Ascendant

Jorak was once again manning the clinic, and Nym was silently thankful both that the man always worked the same shift and that every time he’d needed healing, it had been at night. The healer gave him a sour grimace when he came in. “You’re back,” he said.

Nym was wearing an oversized shirt and pants combo he’d bought off the outer-ring healer, both meant for adults. He was practically swimming in them, but his old clothes hadn’t held together after the lightning strike, plus there was a lot of blood on the scraps. On the bright side, it was easy to hold the money pouch to his stomach and disguise it as him just trying to hold the pants up. A belt hadn’t been part of the deal.

“I came to make sure my friend is alright and that you were paid for your services.”

“Yes, and yes, though the men her family sent to collect her were not pleasant.”

“She went with them?” Nym asked.

“Yes.”

“Willingly?”

“Maybe not happily, but yes. No one carried her out through the door.”

Nym let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good. I’m glad she’s safe. Thank you for helping her.”

“Listen, I understand that you had an emergency, and that her life was in danger. But never, ever, ever do something like that again. I was under no obligation to treat her. Any healer could have refused to help and been well within their rights. The only reason I worked on that girl is because the two of you had already come through hours earlier for healing.”

“We got att-” Nym started to say, but Jorak cut him off.

“And whatever game you two are playing at, stop before you get yourselves killed. She looked like she’d lost a mage duel, and teenage girls should not be having mage duels. You don’t look so good yourself. You’ve been to another healer in the last hour, just barely a day after I patched you up. And whoever worked on you was sloppy. I can tell you were under a pain suppression spell for hours.”

“How do you know that?”

“It messes with your brain. The longer you have one on, the worse it gets. A good healer will fix that as part of your treatment, but whoever worked on you didn’t bother. It’ll go away on its own after a few days, as long as you don’t have a new one cast on you. The longer it stays active, the worse it gets.”

“Okay, but how do you know what my brain looks like?” Nym asked.

The healer hesitated a second before elaborating. “Spotting signs is just kind of a thing you develop with enough experience. I could go on about your unfocused eyes and posture and the shuffle you’re walking with, but let’s just leave it at I know what to look for and you’ve got all the flags.”

“Can you do anything about it?” Nym asked. The first healer he’d seen hadn’t even bothered with a pain suppression spell, and Nym wasn’t sure if that was because they were low-skill outer ring healers or because he already had his own spell running.

“All things considered, I’ll want to see cash up front. But yes, I can fix it and anything else that might be wrong with you.”

Nym pulled out a gold crest and set it on the table. Then he flew up in the air and landed on the examination bench. “If you can make me good as new, it’ll be well worth it.”

Jorak grumbled, but the money was good and he got to work. If Nym hadn’t had the extra cash, which was at least twice as much as Analia had taken from her home, he would never have wasted it on a second round of healing. He didn’t really feel like he needed it, but he wanted to get another chance to study healing spells. He’d seen them twice now, and would have stuck around for Analia’s healing except that he didn’t have any money and was deliberating dumping her on the healer’s lap in hopes that he’d do it anyway.

Unfortunately, Jorak did not offer him the pain suppression spell, so once again he was unable to see a professional craft it. He’d really wanted the outside perspective since he’d mostly fumbled through it and wasn’t confident he could replicate it. He did get to look at a few of the diagnostic spells and solidified the patterns in his mind, and Jorak was able to smooth out a lot of the left-over scarring from the lightning strike.

“Someone stabbed you?” he asked, surprised. He poked at the puckered scar. “Deeply too. You’re lucky you had someone with you to get you to a healer.”

“I… yeah…”

“The cauterization pattern is weird though. It’s more like it’s part of this lightning scarring… What were you even doing?”

“Someone tried to stab me,” Nym said. “Well… did stab me. And then he was going to, you know… and I zapped him, but since he was so close, it also hit me.”

Jorak pulled back, aghast. “Are you telling me you nearly killed yourself with your own spell? Wait, back up. Are you telling me that a kid like you can create a lightning bolt out of magic? I can’t do that, and I’m a retired army mage! I mean, I specialize in healing, but I still know my fair share of combat and utility magic.”

The healer just kind of stared off at nothing for a minute while Nym fidgeted in uncomfortable silence. When it got to be too much, he said, “So can you fix it? Or heal it? Or I don’t know. I guess it’s okay if the scar is permanent. Most people don’t get scars healed. But the other healer said there could be infections.”

Jorak snorted. “Third rate charlatan,” he muttered. “If he’d done his job right, no, that wouldn’t be a risk. I can smooth out the scar a bit, but it’s never going to go away completely. Maybe if your friend had gotten to me when it was still an open wound instead of cauterizing it.”

Nym debated telling him about using his own version of pain suppression and walking himself to the nearest clinic, but decided he didn’t want to answer any questions about how he’d learned it. He glossed over that and let the healer continue his work.

Surprisingly, he did feel significantly better once Jorak was finished. He wasn’t expecting to, but a lot of soreness he hadn’t realized he had disappeared, and the tightness in his muscles relaxed. The experienced healer had muttered to himself the entire time he was working on them, something about incompetent cut-rate scabs who couldn’t heal a papercut without growing the blood vessels in backwards.

When he was done, Nym hopped off the table and snatched up the pouch. He tucked it back under his oversized shirt and grabbed his pants with one hand to hold them up. “Thanks for the fix up,” he said. “Hopefully I won’t be back tomorrow.”

“Wait, don’t you want your change?” Jorak said, holding up the crest.

“Eh, you keep it. If anyone asks, you never saw me.”

The healer frowned and considered it. Then he sighed and shook his head. “I get enough grey hairs from my own kid. I don’t need them from you too. Look, when your friend left with her bodyguard and the soldiers, she asked me to tell you something. ‘Go with plan D and I’ll meet you there in a month,’ were her exact words. She said you’d know what that meant.”

“I do,” Nym said. “Thanks again.”

That plan confirmed his worst fears. It was their final reserve plan in the event that they couldn’t get away from the manor clean and the city guard was looking for them. It meant he couldn’t access the teleportation platform and would have to physically travel to another city to try to use theirs. The closest city to Abilanth was over five hundred miles away and would take weeks to reach on foot. Worse, the route was extremely dangerous. Worse still, that wasn’t the final destination.

They’d made the plan on the assumption that they would be flying, which would cut down both the danger and the travel time significantly. However, it also assumed a full kit, which would be absolutely essential for him to acquire, and that might not be so easy now. Nym needed a new pack, clothes, a coat and cloak, shoes, food that would keep for weeks, and he was hoping to find some sort of mask designed for flying. He’d found that as he got faster, and especially as it got colder, the wind was becoming a real problem.

Dawn was only an hour or so off, and Nym prioritized the warmer clothing in the middle ring. He wasn’t sure how much interference to expect from the city guard outside of choke points like gates and the mages guildhall, and if he was forced to flee, he wanted to be warm when he went. He could survive a lot longer on an empty stomach than he could wearing clothes that he had to physically hold to his body to keep them from falling off.

For all the bad luck he’d had in the past few days, Nym completed his shopping list without a problem. He even paid extra to get his new winter outfit tailored to fit him, got a new, thick leather coat, shoes, gloves, and pack, and a wool aviator’s mask that not only covered his whole face, but had a pair of built-in goggles with glass lenses.

Once his pack was full, including the still hefty money pouch, he returned to Valgo’s hide out and spent the rest of the day looting it. Between his scrying and his ability to see magic, he thought he found every last valuable. When he was done, he returned to the warehouse and started handing out coins. If anyone deserved Valgo’s ill-gotten gains, it was the street children he’d kept under his heel.

Nym kept the crests, if for no other reason than it would be extremely suspicious to have a bunch of kids between the ages of five and ten running around with gold, but in less than an hour, he’d emptied out every last wedge and shim into their hands. To the older kids, the responsible ones who’d done their best to take care of everyone, he handed the majority of the silver shields with instructions to buy new clothes and maybe rent a place to live that was better protected from the weather.

Nym was about to leave when someone walked into the warehouse. It was the Academy student he’d seen a few weeks ago, the one who’d been handing out bandages and salves. The teenager studied him curiously, a soft smile on his face.

“You got out,” he said as he approached, motioning towards the new clothes and pack. “You’re leaving.”

“I did, and I am.”

“Good for you,” the student said. “Did you practice your fire magic?”

“A bit,” Nym said. “I’m still working on it. Thank you for showing me where to start.”

They watched the kids scamper around, some of them disappearing for a bit and coming back with warm food. “Where did the money for this all come from?” the student asked after a bit.

“The thief who was using them to pickpocket for him died. I looted his hideout and distributed all the smaller coins to them. The older kids got the shields to spend on blankets, food, medicine, shelter, whatever they need.”

“Hmm, that’s good. I guess my services won’t be needed any longer.”

“Why didn’t you just hand some money to them in the first place?” Nym asked.

“Me? How would I do that.”

“What? Your family would notice if you took that much money?”

The student laughed. “I don’t have any money. I make this stuff myself.”

Nym’s jaw fell open. “What? But… how? You go to the Academy.”

“Well, just between you and me, I got a scholarship. It almost never happens, I’m told. I’m not from here, and I had a letter of recommendation. It’s… very high pressure. If I don’t graduate, I’ll have to repay it all. That would ruin me, financially speaking, for the rest of my life.”

Nym regarded him quietly. He never would have guessed. “So, every time you visit, all the medicine you bring, how do you get the herbs and the jars?”

“There’s work at the Academy for those of us willing to do it. The student body is made up of a lot of kids with very rich parents who would never stoop to doing any sort of manual labor.”

“You’re crazy,” Nym told him bluntly.

“Maybe. But look around. How much did you just give away? I guess that makes us both crazy.”

“I suppose.”

Nym opened his pack and dug around in it until he came up with a handful of crests. He held them out. “Here, take these. Promise me you won’t waste them. Keep an eye on these guys for me, keep them out of trouble if you can.”

“Are you sure? That’s a fortune right there. You don’t even know me.”

Nym smiled. “You were kind to me when I needed it. That counts for a lot to me.”

He pressed the coins into the student’s hand, hefted his pack back onto his shoulders, and walked away. As the sun settled low into the mountains and the shadows stretched out over Abilanth, Nym reached out to the arcana and flew off over the snow. It was going to be a long journey, and the sooner he got started, the sooner he’d see the next town.