Ascendant

Nym approached the table the pair were sitting at. “Hi,” he said, a bit awkward under the woman’s glare. “Do you have a minute?”

“What do you need?” the man said, ignoring his companion.

“Well, I’m kind of in the same spot you guys are,” Nym said. “Nothing available for the kind of work I want to do, but the clerk told me we could help each other. You need a third for your sweeper job. I don’t want to spend the next sixteen hours waiting for some guy to need to send a message.”

“Get lost. We don’t need to babysit some mageling who just learned his first second circle spell yesterday,” the woman said.

“If you don’t want to work with me, that’s fine. I’ll find something else to do. But I can kill ghouls, and have been for the last few days whenever I see them. I can fly all day long, and take the both of you with me for a mile or two at least. I can incinerate remains and shape earth to put up walls or make pits. I can throw lightning bolts. I can cast far seeing and night vision spells.”

“That is an impressive skill set for someone so young,” the man said. “My name is Adriarc. This is my… sister… Larian. Give us a private moment to discuss this, please.”

“Sure, no problem.”

Nym found an empty table nearby and claimed it. The administration office was still about half-full, though the line up to the counter had started to disperse as it became common knowledge that the morning jobs had all been claimed already. Some people hung around, waiting for work to come up, but at least half of them walked right back out the door.

The whispering coming from Adriarc and Larian’s table got more heated the longer they talked, then cut off completely. Larian looked like she was about to stab someone, so much so that Nym was having fourth thoughts about this partnership. Second thoughts had happened while he was still talking to them, and third thoughts about two minutes into the whispered argument.

But that money though… one crest four. Even if he only got four shields for it to their five each, that was still twice what he’d make running messages for a base commander all day long. If he understood sweeper jobs correctly, it would only take a few hours to do, and hopefully there’d be new courier work for him to spend the afternoon on.

Adriarc caught his eye and waved him over. “Okay, we’ve decided,” he told Nym. “We’ll bring you along. Your job will be corpse disposal and to stay out of danger. That means we’ll find a place with a clearing, you sit up safe in the air, and keep the fire going to burn the bodies. You’ll get three shields, and the whole thing will be done in three to four hours.”

“Three? That’s not an even split,” Nym said.

“It’s more than you’re worth. We’re doing all the work, plus having to babysit you to make sure you don’t get into trouble,” Larian said. “The only reason I even agreed to this is it’s better than sitting here doing nothing. We should ask someone else, but if you can hold a flight spell that long, we’re reasonably certain that you won’t take too much looking after.”

Nym once again reminded himself of the money. Three shields for a four-hour job was still a good rate, even if it wasn’t a fair share. He didn’t understand exactly how the army evaluated freelancers, but he figured tagging along on a combat mission would go farther towards getting him authorized for solo jobs faster than his only alternative.

“Fine,” he said. “My name’s Nym, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you,” Adriarc said. Larian notably remained silent. “I’ll go sign us up for the job and we can be on our way.”

He left Nym sitting there with Larian. She immediately got up, snapped at him, “Don’t screw this up and get one of us killed trying to save you,” and swept out of the office.

“You need the money,” he told himself. “You don’t have to like her, just work with her.”

Then he got up and joined Adriarc, who was looking at a map at the counter with the clerk. “Who’s working the sector west of us?” he asked.

“Nald’s crew took it today,” the clerk said.

“Ah, good. They’re solid. We’ll focus more on the north side then. I don’t expect too many will get past his boys.”

Roly shrugged. “However you want to do it. I know it was my suggestion, but are you sure you’re fine with this? After what happened to Nodric…”

“We’ll be fine. Oh, hey, Nym. We’ve got our assignment. Ready to go?”

“Yes. Larian is outside,” Nym said.

“Great. Let’s go catch up then,” Adriarc said. “See you around, Roly.”

“You too,” the clerk said. “Stay safe.”

Nym followed Adriarc outside, where Larian was waiting. “What sector did we get?” she asked Adriac, completely ignoring Nym.

“Ninth Outpost’s. Nald’s crew took the one just to the west, so it should be a light day.”

“Ugh. That’s a long hike. I’m going to be completely wiped out carrying us there.”

“That’s fine. I’ll take point while you catch your breath.”

She rounded and Nym and jabbed a finger at him. “And you. You’d better be able to keep up. If I have to haul you over there too, you’re not getting a single shim.”

If there was one thing Nym was confident in, it was his flying. He was sure Larian knew a hundred spells he didn’t, but he’d only ever met one mage who could out-fly him. Somehow, he doubted the woman was on the same level as Flight Master Brogan. “I’ll do my best. Let me know if you need me to take over ferrying a passenger.”

Her eye twitched and, without another word, an arcana aura sprung up around them. She lifted herself and Adriarc off the ground and started flying north. Nym couldn’t help but run a clinical eye over her spell as he followed them at a leisurely pace. It was technically stable, but he could tell she was having trouble with the arcana output needed to manipulate the air around a second person.

He was tempted to form a few air cushions around Adriarc to stabilize the man’s flight and take some of the weight off Larian, but he doubted she’d appreciate it. If anything, it would probably just result in her yelling at him some more. On the other hand, the better shape she was in when they got to their section of the forest to sweep, the easier the job would be to complete.

“Do you want some help?” he asked as he flew up next to her.

She sneered at him and said, “Just focus on keeping up.”

“Keeping up? We’re barely going at a walking speed. You don’t need to go easy on me. Go all out. I’ll let you know if I need you to slow down for me.”

He heard Adriarc’s muffled laughter behind him, but focused on keeping his expression neutral. It was hard not to antagonize the woman when she took his very existence like it was a personal insult, and there was only so much he was willing to sacrifice to placate her ego. Taking five times longer to get there because she was struggling to draw in arcana fast enough to power a flight spell wasn’t one of those things.

“Fine. You think you’re so big and tough? Let’s see you in action,” Larian said. “You can take over the flight spell for Adriarc. I’ll keep a backup ready so he doesn’t fall when you realize you’re too weak to support another person for an extended flight.”

“Sounds like a solid plan.”

He wove new air cushions around Adriarc, who immediately steadied in the air. Then Nym put on the speed and the forest started blurring beneath them. The wind picked up around them, carrying away anything Larian might have said, but her expression was enough to get the message across. She was falling behind, slowly, but surely.

Adriarc waved an arm to get Nym’s attention, but he couldn’t hear what the man was saying. He put up a half shell of hard air in front of them and said, “Sorry, what was that?”

“I said… huh… that’s weird. What is this?” Adriarc asked, pushing gently against the shell.

“It’s a shell of hardened air to force the wind away from us. It’s too hard to talk while flying without it, but it’s too expensive to maintain all the time,” Nym explained.

“Huh…” Adriarc said again. “That’s convenient. Anyway, I was saying we need to go a bit farther west to get to our sector. We need to check in at the ninth outpost to let them know freelancers are operating in their area. Also, sorry about Larian. Our third died three weeks ago. He was my brother… her husband. Some kid wandered into our sweep and he got killed saving the kid from a geist. I know she’s been rough, but please don’t take it personally.”

Nym took a moment to think about that. “That’s an explanation, but it’s not a justification,” he told Adriarc. “You both lost someone, but look how she’s acting compared to you. I’ll follow your orders for this job, but I’m not going to let her abuse me just because she can’t control herself.”

“I understand. I’ve got no problem with you sticking up for yourself. She’s not acting right, and I just wanted to let you know she doesn’t hate you. You just remind her of the kid who had no business being out here that got my brother killed.”

“Got it. Hey, is that the outpost over there?” Nym pointed to his left at a brown spot in the sea of green below them.

“That’s the place. Just take us in and have a break while I talk to the outpost captain, and then we can start the sweep.”

Nym angled them down and they landed in the courtyard in the middle of the walled outpost. Adriarc went off into the biggest building around, and a few minutes later, Larian landed nearby. She was breathing hard and her hair looked like a bird had tried to make a nest out of it. Nym didn’t say anything, just watched the soldiers on the wall as they scanned the tree line for ghouls.

Ten minutes later, Adriarc came back out and called them over. “Good news and bad,” he said. “Good news is they authorized a bonus for the sweep today. Bad news is that geists were spotted in the area this morning, so we’re going to need to be extra careful.”

“What’s the bonus?” Larian asked.

“Extra shield for each geist we bring back.”

“Not bad pay if there really are any here,” she said. She turned to Nym and added, “Of course, that means you need to stay out of trouble. Keep yourself parked up in the sky and just focus on clean up.”

Nym turned to look at Adriarc, who nodded along. “That’s pretty much what we agreed to in the beginning. Geists lurking in the area means we’ve got to be more cautious and go slower, but it won’t change much of anything for you.”

“Okay, if that’s what you want me to do. Are we ready to go?”

“I think so. We’re responsible for a three-mile square with this outpost in the center. Nobody’s expecting us to get all of them, but the more ghouls we find, the better.”

They flew back up into the air and, under Adriarc’s direction landed half a mile north of the outpost. Nym flew a slow circle, gathering dead wood to use on the bonfire they’d be throwing dismembered ghouls onto while the other two started sweeping the area. Once he was done with piling the wood up, he sat in the air, bored, and conjured up a pair of earth golems. They’d do all the corpse handling once there were dead ghouls to burn.

Now he just needed the ghouls to show up.