David Niemitz

Guild Mage 195

Chapter 195: The Last Light

Keri tumbled off the end of the frozen chute, rolled across a stone balcony and then beneath an archway, and fetched up against an ancient wall with an impact hard enough to take the breath from his lungs.  The orb of sunlight he’d been maintaining for nearly the entire time he and his companions had been exploring the Tomb of Celris bobbed along in his wake, casting shadows about the room.

For a moment, he couldn’t bring himself to move. ...

Guild Mage 194

Chapter 194: The Guide

Liv’s mind flickered through options the instant the monster began its dive.  She was the one lowering the platform, because she was the one who held the most mana; Keri’s most important job was keeping his orb of light from sputtering out so that they could all see to fight.  That left Arjun and Rose to take the lead in defending their group, but she wasn’t confident that would be enough.

Arjun was first – while Keri and Rose both set to r...

Guild Mage 193

Chapter 193: Ice and Steel

At Keri’s insistence, Liv sat in a rough circle – though with only four of them, perhaps the points of a square was more accurate – inside the shelter she’d created when they stopped to rest.  In place of a fire, Keri’s glowing orb of concentrated sunlight rested in the middle of the shelter, illuminating the faces of her friends.  She and Rose were dressed again, and all of them sat on their piled up furs, to keep away the chill of the sto...

Guild Mage 192

Chapter 192: The End of All That Is

Some uncountable number of hours later, they had still not found a map.

Perhaps Celris had never intended to open his home to visitors, though the ancient grandeur of the entrance hall made Liv doubt that.  She supposed that he might have wanted to keep what visitors he did have uncomfortable, confused and dependent on his servants to find their way.  He might have had the panes of glass they’d found in other rifts town off the walls...

Guild Mage 191

Chapter 191: The Tomb of Ice

Liv led her friends into the great hall of the Tomb of Celris – for it was a great hall, a grand entranceway that must once have welcomed visiting gods and goddesses, before the Vædim were overthrown.

Whereas the tower of the Lady of Thorns had felt dedicated to turning away intruders and creating a private place, where a mother could raise her daughter away from the cares of the world, Celris’ home was clearly designed to impress.

While the...

Guild Mage 190

Chapter 190: Polar Night 

“It’s beautiful,” Arjun gasped.

Every time that Liv had come this far north with her father, she had come during the summer, when the sun never quite dipped below the horizon.  Even when she and her friends had made the rushed journey to her grandfather’s deathbed, it had been Harvest season, not winter, and there had been light during the day.

Now, in the heart of winter, the only hint of sunlight was a faint orange glow along the...

Guild Mage 189

Chapter 189: Promises

When Liv woke in the morning, for the first time since leaving Coral Bay, she found Thora waiting for her, with a fresh dress laid out and waiting.  When Liv glanced over at her enchanted boots, she was surprised to find they’d been cleaned and polished sometime during the night.

“I thought you’d be busy with Triss,” Liv said, but she couldn’t help grinning.  “It’s good to see you made it here safe.”

“I’m told you’ll only...

Guild Mage 188

Chapter 188: The High Table

Liv was struck by how much Piers had aged since she’d last seen him, just over a year before.  But then, she realized, that wasn’t quite right.  The guardsman must be coming up on fifty now, and his hair had been going gray for quite a while.  All of the snacks he used to sneak from the kitchen had gone to his belly, and all the exercise that came with service to first Baron Henry, and then later Duchess Julianne, hadn’t quite managed to ...

Guild Mage 187

Chapter 187: The Armory

“When you said you’d be able to fit Rose with something, I was expecting that we’d be scrounging through whatever cast off junk you could find,” Liv admitted.  “Not – this!”

The armory of House Bælris was more impressive than she’d anticipated, and Liv realized that she’d based her expectations on some combination of Castle Whitehill and Kelthelis.  In the one, Baron Henry had spent a good deal of coin on providing his guards wi...

Guild Mage 186

Chapter 186: Matches

“Who are you?” Rosamund asked, with a laugh, as Liv slipped into the steaming hot spring they’d been led to by Keri’s cousin Sohvis.  Steam rose from the pool in a column, up into the cold winter air, and Liv had no sooner stripped off her clothing than she scampered across the rocks and climbed in.

“What?” Liv asked, turning about to face the other woman, letting the almost-painful heat of the water soak into her bones.  

“Y...

Guild Mage 185

Chapter 185: Breaking

At first, the words didn’t even register.

Keri couldn’t take his eyes from Rika, whose hand remained on Sohvis’ arm.  One winter, when they were young men, he and his cousin had dared each other to swim in the icy waters of the Okuthet - the small river that tumbled down from the heights of Menis Breim into Cold Harbor.  Keri had leapt first, and immediately found that the shock of the sudden cold completely prevented him from moving his arms ...

Guild Mage 184

Chapter 184: Homecoming

Liv had declared that she intended to depart Al’Fenthia by nightfall, and in the end it was a close thing.  The days had grown short and the nights long, which caused her a bit of concern regarding their mission at the Tomb of Celris; in any event, the sun was dipping below the western mountains when she and her friends gathered at the waystone.

After her grueling session with her grandmother and Aira Tär Keria, Liv had returned to her guest rooms i...

Guild Mage 183

Chapter 183: Tether

At first, Liv couldn’t help straining against her grandmother’s magic physically.  It was a natural instinct to shove her hand toward her wand with every bit of strength she had, even though she knew the effort would be useless.

Fighting back against a powerful Authority had nothing to do with muscles, but it was difficult to resist when she was fighting off a wave of raw panic at being utterly unable to move.  What made it worse was that her gran...

Guild Mage 182

Chapter 182: Dā

Liv was grateful that Airis and Saana’s servants had kept her guest room in order.  She felt as if she’d hardly stayed there for a moment before rushing off all across the mountains and the jungles in a blur.  Now that the immediate crisis had passed, she wanted nothing more than to soak in a hot bath, fill her belly with good food, and sleep away the day and a night besides in clean sheets.

Instead, she contemplated sitting down on the bed, then loo...

Guild Mage 181

Chapter 181: Winter Campaign

“I have a proposal,” Liv’s father said, before any of the elders could object to his mother’s words.  “If we know that Benedict’s forces will not move until winter has passed, that gives us nearly three months to act in Varuna.  Let us use that time to secure a waystone within striking distance of the mountains.”

“You have a particular target in mind, I assume?” Aira asked.

Valtteri unrolled a large map, inked on vellu...

Guild Mage Alpha Slice

So, we hit six thousand Followers on Royal Road, which is incredible!

In a bit of lighthearted celebration, here's a little treat I had made some notes on some time ago.

I've been playing tabletop and live action role-playing games nearly as long as I've been reading, and in that time I've brewed probably dozens of worlds and customized a lot of systems.

IF I was to create a TTRPG set in the world of Guild Mage, this is a rough sketch of what it might look like, using D&...

Guild Mage 180

Chapter 180: War Council

For the first time since her grandfather had died, Liv woke up pressed tight against another person.

By the time she’d got back into camp after speaking with Wren, Liv had found Rosamund already asleep in the tent they’d been loaned.  There had been two cots set up, one to either side, but with a bit of wiggling, she’d managed to squeeze in with Rose under a linen sheet.  

The cots most certainly weren’t built for two people, a...

Guild Mage 179

Chapter 179: Noghis

As Liv’s father had predicted, the Antrians in the jungle pulled back once it became clear that the Eld were no longer being forced to fight on two fronts.  With the eruption of the Garden of Thorns a tactical failure, whoever was commanding the war machines seemed to have no appetite for the prospect of beginning a full scale assault on the fortified waystone.  By the time night fell in the jungle, the fighting had completely subsided.

“Tomorrow,...

Guildmage 178

Chapter 178: Token

Moristaim Palace – or simply the palace, in the minds of nearly every citizen of Lucania – was a vast complex of ornate corridors and chambers, with as much space dedicated to ceremonial purposes as to the actual living space and comfort of the royal family. 

Milisant Loredan, Princess of Lucania, hurried across the thick carpets that covered the second floor hallway, her gold and purple skirts of Dakruiman silk clutched in the gloved fingers of her han...

Guild Mage 177

Chapter 177: Leaving the Ring

“Four hundred,” Rose said, once the door was closed and the two women were alone.  “It was bad enough when you told me that you’d live for two hundred years, but I thought, well, ‘everyone knows that mages live for a bit longer than ordinary people.  It wouldn’t be so bad as all that.’  Blood and shadows, Liv, it’d be like me having a pet cat – you love ‘em, sure, but you also know someday they’re gonna get old and pass,...

Guild Mage 176

Chapter 176: The Sky So Full Of Stars 

“This is where she is,” Aira Tär Keria explained, using her fingers to manipulate the map of Varuna while Liv and Sidonie leaned over the old woman’s shoulders to look.  “It was designed as an emergency backup facility, in case Corsteris was ever destroyed.”

Liv was amazed at just how large the western continent actually was.  She could pick out the Airaduinë river by the rift that was marked midway between the coas...

Guild Mage 175

Chapter 175: Hunters

The first breath of the Varunan jungle eased muscles that Wren hadn’t even realized were tense.  Coral Bay had been warmer than the north, and Lendh ka Dakruim had almost – almost – felt like home.  But even in the east, the smells had been all wrong.

For a long moment, she simply stood on the waystone, allowing her eyes to remain closed as she filled her lungs with the air of the jungle, redolent with the scents of flowers, damp earth, fruit, ...

Book 2 cover (2nd sketch)

Thoughts? Feels much better to me

Guild Mage 174

Chapter 174: The Garden of Thorns

Liv used her frozen warriors mercilessly, throwing them at every threat that manifested itself between the time her party entered the rift, and their arrival at the wall of thorns that surrounded the tower.  She lost the first to a pair of diving hawks grown to enormous size: their talons, nearly as large as arming swords, pierced and then cracked the ice of a swordsman’s body, leaving nothing but chunks of ice scattered across the road.

He...

Guild Mage 173

Chapter 173: Beyond the Palisade

“If you can spare me, I’d like to see just how badly off the wounded are,” Arjun told Liv, as they followed one of the manor guards to where the expedition was assembling.  The warrior led them from the base of the staircase, which curved back up around the great tree, a short distance down the street to the nearest intersection of two roads.  There, dozens of riders were waiting, along with saddled northern horses clearly intended for Li...

Guild Mage 172

Chapter 172: The Dark of Night

By the time Liv had brought the disk of mana up even with the platform, small flakes of snow had begun to drift down through the night.  She imagined that most of them had been caught up in the boughs and pine needles far overhead, but a few managed to land on the fabric of her dress.  After the heat of the Varunan jungle, it was jarring.

Liv slipped off the mana-construct and got her boots firmly on the wide wooden platform, but she didn�...

Guild Mage 171

Chapter 171: False Prophecy

“This,” Liv said, looking down from the broken walls of the bridge onto the lake that filled the river valley.  “This is where I need to be.”

Behind her, the dark serpent of the Airaduinë river stretched on endlessly into the dark jungle, winding its way east until, somewhere in the distance, it spilled into the ocean.  Before her, however, the reservoir created by the ancient dam was painted gold in the light of the setting sun. ...

Book 2 initial cover sketch

Definitely sending a few notes back on this, so if you have feedback feel free to let me know and I can pass it on

Faerie Knight 177 - Final Chapter

177 - The Feast of Saint Veischax

Like most Narvonnians of my generation, I find it difficult to imagine a time when our kingdom and the Caliphate were at war.

• Evaine du Camaret-à-Arden, Baroness of the Arden 

 ☀ 

14th Day of the Harvest Moon, AC 298

“Get that out of your mouth!” Yaél exclaimed in frustration.  Trist was amused to observe that, though his squire had been terrified to hold an infant, ...

Guild Mage 170

Chapter 170: Neverending Tide

Keri pushed off his back foot and thrust his spear forward at full extension, taking the ahmatti in the shoulder.  The mana beast was maddened by not only the turbulent mana of the eruption, but also the oily thorns that grew out of its shoulder and back.  Rather than stopping, the ahmatti threw itself forward, pushing the shaft of the Næv’bel deeper and deeper as it growled and spit and tried to get within clawing distance of Keri.

Even ...