Ascendant

That night, Nym managed to slip an actual spellbook into his stack of reading to take to bed with him. He also scribed a new rune sequence to prevent scrying, but delayed activating it until he returned to the guest room he’d been given. Even then, he studied the Bardin-approved books for several hours until it was well after midnight.

The guard outside his door stayed there all night, but Nym wasn’t worried about him. He doubted the man knew any magic at all, not even first circle stuff that some soldiers sometimes dabbled in. What he was really waiting for was to confirm that the actual mages had gone to sleep and weren’t going to be spying on him.

That was why Nym turned out the lights and spent an hour in bed, pretending to be asleep. There were only so many hours he could devote to the plan though, and he wasn’t willing to waste all of them on caution. Heart hammering in his chest, he opened a conduit and filled his soul well with arcana. Then he sent a tendril out to activate the rune sequence on the table next to the bed. It flared to life in his sight, and Nym climbed back out of bed.

His clothes for the day were wedged into the bottom of the door frame before he turned back to the light orbs sitting at rest in its holder. They were easy enough to operate, once he knew how. He turned one of them back on, but set to dim, and pulled the spellbook out of the middle of the pile.

Then Nym sat cross-legged on the middle of the bed, naked, and began to read. He skipped over the first circle spells and the elemental manipulation exercises, though he did make a note to come back and look at the earth and fire ones if he had time, and started on the second circle section. Unfortunately, it only took up thirty pages at the end, but there were still seven spells there that he didn’t know how to cast, and he was determined to fix that before the sun came up.

The first was the basic arcana injection spell that Amos had used on him months ago. Once he read the breakdown of how the spell functioned and went over the steps, it was trivially easy to put together. Nym practiced a few times, though without a willing target, he couldn’t work on the timing.

The second spell was the aura reading spell that Lathia had told him about, the one she said Amos had used to know when to fire the injection off. Nym skimmed over it and it looked straightforward, but his ability to see arcana was superior from what he could tell. He marked it a low priority to come back and learn properly if time permitted.

He started getting frustrated with the third spell. It was the slow falling spell Bardin had described to him, and it was utterly useless considering his mastery over elemental air. The structured spells the book described were inferior in a lot of ways to the flexibility of elemental mastery. They were very narrow and defined in their purpose, making them less versatile, and they also took longer to cast. Sometimes they used less arcana, but even that was just a matter of practice before elemental casting won out.

Finally, at the fourth spell, he found something useful. It was an improvement on a first circle spell that helped see farther. Nym had to flip back to an earlier section to find the spell being referenced. That was easy enough to do, though the spell had a problem with feedback in the form of splitting headaches if used for too long or in too bright areas. The second circle version was similar, except it worked in bright or dark areas.

Finally, Nym could use magic to see in the dark.

He immediately set to practicing the original first circle spell. Once he felt he had sufficient control over it, he upgraded to arcana from the second layer and enhanced the spell’s structure using the modifications the spellbook described. It took him a few tries to get it right, but eventually the spell took hold.

It took a surprising amount of effort to hold it in place, but it worked. He dismissed the light orb and looked down at the book. Even with no light at all, he could still make out the words on the page. It all ran a bit together since he got more of the idea of color than actual colors, but it was legible. Excitement lanced through Nym. With this spell, he could ‘borrow’ from bookstores, study, and put them back on the shelves. He wasn’t completely screwed when he lost access to the Feldstal library.

Nym dismissed the spell and recast it another dozen times, just to make sure he could do it from memory. With each attempt, it got easier to cast, and easier to maintain. It might have been his imagination, but he thought everything was a bit less blurry and colors more themselves too.

The remaining three spells were useful in a different way. They provided a measure of safety in the form of a kinetic barrier that would bounce physical attacks away from him, an upgraded version of the first circle telekinetic cutting edge, and a mind scrambling spell that would daze his victim for a minute or so at maximum power, a few seconds at minimum.

Nym practiced them as best he could, though once again, without a target, it was hard to determine how successful he was. Despite that, he was happy with his progress. He had a way to defend himself beyond merely flying away from trouble, and a way to fight back if he absolutely had to, though he couldn’t really think of much use for the mind scrambling spell. One day though, he might need it, probably when he least expected it. So he practiced weaving arcana together into the pattern for it.

The guest room didn’t have any windows in it, but it did have a magical clock with a face plate that brightened slowly as the sun rose. With that to alert him, he stowed away the book, used telekinesis to pull the dirty laundry back to the hamper, and laid down with the intent to pretend to be sleeping.

Three hours later, he woke up confused and disoriented at the time. It took him a few moments to even figure out what day it was, and he only grew more confused as his mind caught up. There was a tray sitting on the table with food on it, and just the sight of it was enough to make him realize how ravenous he was. He scarfed half of it down before he even saw the note placed on the tray.

Analia is always starving after she stays up all night practicing. This should tide you over until the next meal. Please be sure to return all the books to the library today.

It wasn’t signed, but then, it didn’t have to be. There weren’t very many people who could arrange the surprise for him. He grimaced anyway as he read it. After all the preparations he’d taken, Bardin had seen right through him.

He ate and bathed and got dressed in yet another set of clothes that had been tailored to fit him. After more than a month of wearing the same clothes, he had a new set for every day of the week. Nym knew what was happening. They wanted him to sign the contract, so they were showing him the high life. Unlimited food, access to knowledge and training, shelter and comfort, and all for the low cost of signing decades of his life away to their service.

In a way, he supposed it was flattering. He wasn’t sure how this kind of thing usually worked, but there was probably a lot more work on the would-be mage’s part to convince a noble house that he was special, that he was worth the time and effort and money. Nym had fallen face-first into this deal, after breaking into their house to rob them no less. It was ridiculous how lucky he was.

And all he wanted was to find a way out.

The contract was coming down on him at any time. He tried not to bring it up, but he knew Bardin was working on it in the background. Or rather, some clerk somewhere was working on it, making projections and judgements about how much he was worth, how many years they’d need to recoup the expense, how many more to turn a profit. They were calculating food and education and charting out how they would run his life to best suit their needs.

Nym expected he had at best a day or two left, and most of his time was taken up working with Analia on her elemental air manipulation abilities. She was determined to turn her flight from riding a storm to something controlled, and it forced him to be vigilant at all times. Already he’d saved her from nasty spills that would have resulted in a trip to the infirmary twice.

She was getting better, and that was probably in large part thanks to his advice. If he could figure out how to tell her what she was doing wrong without giving away that he could see the arcana in her spells, he could probably have her flight stable in a few hours. That wasn’t an option however, so he was reduced to generic recommendations and talking about how he did it, hoping she’d pick up the tips she needed from his commentary.

It was a slow, tedious process. If it were anything other than flight, he could just give her some help, let her practice, and check on her. But because she couldn’t cast her own flight spell quickly enough to save herself if she fell, which she did, often, he was forced to watch and catch her.

The evening at least was spent digging through the library for written treasures. Bardin still showed up and prodded him towards more beginner books. He didn’t seem to believe Nym when he said he’d read enough and that the new books were just repeating information he’d already absorbed.

“It’s because he teaches beginner classes,” Analia told Nym. “He has to cater to the slowest in the classes, and he has a hard time recalibrating for smart students like us.”

“Still annoying. I’ve read this exact passage in another book already. It was lifted out word for word.”

Bardin was sitting at a nearby table grading a stack of reports from his students, a pained expression on his face. “What even does this mean?” he muttered. “None of this works the way you think it does. This is literally impossible. Did you even read the material? Fail.”

“Does that happen often?” Nym asked.

“About six weeks after the start of each term when they have to turn in their first major projects. Every single time, he gets himself worked up like this. It was funny the first few times, but now it’s just kind of sad,” Analia told him.

“It is somewhat disturbing to see the same thing happen over and over again,” Malk observed from his place near the table. “Still, your brother sacrifices much for the good of the house. It is not right to mock him for it.”

Analia didn’t deliver the expected retort. Nym felt he’d gotten to know her quite well over the last few days, and she loved to banter. Malk was a bit of a hard target as he took himself far too seriously in Nym’s opinion, but Analias had known him for years and knew just how to keep him going.

Instead, she looked hesitant and afraid, and maybe tired. Her eyes roamed around the library, suspiciously looking everywhere except the shelf that blocked the entrance to the hidden vault. She never spoke of it after the first night, and Nym never did get a chance to find out what exactly was in there.

Whatever it was, it was obviously still weighing on her mind, and he found his curiosity reignited. It wasn’t any of his business though, so he shoved all thoughts of it aside and went back to the increasingly frustrating process of trying to pry new nuggets of knowledge out of the beginner manuals Bardin kept forcing on him.

With a sigh, he set his book aside and reached for a new one. Maybe the next one would tell him something new.