Ascendant

Nym hadn’t felt that cold numbness descend on him once since he’d reached Abilanth. He’d thought he’d finally put it behind him, and he’d welcomed that for two reasons. First, it only ever seemed to happen when his life was in danger, which was never a position he wanted to be in. Second, it scared the hell out of him afterwards.

But in that moment, with the specter of death looming over him, Nym embraced the change. The fear drained away, and with it the indecision and the hesitation. He was ruthless and he knew what he needed to do.

“Leave,” he told the people who were still upright and capable of moving. The ones on the ground were dead already or would be soon. They were not a concern. Valgo was, but he couldn’t kill the thief, not yet. If nothing else, Nym needed the money they’d taken from the Feldstal manor, and he hadn’t seen it in the hideout.

He hadn’t found any real treasury there, but since Valgo was definitely loaded, that meant it was somewhere else. If he was lucky, he’d come out considerably ahead. All he had to do was get the information out of Valgo and loot the stash.

He was embarrassed to think that he’d ever been afraid of the man. Valgo knew some magic, sure. He had minions and spies and money. But Nym just needed to remember a single mid-level spell, just one complex offensive piece of magic, and he’d easily beaten the thief. It had been the work of a moment to smite the courtyard.

The strike had been wild and unfocused, but he could forgive himself considering how close he’d cut it. The girl was still alive, which was a good thing. She seemed a lot less valuable now that he was about to come into his own financial windfall once he discerned the location of Valgo’s treasures, but still, she’d done nothing to wrong him and it would be a shame if he’d accidentally killed her.

The minions weren’t leaving like he’d told them to. Instead, a variety of small crossbows were being revealed and aimed at him. A few of the bolder ones had pulled blades and were advancing. Nym cast his kinetic barrier spell to protect himself from ranged attacks and flew fifteen feet into the air. With the burning hideout to his back, he stared down at the minions and contemplated the best way to break their morale.

It would be hardest and probably least productive to kill them all. A few more well-placed lightning bolts would thin the crowd and the few who survived would surely flee, but the spell was complicated and difficult to aim. Valgo and Analia were close enough to the action that he risked hitting them, so he decided against that particular bit of magic unless they forced his hand.

Fire was another possibility. His control wasn’t spectacular, but with his recent insights, he was finally starting to get the hang of it. It wouldn’t be too difficult to light a few of them up, though he doubted he’d be able to put them back out again. There was still enough snow in the yard that he was sure it wouldn’t be a problem.

While he considered, the first volley of crossbow bolts struck his barrier and rebounded everywhere. A few of the minions cried out when they were pierced by them, but Nym was too distracted to pay much attention. The barrier held, but the sudden drain to his soul well was larger than he’d anticipated. He needed a second conduit dedicated exclusively to keeping the barrier going.

The rest of his options were intimidations at best. Blasts of air could knock them over. He could try to freeze them. The spell that cut through things worked, but it was limited. In the end, he decided his lack of control over elemental fire manipulation wasn’t an issue in this scenario. Rather than reach out to the burning building to borrow fire, he threaded arcana over his chosen targets like a spiderweb, then ignited them all at once.

Theatrics was an important part of intimidation. Even though he didn’t need to, Nym pointed a finger at each of his victims. The four people he selected lit up and started screaming. They quickly abandoned their weapons and dove to the ground to roll around, trying to smother the flames.

Nym could have fought to keep the fire going. That was much easier than trying to extinguish them, but in this case he didn’t see any reason to. Instead, he turned to point at a new person and layered him with more webs of arcana. The man’s eyes widened and he turned to run, but only made it a few steps before Nym ignited him.

Slowly, he panned a pointed finger across the gathering. Nobody was attacking him now, and tension hung thick in the air. It was like they were afraid to move, that the first one would attract his notice. He paused for a second, his finger pointing straight up.

“Leave,” he said again.

With Valgo still on the ground and showing no signs of regaining control of the situation, or even that he was conscious, his minions finally broke. Those that were capable fled. Those that needed help crawled off as best they could. A few people stopped to help them, but most of them were left to hobble away under their own power.

After a minute, the only ones left were Nym, Analia, Valgo, a few groaning thieves who hadn’t managed to clear the yard thanks to their injuries, and a bunch of corpses. The smell of charred flesh from the initial lightning strike was strong in the air, and much of the snow in the yard itself had vaporized into steaming mist thanks to Nym’s magic.

He considered the hideout behind him and decided it would be best to put the flames out so there was no risk of them spreading. Elemental water magic rippled out from him in a big, inelegant mass that collected loose snow and hurled it at the building. At the same time, he ripped the air away from the fire and channeled it straight up in an attempt to both smother it and starve it.

The flames dimmed, but didn’t disappear completely. He thought he could probably do it though, if given enough time, and assuming he didn’t give himself arcana poisoning first. The elemental spells were brute force magic, akin to heavy lifting and he was getting tired surprisingly quickly. It must have been all the magic he’d used throughout the night, possibly coupled with the healing he’d needed for his physical injuries.

Suppressing the fire wasn’t a high enough priority for him to continue to dump arcana into it. What he needed was a safe place to transport Analia and Valgo, and sure-fire way to restrain the old thief. Neither were conscious now, both heavily injured. Analia had survived because Nym had deliberately tried not to hit her; Valgo because of his own magics. Nym needed a healer for her and an interrogation room for him.

If he’d been able to recover the money, he would have turned Valgo over to the Feldstals and let them handle him, but the coins were nowhere to be found. He needed that pouch if he was going to get Analia fixed up without returning her to her family, which meant he needed Valgo to wake up and tell him where it was. His spell list was still very limited though, and he didn’t think he had anything that could restrain a normal person, let alone a mage who had shown an ability to do as least limited teleportation.

Then he spotted the small metal rod Valgo had used on him. He scooped it up and examined it. It was maybe six inches long, about as thick as a finger, made of something that might have been silver, with one flat end and one that tapered to a blunted point. It was covered in runes that were tiny, very difficult to read.

He didn’t recognize a lot of the individual runes, but he knew it knocked people out and he guessed it was supposed to do something like an arcana injection to disable a mage’s ability to cast spells. The most important part was that it looked like all he had to do was channel some arcana into it to activate it, and then jab the pointed end into the intended victim to discharge the spells.

That seemed simple enough. Nym charged it and stabbed it into Valgo’s leg. Arcana punched into him, then faded away. It seemed like nothing had happened. Nym wasn’t sure if it had worked or if he’d done something wrong. Just to be safe, and because he wasn’t particularly concerned about Valgo’s well-being, he charged it a second time and poked the man again.

It had the same results. Nym shrugged and pocketed the enchanted rod. If it worked, great. For now, he’d proceed as though it didn’t and be as careful as he could. He needed first to wake Valgo up, and then to find a way to get truthful answers out of the thief. Nym had half an answer for the second problem, at least. He copied Bardin’s truth seeking spell, and was pleased to see that it was easy enough to get up and running, and also didn’t have any real impact on the amount of arcana he was holding in his soul well.

He did not have time to wait for Valgo to wake up on his own. The sun was already up and even though it was the outer rings, somebody would show up soon to investigate the burning building. Nym wove cushions of air to pick up Analia and Valgo, and, using his scrying spell to lead the way, threaded through the city streets while avoiding its citizens. There really was only one place he felt safe enough to go.

* * *

 The kids didn’t spend a lot of time on the second floor of the warehouse. The stairs were rickety where they still existed, and even the weight of a child was enough to make them creak and sway. The space wasn’t really needed anyway, and being higher up just meant being exposed to more wind. In short, it gave Nym all the privacy he needed.

It was the work of a moment to blast the accumulated snow away and lay Analia down in a relatively sheltered corner. Valgo got tossed into the snow bank. Both were awake by the time he made it there, but neither was making much noise beyond Analia’s quiet, pained weeping. She’d been caught in more of the lightning strike than he’d thought, he just hadn’t realized it until he got a look at her back and saw the shredded clothing and burns.

She was breathing hard too, which actually concerned him more than the more visible injuries. He considered taking her to a clinic and trying to use her family name to direct the bill to them. Unfortunately, he didn’t know if they’d work on the promise of payment, and if he left Valgo alone, there was every possibility that the old thief would work his magic and escape somewhere. Nym needed him alive and controlled if there was going to be any chance of recovering the missing money.

He didn’t think there was much choice. The longer he waited, the worse Analia was getting. He picked her up again with his magic, gave Valgo’s still but awake form one last bitter look, and flew off towards the middle ring.

He took her to the clinic that had patched him up a few hours earlier and told her that they’d been attacked, lost their money, and she’d been struck by lightning magic. He then told Jorak that her name was Analia Feldstal and that her family would no doubt pay whatever the price was to have her healed. Before the healer could protest, Nym was back out the door and in the sky again.

He ignored the shouts from a nearby city guard commanding him to get back down on the street and flew as fast as he could back to the warehouse. When he got there, Valgo was nowhere to be found.