, that twit could barely magic himself out of an empty room with an open door, so Nym should have had no problems.

He hadn’t factored in Amos’s family, the money, the connections, the pedigree. Sure, Nym was a better mage by far, but Amos was a known quantity. He would go to the Academy, attend his classes, pay his tuition, and graduate in a few years, just the way the Academy wanted. Nym would not do any of those things. Nym couldn’t even get into the middle ring without sneaking in.

Teaching himself was not going so well. His experiments with fire magic had nearly gotten him kicked back out onto the streets. The other kids all hated him now, and it was only because Valgo had a use for him that the old thief had interceded to let him stay, proving once and for all that Nym was firmly in his grasp now. No one had cared enough to help with all the burns he’d gotten.

So he huddled in a corner that smelled of rotted wood and mildew and cursed the sky for giving them more snow. The roof was more hole than shingles at this point, and all the good corners were taken by other kids. Sure, Nym could bully his way in. He was bigger than most of the kids, except for a few of the oldest, and it wasn’t like anyone else had magic. All it would cost was any semblance of security and yet another guilty barb in his conscience.

Street kids were vicious and right now everybody hated him. If Nym forced someone out of one of the good corners so he could be moderately more comfortable, the most likely result was that one of them would murder him in his sleep. Valgo might be annoyed since he still had plans for Nym, might even beat whatever urchin did it to death, but that wouldn’t help Nym after the fact.

No, the best option was to accept the mildewy corner for the protection it gave him from the wind and lament that his lack of control over his pyromancy had cost him the good will of his fellow street urchins. He needed to keep working on the internal heat regulation spell anyway if he was going to survive the winter. It was that or find a new place to sleep, and he was not interested in the other offer he had.

Nym shuddered just thinking about it. If Valgo hadn’t come along when he did, it would have been a kidnapping, not an offer. He was not eager to peddle his ass in a brothel, no matter how warm it was or how regular the meals were. It was twelve kinds of messed up that places like that even existed, and worse that thugs went out and just rounded up random homeless kids to fill the rooms.

He was so lost in his own thoughts that it took him a minute to realize something was happening. The street kids were all running for the far end of the building, but they were excited instead of scared, so Nym knew there was no danger. Nobody could rabbit like a pack of street urchins, and they’d disappear at the mere whiff of trouble. Curious, but also knowing he wasn’t welcome, Nym rose from his place and followed after them at a distance.

A young man was in the building with a pack. He was maybe sixteen or seventeen, wearing brown robes that announced his status as a student at the Academy. Nym had seen some of them around town when he’d first gotten to Abilanth, and he recognized the stitching on the border, even if this one’s color was different from the ones he’d seen.

The teenager sat down the pack and started calling the urchins towards him by name. They clearly knew what was happening, since they all came willingly and no one crowded him. Nym’s eyebrows rose as he watched the student mage pull out jars of salves and ointments, then administer them to the kids.

Everyone got their turn; everyone waited patiently in a way he’d never seen them behave for anyone. Nym smiled to see it, then went back to his corner. It was nice to see that even here, there were some people who cared. The mage was no doubt from some rich family, but spending his dad’s money on medical aid for the poor was better than what he’d seen other rich kids waste it on.

He put the student out of mind. As nice as it was to see a ray of hope in the darkness, he still had a long way to go before he climbed back out of it. Valgo was not going to relinquish his blackmail material. He was going to have to help the old thief knock over a couple of manor houses owned by rich nobles. At least it would be stealing from people who could afford to lose it.

That was just a stall though. Valgo wasn’t the type of person who would just thank him for a job well done and let him go. There would always be another job as long as he had his hooks in Nym, more work that risked Nym’s life to make Valgo rich. He needed to get rid of the pawn shop receipt Valgo had acquired, maybe the books too. More than that, he needed to get rid of Valgo.

The world as a whole would probably be a better place, and if he could get access to all the loot the man had stashed, there would be enough to pay for his place in the Academy and provide a place to live for the street kids currently suffering under Valgo’s tyranny. Everyone would be better off if he could only think of a way to do it. Nym hadn’t realized how much of the money they stole was funneled right to the old thief until he’d started asking about it.

“Hello,” a voice said.

Nym started in place and looked up to see the student mage standing in front of him. The teenager smiled at him and said, “Do you need anything taken care of?”

“No,” Nym said slowly, more of a question than an answer. He thought about it for a second. “No. I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Are you sure? Those look like fresh burns on your hands and arms.”

“Ah… that. No. Those are fine.”

The burns were his punishment, a thing that the other kids saw and let them know that Nym was suffering for his screw up. Nobody had any blankets anymore, but Nym had it worse because he still had to deal with the burns in addition to being cold.

The student frowned at him and squatted down to sit next to him. “Want to talk about it?” he asked.

“Not much to say. I got the stupid idea that I could warm up our blanket stash so everyone would be more comfortable, but I suck at fire magic and set them on fire instead. Burned myself putting the fire out and now everyone hates me because it’s the first month of winter and we’re all going to freeze to death before it gets warm again.”

“Blankets,” the student muttered to himself, looking around appraisingly. “Of course they need blankets. Hmmm.”

He turned back to Nym and said, “But you, you’re very young to be using fire magic. Really, any second circle spell is impressive. Did you have a master who took you on as an apprentice?”

Nym laughed bitterly. “Do a couple of beginner books count?”

“Fire though,” the student said. “It’s considered the hardest of the basic elemental manipulations because the other ones all have sources to draw on. Air is everywhere. Earth is easy to come by as soon as you leave the city, and not too difficult to gather even here. Water, well… just look at all the snow.

“But fire, fire is different. With fire, you can’t just merge your arcana into the air or ground and enforce your will on the world. Fire needs a spark, an act of creation.”

“Got that part down,” Nym muttered glumly.

“And once you’ve formed that fire, it naturally wants to spread and consume. That is fire’s nature. It’s not like water or air that will settle back to a neutral state once you’ve finished your work. Fire is hungry, it is alive, and it fights you the whole while. It takes discipline to control fire.”

The student raised a hand and showed Nym a small candle-flame that floated above his palm. “I do have some small talent with fire magic. This is the exercise I recommend you practice on. It will help you refine both your ability to create fire and control it in a safe manner. The worst you can suffer is a minor burn, and the most likely result is the fire snuffing itself out if you make a mistake since it has no fuel but the arcana you feed it. It’s much safer than practicing fire on a pile of flammable blankets.”

The student had channeled his arcana so quickly and so effortlessly Nym hadn’t even seen that he was casting a spell. That… that was impressive. Nym had never seen anybody able to cast magic so smoothly that it didn’t even have the tell-tale glow of arcana filling their soul well, especially not arcana from the second layer.

“Once you’ve mastered that, you can start working on the basic parameters of control: amount of heat, light, size, and what it will burn. They say the greatest fire mages can melt solid rock with pinpoint accuracy. Wouldn’t that be something to see?”

“Yeah, I guess it would.”

The teenager stood back up and brushed some loose snow off his robes. “I’m sorry about the burns. They can be quite painful, and children can be cruel. Sometimes good intentions can have disastrous results, and all they see is what was lost, not the reasoning behind it. Are you sure you don’t want me to look at them?”

Nym sighed and shook his head. “It’s my punishment. They keep me safe because the other kids know that I’m suffering for my screw up.”

Something pressed against his foot, and he looked down to see a tiny glass jar being pushed into him by the student’s shoe. “I doubt anyone here knows exactly how fast those burns should heal, or is going to be looking at what anyone else does in the dark of night,” he said offhand, not looking down at the salve.

Tears welled up in Nym’s eyes at the unasked-for kindness, but he willed them away. “Thank you,” he whispered, and the student nodded.

“I’ll be back around when I can, probably in a week or so. Be careful not to get the burns dirty. Burn infections are nasty and expensive to treat. You should look for some clean rags to wrap your hands in. Oh, and if at all possible, I would appreciate the jar back once it’s emptied. Good glass can be expensive too.”

The student paused to think. “Of course, if it should happen to get stolen by someone who wanted to sell it to an apothecary, why, they would probably get enough for an empty jar to have a hot meal or two. There would be nothing you could do about what’s taken from you, so I wouldn’t hold it against you if you couldn’t return it to me later.”

Then the teenager left. Nym watched him stop to talk to a few other kids, sometimes just for a few moments, sometimes longer. He seemed to know everyone and had a kind word for them all. Nym picked the jar up out of the snow and hid it under his shirt when no one was watching.

It was nice to meet a good person again. The mage reminded him of Ciana in all the best ways. There hadn’t been too many of those people in his life, just giving with no expectation of return, and he vowed again to repay all of them someday.