Ascendant

Thrakus was not what Nym expected in a city. He’d pictured something like Abilanth, just scaled down to a smaller population and a lot flatter since it wasn’t built on the side of a mountain. Instead, it sprawled miles in every direction. It was a trading city with agriculture to the south and lumber to the north. Three different major roads ran directly to it, one coming in from the west coast, though far north of Palmara, one from the east to the kingdom’s border, and one from the south, carrying all sorts of traders, craftsmen, and caravans.

Nym entered from a smaller road from the north, connecting Thrakus and Abilanth together. It was less traveled in large part due to how difficult it was to reach the city hidden in the mountains, but it wasn’t empty by any means. Nym saw more than one caravan traveling north. Each one was enormous, with upwards of forty or fifty wagons being pulled by thick, sturdy, shaggy-haired oxen.

And that was Nym’s problem with Thrakus. The city stank. There were so many animals in it that it perpetually smelled of manure and livestock. Coming from the frozen north, where the cold kept the smell of everything down, it was especially strong. The natives didn’t even seem to notice. Nym was horrified to realize that after a few days, he stopped smelling it too.

It had taken him almost five days to reach Thrakus after his little detour under the snow, thanks mostly to his slow flying speed. He still felt awful, but having spent the last week at a little inn on the outskirts of the city called the Lucky Barrel doing his best to eat his own body weight in food and casting absolutely no spells whatsoever, he was recovering quickly.

Nym paid for a whole week up front, and a second week after the first had passed, and it felt weird to not have to scrounge for money to do that. He’d broken a single crest down into a few shields and a lot of shims by first visiting a leatherworker to have his coat repaired, then used that as spending money for food.

Even after all that, he had more money than he knew what to do with. Mindful of the fact that it would probably have to last him for a long, long time, and that he had no idea what funds Analia would arrive with, he refrained from spending it frivolously. Nym paid for lodging and food at the Lucky Barrel, and a private bathroom and laundering at the bath house a few blocks away.

Then he rested and tried to stay inconspicuous. As far as he knew, nobody was looking for him in Thrakus, and he’d finally realized that telling people his actual name everywhere he went was doing him no favors. The innkeeper and his family knew him as Ermy, a name he’d shamelessly stolen from his homeless friend back in Abilanth. He hoped his old coat was still keeping the real Ermy warm, and that they’d all found better shelter before the blizzard hit the city.

He'd done a lot of sleeping over those first two days, but now Nym was up, well-rested, well-fed, and ready to see the sights of the new city. The pain of arcana poisoning in his body had completely faded, and as long as he didn’t do any magic, his soul well didn’t ache either. So he spent his second week exploring Thrakus. He found open-air markets outside the city where caravaners bought and sold out of their wagons parked next to farmers selling off some of their excess preserved food, though the prices were a little high this late into the winter season.

Nym wandered them, browsing and listening to people. He knew very little about other lands and their cultures. Unfortunately, the merchants didn’t like having a kid browsing through their wares and not buying anything, and after an hour, he started getting dirty looks. Nym decided it was time to find somewhere to be.

One good thing about his time on the streets was that he had learned a lot about pickpocketing, and consequently a lot about how to protect himself from pickpockets. The first step was not to appear to be a mark. A lot of would-be thieves would pass him by for easier targets as long as he wasn’t obviously wealthy, flashing around a lot of coin, with a heavy pouch hanging off his belt or coins clinking in his pocket while he walked.

After that, Nym kept his coat buttoned up and his money inside a pocket sewn on the inside, which was itself also buttoned. No pickpocket was getting into that without a knife to cut through some seams or ties, and while small finger-mounted blades did exist and there were many, many thieves skilled in their use, no one was going to target a kid who was sensibly dressed for the weather but whose clothes were far from new.

He wandered around aimlessly for a while, just kind of mentally mapping out the city and noting the locations of important buildings. Very few of them were more than two stories tall, with the local mages guildhall being a prominent exception. Nym noted the location in case he needed it for some reason, but otherwise stayed far, far away from it. The guildhall and the city guard were the two most likely places to have a description of him.

While he was wandering, he found himself running into the back of a crowd of people all standing around watching something. Curious, Nym threaded his way through until he reached the front of the crowd. That got him a few more dirty looks, but nobody said anything.

Four mages were working together, the glow of arcana surrounding all of them. Their auras were hues of brown, green, and yellow, all nature colors, and it was obvious why. All of them were casting earth manipulation spells. The two younger ones, a set of identical twins, were using basic terrakinesis to excavate the foundation for a new building, while a middle-aged one with a beard was transmuting the loose earth into solid bricks, and the last, a woman who looked to be in her late twenties, was keeping the whole thing organized as she slowly put it all back together.

It was the fourth mage who interested Nym the most, since her work was a compilation of using magic to move the bricks into place, and carving rune sequences across their surfaces as she did. He couldn’t see them very well from so far away, but his immediate guess was that she was binding the bricks together to form a solid foundation for the building they were raising.

Just based on the dimensions, he guessed it was some sort of warehouse or store. Unlike Abilanth’s middle and inner rings, Thrakus was not well organized. There were districts, to be sure, but he’d seen plenty of homes near the market squares, and more than a few businesses being run out of other homes in the middle of residential areas. All of the roads were wide, even if most of them were made of hard packed earth occasionally worn down into wagon ruts. The city had grown organically, with people putting up new buildings wherever it was most convenient at the time and very little thought given to long-term planning.

Not everyone was happy to see the mages working though. A handful of men were scowling at the scene, muttering to each other and shooting dark looks at the mages. Nym missed most of what they were saying due to the noise, but the bits and pieces he did catch made him think that the men felt they’d lost money over not being awarded the contract to build the foundation.

Other workers waited nearby with a pile of lumber and various tools, apparently planning to get started on the framework of the building immediately. And just judging from the few minutes Nym spent watching the magic, the four-mage crew would have the entire foundation completed in the next half an hour.

“-lose another contract to their crew, we’re gonna go under,” one of the men said.

“I know! What do you want me to do? We can’t compete with their prices.”

The mutterings faded back out again as Nym focused on the mage who was taking the loose earth and compacting it down, then transmuting it into stone. He didn’t understand a lot of the spell, mostly because he couldn’t get his own arcana to flow that way. The pattern would be easy enough to draw, but in practice, everything had to be put together just right. There was a sense of finality to each piece when it was slotted in, that it wasn’t going to move again.

His own techniques were different. He quite often crafted a piece of the spell, only to stretch or bend it around another later on. It worked fine for all his elemental air and water based magics, but he supposed earth manipulation was different. That was probably why he’d struggled so long. The books had tried to explain it to him, but it wasn’t until he watched the mage work that things really started to click. It wasn’t enough to have an intent of solidity. He needed to cast that way too.

“-how well they’d work with a few broken bones,” the man muttered to his companions.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Jakwen. You try anything, they’ll be putting you in the ground next.”

“Well someone has to! Not like you’re getting anything done. Whole guild is falling apart and you just stand there wringing your hands and apologizing.”

“Boss said he was handling it. Just wait for him to work his magic.”

“Meanwhile they’re working their magic and we’re going broke!”

Nym tried to ignore the conversation. It wasn’t his problem. He just wanted to watch the mages work, maybe get a few insights into his own earth spells. He really wished he could see what those runes the lady mage was drawing looked like. The urge to cast a scrying spell to get a better look at them was almost overpowering, but he resisted. He was still recovering, no magic allowed.

“-told me they always hit the Quarterhouse after a job. We can catch them on their way out. They’ll be too drunk to fight back, it’ll look like a random mugging. There’s twelve of us to four of them!”

The idiot was actually discussing his plan to assault a quartet of mages easily capable of casting second circle spells out in the open, surrounded by people, and making very little effort to lower his voice. Nym was sure he wasn’t the only one who was overhearing this. The sensible one continued to try to reason with the idiot, but it wasn’t going well. Nym went back to trying to ignore all of them. He wondered if he could get a better look at the rune work if he stood on the far end of the crowd, where he would be technically farther away but would also have a much better angle to read them.

As a side-benefit, it would get him away from the idiot. Nym decided to do just that, but the crowd that he’d slid through to make it to the front had gained even more people and it was now too thick to push back into. He tried, but someone shoved him back. Nym didn’t quite see who it was, but the person was clearly an adult and clearly stronger than him.

Arms flailing to try to keep his balance as he staggered back a few steps, Nym’s heel caught on a clump of dirt and he ended up sprawled out on his back staring up at the sky. A few laughs and snorts came from the crowd, and then his vision was filled with the bearded face of the third mage, the one who was making bricks. He extended a hand for Nym to grab and pulled him to his feet.

“Alright there?” he asked, even as his aura flared up with some basic terrakinesis and the dirt was pulled from Nym’s clothes.

“Yeah, sorry. I’m fine. I was just trying to move through the crowd and, well… it’s kind of packed now. Thanks for the help.”

“Not a problem. Best be on your way now though. There’s a lot of heavy stuff moving around here; it’s not a place to just be standing in the middle of.”

“Right, sorry again.” Nym hesitated for a second, then leaned closer to the mage. “I overheard a bunch of guys talking about jumping your crew after you leave the Quarterhouse tonight. I think they’re business rivals who’re sick of losing work to you. I’m not sure if they’ll do it or if they’re all talk though.”

“That right?” the mage said. “Well thank you for the warning, young sir. What’s your name?”

“Ermy,” Nym lied.

“I’ll tell you what, Ermy, why don’t you meet us at the Quarterhouse in three hours and I’ll buy you a steak. I’ll even let you pester Ophelia about the runes you’ve been watching her draw for the last ten minutes.”

“How did you…?”

“Noticed you mouthing the names, though you got a few of them wrong. But enough for now. I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Oi!” one of the excavating mages yelled. “You’re getting backed up!”

“See what I mean?” the bearded mage said. “You’d think they were in charge instead of me. I’ll see you in a few hours, son?”

“Sure,” Nym said, eager for the opportunity to score some free food and talk to some earth mages about magic.