Ascendant

Maybe it was the concussion he undoubtably had given himself, but Nym was starting to like this strange and naïve girl. Here he was, breaking into her house, and she considered her attempts to capture him a game, and now wanted to provide medical aid when he’d gotten hurt.

“Bad idea,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“Not supposed to be here,” he admitted. “I could get in trouble.”

“I hardly think getting a scolding is worth having an untreated head wound.”

Nym struggled to put together a string of coherent thoughts. “No, could get put in jail, or executed. Telling them about Valgo might not be enough to save me. Better to be quiet and hidden so no one finds me. Except you found me, ruined it all. Now I need to escape.”

He realized he was babbling, but it was so hard to keep track of what was going on. He tried to struggle out of the girl’s grip, but he was unfocused and uncoordinated. She easily held him in place. “Easy now,” she said, her voice soothing. “You’re rambling, and it’s all very interesting, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Nym tried to explain about the blackmail and the planted evidence, but he didn’t do a very good job. The girl held him still while he talked, and it took him a few minutes to realize that maybe he needed to shut his mouth and that he was already in enough trouble. By then, it was far too late.

Arcana sprung up around the girl and she wove it into a spell Nym had never seen before. At least, he was pretty sure he hadn’t. “Malk, please join me in the third-floor library immediately,” she said to empty air.

“Who’s Malk?” Nym asked.

“That would be me,” a man’s voice said from behind him. “The better question is, who are you and why are you in the manor. Lady Analia, please take a step back.”

“That’s not why I called for you,” the girl said. “This is my new friend Nym. He had an accident and bumped his head against the book shelf. He’s been babbling for a few minutes now, but he needs to be given medical treatment to make sure there are no long-lasting consequences.”

“You… want me to heal this intruder?”

“I told you, he is my friend.”

“He is a criminal who broke into your family’s ancestral home, no doubt with nefarious intentions. We are lucky that you were not harmed when he happened upon you.”

“I have given you your instructions,” the girl said. “Please carry them out.”

Nym chose that moment to interrupt by falling over and throwing up on the floor. “Sorry,” he said. Everything was fuzzy. Everything was spinning. He needed to escape, but he was only just barely coherent of that fact. Doing something about it was beyond him.

The next thing he knew, he was laying on a narrow cot, staring up at the ceiling. There were five people standing around him, but he only recognized two. One was the girl from the library, and the other was the man she’d summoned. Nym hadn’t gotten a good look at him, and only knew it was him because he recognized the voice.

“-need to stop being so reckless. He is not a stray cat to be giving a saucer of milk. What if he’d been a stronger mage than you? What if he’d kidnapped or killed you?”

“Oh, he was a stronger mage. No doubt about it. His spells were a bit… basic, but he’s got me outclassed in power and control.”

“All the more reason to restrain him properly! Who knows what kind of spells he’ll throw at us in a bid to escape!”

“He will not try to escape. I have shown my trust in him, and he will trust me in kind.”

“He is awake,” a new voice said.

“Thank you, Nemari,” the girl replied.

“As always, it is a pleasure to serve, my lady.”

Nym turned his head to look over at the people gathered around the cot. Closest to him were two guards wearing the noble family livery. Each was lightly armored and had a sword strapped to his waist. Nym noted with some amusement that the nose-picker was one of the ones guarding him, but he did not recognize the other.

Of the other three people, one was the noble lady, Analia. She was still in her nightgown. One was a man who looked like he was in his fifties but with a body like a professional soldier’s less than half his age. He was incredibly handsome, with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and a perfectly groomed beard that hugged his jawline.

The last was a tall man who wore a mask similar to the one Nym had worn. His body was concealed by a heavy cloak, only open enough to show off a pair of rugged boots. His eyes were dark and shadowed. He was watching Nym, sizing him up no doubt, and formulating the best way to take him down. Nym assumed he was Malk.

“How are you feeling, Nym?” the girl asked.

Now that he thought about it, he was surprised how good he actually did feel, physically at least. The concussion was gone, and he was now able to look back on the last half an hour of his life with mounting horror as he recalled how much he’d told Analia about why he was there and who Valgo was. He couldn’t believe, even with a head injury, that he’d been so stupid.

It was a safe bet that Malk knew all of it too, and unlike her, he wasn’t suicidally trustful. If Nym was the luckiest person in the world, he’d escape the manor without being handed over to the guards and survive Valgo long enough to fly straight out of Abilanth. Then he could starve to death in the mountains instead of being murdered by the city’s criminal underbelly either in a jail cell or a back alley.

“Like there’s no way this ends well for me,” he confessed.

Malk snorted, but didn’t say anything. Analia ignored him and said, “There’s no reason it has to end poorly. Based on what you’ve already told me, you’re as much a victim here as my house is.”

“If we could believe a word of it,” Malk muttered behind her. He raised his voice and added, “Lady Analia, please step back behind me.”

The bodyguard moved to place himself between Nym and Analia, but she shoved past him. “I trust him,” she said firmly. “But… would you consent to a truth reading?”

“I don’t know what that is,” Nym told her. He knew what it sounded like though, and he didn’t like the idea.

“That’s hardly reliable,” Malk protested.

“You doubt my abilities?” the healer said.

“There are far too many ways to get around it, and you know that.”

The healer gestured at Nym. “I think I can handle a child.”

“Hush, both of you,” Analia said. “A truth reading is when a mage with a talent for healing uses magic to read your body, to look for signs of dishonesty. They also alter your thoughts to make you want to answer questions truthfully. It isn’t always reliable, and there are many who find it to be ethically objectionable. However, in this case, where you are an intruder in my home, I believe it is necessary to set everyone’s minds at ease. I will not force you to do it. You can refuse.”

“And if I do?”

“Then we shall see whether you will be released out on the street or directly into the custody of the city guard.”

“Guess I don’t have much choice then, do I?”

“There is always a choice. You made a series of choices that led to you smacking head first into a heavy oak bookshelf with several hundred books on it. I made a choice to ask Nemari to make sure you didn’t die from it. Malk made a choice to be a pain in my butt tonight.”

“My lady, please.”

Analia ignored Malk and kept talking. “So yes, you have a choice. You can choose to reach back out and trust me as I am trusting you, or you can choose to cast the die and see where your fate takes you. Either way, it has been an absolutely fascinating evening for me. Thank you for that.”

Nym rolled his eyes. “Quite the speech,” he said, his lips curling up into a soft smile. “What do you need me to do?”

Analia gestured to the healer. “If you would?”

Nemari stepped up next to the bed and told Nym, “Just sit up here. I’ll place my hands on your shoulders. You are going to feel a kind of tingling sensation. That’s just my arcana entering your body. It will fade after a bit. The spell will alter the way you regard other people and exaggerate your friendship to Lady Analia. This is normal and temporary. Some people have extremely adverse effects to this magic, and if you begin displaying any of those symptoms, the spell will end immediately.”

“Got it,” Nym said, sitting up. “Go ahead.”

Hopefully they wouldn’t ask anything he didn’t want to answer, but he was more than happy to throw Valgo under the cart. Let him get trampled by the horses if it saved Nym from being turned over to the guard.

It took Nemari a minute to forge his conduit and begin filling his soul well, one long awkward minute where Malk gave him a death glare and Analia studied him. The two house guards on either side of the bed watched him warily, but otherwise ignored everything going on and stood motionless. Well, one of them was motionless. Nose-picker was just as fidgety now as he’d been an hour ago.

Slowly at first, but with ever-increasing intensity, he started to feel arcana creep across his skin and soaking into his body. It didn’t strike at his soul well, the way an arcana injection did, but instead followed deliberate paths leading all the way through him. Nym shuddered at the feeling, but didn’t try to fight it off. He was sure he could have if he wanted to though, probably using the same meditation technique he’d learned to fight arcana poisoning back in Palmara.

“He is ready,” the healer announced suddenly.

Nym didn’t feel any different. He opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and just shrugged. Analia moved to stand directly in front of Nym and said softly, “First, tell me the truth, Nym. Do you mean anyone here any harm?”

“No.” That was an easy truth for him to tell.

“Would you harm anyone?”

“Sure, to save my life. If Malk attacked me like he wants to, I would fight back.”

The girl laughed and said, “Understandable. But barring any attacks on your person, would you attack anyone in the house?”

“If someone attacked you, I would try to stop them.”

“What if someone attacked Malk?”

“Eeeeehhhhhhh…”

Nose picker was laughing behind him now, trying hard to stifle it but failing. It didn’t help that Analia looked like she was about to burst keeping her own laughter contained.  The only ones who didn’t react were Malk himself and the healer channeling the spell.

“Tell me the whole truth of why you are here, please.”

Nym explained about the hidden vault in the library he’d been told to find, that Valgo had extorted him into using his magic to break in using the pawn shop receipt. He explained how he’d bought the books from another pawn broker and sold them once he was done because he needed the money, and only learned afterwards that Valgo had stolen them to set him up.

Analia waited politely until Nym was done. Then, she said, “Can you please clarify what you mean about a library vault?”

Nym explained again about the vault and where he’d located it. When he was done, Analia shook her head and said, “There is no hidden room in the library. Malk, do you know anything about this?”

“No, my lady.”

“But it’s there. I saw it myself.”

“Well, let’s go take a look and see.”