Ascendant

Without the military presence, Ebalsan would have reminded Nym a lot of Zoskan. It was on the eastern border of the same forest instead of the north, and it was probably two or three times bigger, but the homes were constructed in the same style and its people wore the same clothes. Ebalsan was what Zoskan could have been if it was more conveniently located on important trade routes.

That was before the undead showed up, which Nym was becoming more and more sure was related to what he’d discovered in the forest half a year ago. Though it was still over a hundred miles to Zoskan if he flew straight over the forest, he was sure it was less than half that to the place Leaf had wanted to look at.

Near the city, right in the middle of a few fields like it had grown out of the ground, was a fort made completely from earth and stone. It had its own walls, also earth-make, and hundreds of tents surrounded it in a rigid grid pattern. A trail perhaps two hundred feet wide had been carved into the forest, leading directly away from the keep. More walls had been raised from the ground between the keep and the opening, and all of them were manned by hundreds of soldiers watching the forest for signs of undead.

Bildar steered their wagon towards the town and handed the reins off to Ophelia. “I’ll go get the paperwork sorted for us all while you resupply,” he said. “Try to get us a barrel of something nice, yeah? I have a feeling we’re going to be here for a little while.”

While their leader walked off by himself towards the keep, the rest of the group went up to Ebalsan’s gates. They were wide open, but staffed by both local guards and professional soldiers. “Your business?” one of the soldiers asked as they approached.

“Earth mage crew specializing in fortification construction. Our leader is heading to the keep now to get an assignment, we’re going into town to restock our supplies.”

“Go on through,” the soldier said in a bored tone. “Make sure you clean up after the oxen if they leave any messes or you’ll be fined.”

Ebalsan was almost exactly what Nym expected. There were less locals than he’d thought there would be, but the soldiers more than made up for the numbers. They were everywhere, eating meals, shopping at stores, chatting with citizens, or even standing guard. None of them paid the group much attention, and Nym reminded himself that he was there to work with the army, not get arrested by them. No one knew who he was.

Other than the old familiar fear he felt every time he’d seen guards who ignored him, Nym found the town rather charming. The group split into three soon after entering, with Analia wanting to find a room at an inn where she could get a well-cooked meal and a bath, and Nym following after. Ophelia went towards the market district to find general supplies, and the twins disappeared, intent on being anywhere but near Ophelia so they wouldn’t have to help her load those supplies.

“I’ll remember this, you treacherous dogs!” Ophelia yelled at them, shaking a fist in the air.

“Um, do you want me to help?” Nym asked.

She looked momentarily surprised, but then shook her head with a laugh. “No, it’s fine. It’s not that hard to resupply a wagon by myself, but I’m going to use this as a justification to make them set up everything when it comes time to unload it. You may want to consider buying a weapon before we head out to the woods.”

“A weapon? But we’re mages,” Nym said.

“You think undead care? Get something heavy and ram it into them at high speed with magic. Or something pointy, or sharp. In my experience, heavy is better, but I’m an earth mage. Heavy fits my style.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Nym said doubtfully. He didn’t want to haul around ten or twenty pounds of metal, sharp or otherwise, everywhere he went. But he had to admit, Ophelia had given him a lot of good advice over the past few weeks and he had certainly never been part of a military operation or even seen an undead monstrosity, let alone fought one.

They parted ways, and Nym followed Analia as she sought out an inn. He felt like the only reason he was along was to transport her trunk for her, which had somehow grown heavier over the past few weeks. Unlike the rest of them, she had no plans on going farther than Ebalsan. She wasn’t an earth mage and wasn’t going to fight on the front lines.

Nym wasn’t an earth mage either, but he thought he could do a decent job helping them. He knew enough of the basic spells they used and could run a lot of arcana through his soul well in a day before he started hitting his limits. For now at least, he wanted to both earn a bit of extra money and get a closer look at this undead problem.

Once Analia was settled in at a place called the Silver Gilder, Nym left her to her bath and meal and other luxuries and went to find the market square. The more he walked around, the more nostalgic he got for Zoskan. Even the cobblestone patterns were the same. If he’d scattered in a few familiar faces from the other town, he would never have known he was somewhere else.

This proved to be helpful, as the same kind of logic had been used to lay out the streets and it took very little effort to find what he was looking for. The sign hanging above the door simply read, “Halder’s” with a crossed sword and mace beneath it. There was no display window, or even regular sized windows.

The door itself was unlocked, so Nym pushed it open and walked into his first ever weapon shop. It was a bit intimidating, if he was being honest with himself. There were probably a hundred different melee weapons mounted on pegs on walls. Axes, flails, swords, daggers, maces, and even more weapons he didn’t have names for lined just about every available inch of space. Stands were set up regularly and contained spears by the dozens of various sizes with different shaped heads.

A teenage boy sat in the corner, idly throwing knives at a target set up about ten feet away from him. One after another, they thunked into the wood, each one quivering. A faint aura of arcana surrounded the boy, maybe enough to account for a weak first circle spell. He didn’t get up from his game until all the knives had been released, and even then it was only to go collect them from the target.

“Excuse me,” Nym said.

“Yeah, need something?” the teenager asked. “Everything’s got tags on it. We don’t negotiate. Just pick out what you’d like and bring it over to me.”

“Oh, I see.” Nym looked around at the shop. “Got any advice?”

“If you don’t know what you’re doing, it doesn’t much matter what I say.  You’re going to get yourself killed the first time you pick a fight regardless of which weapon you’re holding.”

“I’m not trying to pick a fight with anyone,” Nym said.

The teenager stopped pulling the knives out and looked at Nym for the first time. “Then why are you here?” he asked.

“My group is going to build fortifications in the army and they said I should have something to defend myself with.”

“Oh, you’re a mage?” the teenager asked. “ You should have said so. Come with me. We’ve got some special mage weapons in the back room.”

Nym followed him to a room that had a decidedly different theme going on. Instead of a thousand pounds of steel mounted on different sized handles, the new room had display cases holding some truly bizarre items. The closest one looked something like the head of a sledgehammer, except with no handle and a bunch of ridges carved into it. The whole room was shaped like one long hallway with an extremely battered wooden target hung onto the back wall.

“So most mages go one of two ways. Heavy and spiky, or thin and pokey. This side of the room has the heavy things, that side has the light. Feel free to try some stuff out and let me know when you figure out what you want.”

That was apparently all the explanation Nym was going to get. The teenager left him alone in the room and returned to the store front. It didn’t take long for the sound of knives thunking into wood to start up again. Nym’s eye started twitching in time to the sound.

Poking his head back out through the door, Nym said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t really know what I’m looking at here. Could you help me out?”

“No,” the teenager told him in a bored, distracted tone. “I’m not a mage. No idea how mage weapons work. I just know you pick them up with magic and hit stuff with them.”

That was both vague and annoying. Nym considered going to another shop, but he didn’t know where to find any and he wanted to get this chore taken care in time to meet up with everyone else so they get moving again. He ducked back into the room and telekinetically picked up the closest thing he could find out of the ‘light’ display case.

It was a flat disc, sharpened all the way around. Nym telekinetically shoved it at the target wall as hard as he could and watched it bounce off. He shoved it in again. It penetrated maybe enough to hold its own weight if he let go, but Nym didn’t want to test it. Instead, he moved the weapon back to its tray and tried again with one of the heavier blocks.

That made a loud crunching sound and definitely did some damage to the wood, but it was so heavy he already was sick of it. It went back onto the display case too. He tried a few other from the heavy weapons before writing the whole section off. The light weapons looked more interesting anyway.

After experimenting with a few, he found he liked the ones that looked like throwing knives without handles the best. Those made solid thunking sounds, similar to the ones coming from the front room, each time they hit, and with magic driving them in, his accuracy was more or less perfect. Pulling them back out, however, was a different matter.

He couldn’t find a weapon he wanted. They were all too heavy, or too hard to use, or too hard to recover. As Nym worked his way down the hall, he found himself getting frustrated. There didn’t seem to be anything here he couldn’t do better with his magic, and he couldn’t find a logical reason to part with good silver and copper in exchange for weapons he didn’t need.

He knew Ophelia wanted him to be armed, but nothing here suited him. He put everything back in the display case, shook his head, and left. The teenager barely looked up as he walked by, and neither of them spoke a word to each other. Nym left the shop and turned deeper into the market district.

Weapons might not have been on the table, but there were plenty of other things he could stock up on. Though learning the mending spell had negated his need to replace his clothes so quickly, he still wanted a few other personal items, like soap, ink, and paper. Nym had a strict budget in mind, but there were a lot of stores and he was hopeful that he’d find everything he wanted at reasonable prices.

Three hours later, he met up with the earth mages, his face twisted into a scowl and he was in a foul mood. “Why is everything here so damn expensive!” he snapped. Ophelia just laughed.