Ascendant

The problem with the limited knowledge Nym had on the subject was that it was all designed to be used on an infant under very specific conditions. Nym did not have an enchanted tank to put the test subject in, nor was he able to imprint his will on the target’s to guide the process. The far more likely result was that he’d break the soldier’s brain instead of fixing his conduit.

He wasn’t sure how much to tell them about their conduits. His ability to see magic was the one thing he never, ever, ever told anyone. It was his hidden trump card, the secret to a substantial portion of his success as a mage. He did not want people to find out. If he started explaining to the soldiers that he could see their conduits and what they needed to do to fix them, they might ask how he could see them. Even if they didn’t, they might tell someone else who knew enough to know it wasn’t normally possible to see such a thing.

Keeping his ability to see magic hidden hadn’t been much of an ethical question before. It didn’t really affect anyone but him, as long as no one knew about it. Now, he’d identified a problem in someone else because he could see things other people couldn’t. He wasn’t sure if he needed to say something or if it was better to preserve his anonymity, at least as much as he could considering how often someone pointed out that he was too young to be good at magic.

That problem would probably disappear completely as he now looked like he was thirteen or fourteen, despite it having only been around seven months since he’d woken up to Ciana’s voice on the beach. That professor friend of Bardin’s had said he was aging rapidly, but didn’t seem to know if it was going to stop. Nym wondered if in five years, he’d look middle-aged. Maybe he’d be dead in twenty.

That was a disturbing thought. He hadn’t given much consideration to it before, since looking older benefited him, but the sudden realization that he couldn’t make it stop and might age right into the grave in a handful of years brought him up short. He needed to stop screwing around and get serious, to recover his memories and break whatever curses had been placed on him. He needed to know who he was and why this had been done to him.

He didn’t have a lot of time to reflect on this, as both soldiers were running at an arcana-empowered sprint the whole time while he flew behind them. The forward command post came into view in a matter of minutes, and their group was met by a squad of soldiers on the road. His escort spoke to the squad leader in muttered tones for a minute, explaining the situation. When they were let through, another two soldiers from the squad joined them.

This process repeated itself several times as they went through various checkpoints. Nym watched the surroundings change from an open road hacked through the forest to a gatehouse in a fortress wall to a checkpoint inside the main keep, and then several more times as he was guided through the interior.

Finally, after a lot of being handed off from one group of soldiers to the next, Nym found himself waiting in a room outside an office with his two original escorts, and waiting, and waiting…

“I’m bored,” he said.

One of the soldiers snorted. “Comes with the job. Better bored than getting ripped apart by a ghoul.”

“Even that’s better than what a geist’ll do if one catches you,” the other replied. They both shuddered. “Just put an arrow in my eye if you ever see a geist hauling me away.”

“What do geists do?” Nym asked.

“That’s… not really something we would normally tell someone your age. I guess it’s okay now because you’re… you know… you.”

“I think so. If he’s going to fight, he needs to know what he’s up against.”

“Right, so the thing about geists is that a ghoul will eat you while you’re still alive, but a geist will flay your skin off you, then hook itself into your body and become your new skin. You’ll walk around with a geist flesh wrapper, except it’s not you controlling anything. It’s the geist. They’ll just ride you around for days while you die wrapped up in them, and once they get ahold of you, there’s no saving you. Even if someone else kills the geist, you just die with it.”

“That’s horrifying.”

“They’re the real reason for the walls. Ghouls are bad, but it’s the geists we’re trying to keep contained. Geists can’t really climb on their own, so as long as they don’t get hosts, we can close off the area and keep them from spreading.”

“What about the other type, wights?”

“They’re… probably the least of our concerns most days. Ghouls will climb things and ambush. Geists are geists. Wights only rise up from the corpses of the recently deceased. They retain all of that person’s skills and knowledge from life, so they’re way more dangerous than a ghoul, but there are so few of them and it’s easy to take precautions against more of them rising up. When they do pop up, they’re a huge problem, but they’re rare.”

Nym was about to ask what changed between a living person and a wight of that person if they still had all the same stuff in their head, but the door to Commander Seskrit’s office swung open and ended the conversation. The commander himself stood in it. He was an exceptionally tall man, wiry and long-limbed. His face was thin and sharp, with dark eyes that regarded them all with cold, calculating calm.

“You’re the boy mage?” he asked. His tone suggested that he already knew the answer.

“Yes, sir.”

“I see. Come join me in my office. You two are dismissed back to your posts.”

 Nym followed the commander in. Rather than sit down at his desk, Seskrit walked over to a large map spread across a table. It showed the local area and gave Nym his first look at where exactly he was in relation to places he’d already been, but its real purpose was to keep track of troop positions. Little wooden figurines covered it, most painted blue and white, with a minority in black, and an even smaller percentage in yellow. Tiny wooden walls formed a quarter-circle around a portion of the forest.

“Your name is Nym?”

“Yes, sir.” He should have insisted everyone go back to calling him Ermy when they got close to Ebalsan, but it was too late now.

“According to the report I received from a Captain Tainer, you are aware of the source of the undead from a prior experience in the area involving Babkin the Berserker and Leaf Aeldson where you investigated the frost wraiths.”

It was the first Nym had heard of the title ‘Berserker,’ but given Babkin’s stature and how afraid of angering him people were, he supposed it wasn’t a surprise. On the other hand, he’d never once seen the man actually lose his temper, even when Nym was arguing with him. It was hard to picture Babkin roaring across a battlefield, slaughtering everyone and everything in his path.

“I knew them as Babkin the innkeeper and Leaf the guy who lived in the woods, but yes.”

Seskrit snorted. “Yes, I heard about Babkin’s retirement project. Regardless, we do not want information about the source of this getting out. Information about a tear in the veil could attract new, unscrupulous necromancers with less brains than God gave a rock who’ll pick at it and make everything worse. You are to keep this information to yourself.”

That was actually a pretty solid reason not to spread around the source of the problem, to Nym’s mind. Whatever protections they came up with once the undead were contained and destroyed, they would work better if no would-be villains ever showed up to test them.

“Understood,” he said.

“Good man. Now, onto the second report I received. A knot of ghouls somehow popped up behind our front lines and hit our building crews hard. You were there assisting a crew, but when the ghouls showed up, you helped evacuate your companions, and then came back for others. And then you created some sort of dirt monster, which you commanded to destroy ghouls, and ferried the body parts over to nearby bonfires to be immolated.”

“That… yes, I guess that’s true.”

“I’m going to be honest with you. This military does not have a place for you. You are too young and you are untrained. I can’t attach you to our scouting unit and you’re not a trained and licensed mage. You could be an asset, but not in a way we’re structured to take advantage of.

“This undead problem keeps getting bigger. We’ve called in reserves trying to keep up with it, but it’s growing faster than we can contain it on our own. We had to start recruiting from non-military personnel, had to form a company of troubleshooters who take on odd jobs. They go out and destroy undead if needed, but they also deal with the other problems and challenges the forest presents us. People get lost. Wild animals attack our outposts.

“Sometimes the standard army kit isn’t the best solution for the job. When those kinds of situations come up, we have freelancers. We operate as a fallback and resupply point for them, and they get paid to use whatever unique skills they possess to help pacify this forest. You’re young, but if you’re interested, I think I could get you a position doing this work.”

“Well, maybe that could work. I’ll be honest with you, sir. It’s not that I don’t want to help, but I came here with an earth mage crew to help them, practice my earth magic, and to earn some much-needed money.”

“You’ll earn at least as much money this way as you would building barricades and outposts. If you’re any good at it, you’ll earn more. If we consider last night your first job, you’ll be owed nine shields for the work,” Seskrit told him.

Nym was hesitant to take the offer. It didn’t sound safe, and he knew the Earth Shapers wouldn’t be happy about that. Ophelia especially worried after him. But it did sound exciting, and more importantly, profitable. He was going to need serious money if he planned on hiring experts to help him recover his memories. He’d probably need serious money just to find those experts. That wasn’t even considering how much he could further his own studies with this job.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

The commander nodded. “I had my assistant get all the paperwork done to commission you. It’s here on the desk. Take your time reading it. Once you’ve signed, someone will give you the quick tour of what facilities you’ll have access to.”

The paperwork wasn’t that complex, barely two pages long. It basically stated that Nym would be attached to the military as a freelance unit that would be paid by the job, pay to vary per job and agreed upon by both himself and the military prior to accepting it. He would have access to their armory and quartermaster to resupply as needed, and that he would be responsible for purchasing those supplies himself, albeit at the army’s price.

Nym signed it and handed it over the commander’s assistant, who’d been waiting for him outside the office. The assistant gave it a once over, nodded, and said, “Let’s go get you registered.”

It turned out the freelancer’s facilities weren’t part of the central keep itself, but instead occupied a few buildings pushed up against the north wall of the command post. They had the same rough look as everything else, clearly made with magic and in a hurry. There was a framework of lumber it had been built around to give it some extra stability, but if anything, that made it even uglier.

Commander Seskrit’s assistant led him into the main building and up to a counter with a bored-looking receptionist. “New one to file paperwork, needs a badge and a quick tour.”

The receptionist looked him over and said, “Bit young, isn’t he?”

“The commander cleared him, so… I guess just do it?”

A shadow fell over Nym and the assistant. Nym turned in place to see a huge man wearing a lot of leather with steel plates attached to it in strategic places. An axe hung from a belt loop, with one hand resting on the head. Its blade was over a foot long, and secured by a leather sheathe.

“No,” Babkin said. “This will not be happening.”