While yesterday I had thoroughly enjoyed the time walking by myself, today I felt even better. The thick wooden tunnel with its spots of sunlight and the green wisps of nature spirits was a bit chilly, but I ignored that. Instead, my mind was turning the matter of the witch over and over. Even the pending adoption of responsible child and a childish necromancer couldn’t put a damper on my mood.
The witch represented a whole host of possibilities. Two of them more prominent than others...
2021-05-28 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
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The walk towards Woodhoot was surprisingly pleasant. Without the urgency of required work or the needs of others to consider, I felt a joyful exuberance that carried me. I explored a few swards surrounded by wild blueberry bushes to pick fresh blueberries. I took an afternoon nap on a bed of thick moss. I may have even cast a charm spell on a Forest Beetle and made it dance for me. Just because I had too much dignity to permit myself a romp, didn’t mean that I couldn’t amuse myself with b...
2021-05-27 16:30:00 +0000 UTC
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After the meeting with Guildmaster Tim, I set about the last of the two tasks I wanted to accomplish today. I had brought a bottle of fifty-year-old grape wine, a tart and bitter vintage that’s taste didn’t match its price. Still, I was hesitant to bestow such a bottle on Baroness Lark. Not because it was that kind of thorny gift wasn’t warranted, but because I assumed a better opportunity to gift the foul thing would arise in the future.
So, I once more went back to the market. I...
2021-05-26 16:31:01 +0000 UTC
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I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it. By how nervous Miles had acted, I had assumed everything from bandits to the Baroness to the king’s guard. Nothing I couldn’t handle, certainly, but I’d fully prepared myself to return the rudeness of an interrupted meal with advanced spellwork of my own. Instead, I found what I could only imagine as the entirety of the population of Woodhoot standing around the door of the inn. Nearly two hundred people, far more than I would h...
2021-05-25 16:31:00 +0000 UTC
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It was the day of our departure to Lark for the Baroness’s wedding, and I was doing a few last minute spellworks in my laboratory. While I was confident that the containment fields that I established for my multiple tests would hold, I saw no reason not to enchant additional protections and illusions to keep them safe.
My primary concern at the moment was the variant of parasitic mushroom I adapted to consume the Pestilence scales I managed to procure. Or, rather, as the tower i...
2021-05-24 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
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It had been a week since Kine’s departure. Two weeks past when my new assistants arrived, and I was sitting on the top of my tower, enjoying a glass of pear brandy. The new height had done wonders to the view during the day, and I could see all the way to Lark from where I sat. Of course, I sat facing the other direction so it wouldn’t disturb my view, but that didn’t change the fact that I could.
I already missed Kine’s presence. I’d sent him off with a geomancers staff, a ho...
2021-05-21 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
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Two months had passed since Walker and Lilly’s departure. My new assistants were due any day now, but I could see Kine growing more and more prepared for his own journey. While Walker had grown more interested in testing himself through combat over his two years with me, Kine had grown in a different way. He had maintained his focus on the practical application of his magics, and held no interest in the experimentation and studies he had been tasked with. Instead of desiring to test himself...
2021-05-20 16:31:00 +0000 UTC
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Honest Brom was anything but honest. He was a man of smaller stature, though he had gained some weight in the past two years. His brown eyes, bowl-cut black hair, and a clean-shaven face did nothing for the naturally mischievous countenance. I imagined others viewed his arrival like a roll of the dice and wondered if they would lose or win big.
His guard, on the other hand, stood nearly six feet tall and had the same brutish body type as Meathead. They were almost matched to each other,...
2021-05-19 16:31:00 +0000 UTC
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The next day was filled with realizations. While my time tutoring Lilly had been less and less as she grew in her studies, the tasks that I had previously assigned Walker still needed completed. Kine graciously agreed to stay until the new assistants arrived and take on several of Walker’s previous duties, which did help.
I also stopped the patrols out into the bog. Those patrols took increasingly longer periods of time as the exploration went further and further out. To date, the pat...
2021-05-18 16:31:04 +0000 UTC
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My study had changed significantly in the past two years. With the laboratory moved to its own floor, I was able to expand the room to contain books and scrolls along all the walls without the need for a bookcase to stand out from them. These shelves weren’t entirely full, either, which gave my literature collection room to grow. The sitting chairs were now better positioned, and I acquired new finely-crafted oaken tables and desks from Lark.
Lark’s [Carpenters] had something of a b...
2021-05-17 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
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Hello!
I just wanted to touch base to let you all know that I'm still working on the next chapter and it should be out in 2-3 days, instead of the week I originally estimated.
For those patrons who joined recently, I'll be working to ensure you stay 3 or more chapters ahead of any Royal Road postings once the 2nd arc begins. Privileged content should also be made available in the future, like polls, special interludes, etc.
As background - I've rewritten ...
2021-05-14 20:00:03 +0000 UTC
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As I considered the multiple ways of going about what I wanted, I decided on one thing first. That despite my anger at the kingdoms of men, I didn’t want to see humanity lost with the end of an Age. I was half-human, after all. So I began my work with a letter. One that I hesitated to write, if only for a moment.
To the honorable and respected Count Shielding,
I write to you to inform you of a matter of great import. I hold your family in high esteem and believe you...
2021-05-13 16:31:00 +0000 UTC
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Following his words, we did the one thing that most wizards would do when confronted with the possible end of civilization. We drank. We went through three bottles of brandy. By the end of the night, we had found ourselves on the roof and composed poetry. Poetry about the giant lamprey corpse sitting in the lake. When Alred fell asleep there, I took myself to my bed.
In the late morning when I awoke, I found that he had already departed. His warning left me with a number of concerns, bu...
2021-05-12 16:30:00 +0000 UTC
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Three intense weeks flashed by me. The first thing I had done was to restructure my [Analyze] spell. If the tower could detect information I couldn’t then something was wrong. That was only the precipice of my fall as I delved into the inner workings of the Asrid Flowers.
The yellow-leafed plant was much, much stranger than I originally imagined. The inner workings of it barely functioned as a plant at all. Instead, it fed on ambient mana, like a dungeon creature. But feeding on mana ...
2021-05-11 16:31:00 +0000 UTC
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By vote -
A day at the tower day - Lilly POV
The sounds of birds chirping woke me from my dreams. I wiped my eyes as I tried to recall the face of the handsome prince. But I couldn’t. All I could remember was the white stallion we rode away on, and the way the wind felt in my hair. The same breeze that blew through my window.
My window, the only one in the tower. Dad—master—had allowed us to chose our rooms, and I picked the ri...
2021-05-10 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
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By the time I’d made it down to the entrance to the dungeon, I was fuming again. I had been going over in my head the number of times I had bent my neck to nobility. How often I listened to a kingdom representative because I wanted to be seen as a good and upstanding citizen of the kingdom. A proper son of Sena that did his part. The smiles on their faces meant something entirely different in my mind now. As if the entirety of the noble caste were laughing at my expense.
It wasn...
2021-05-09 16:31:00 +0000 UTC
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Hello! I have several ideas for different scenes from Lilly's POV that would all work well. So, I thought why not let you all pick?
2021-05-08 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
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When I awoke, my anger hadn’t abated. Rather it seemed to have grown. I felt ashamed of my initial reaction, the raging tantrum I threw in the dungeon. Though, it didn’t take me long to lay the blame for that on the crown. My breakfast was brought to me in my bed. Chelsea had outdone herself, with an intricate pie of tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and condor meat. It smelled delicious. The downside was that drink served was the Asrid Flower tea. It tasted of bitter betrayal, and yet still I ...
2021-05-08 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
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Hi! I wanted to see if any of you would be interested in an interlude chapter from a different point of view. I've put together a list of some of the characters to choose from, but if the option you want isn't on the list, feel free to comment below to add it.
The options listed below are formatted names - background
This format isn't indicative of what the interlude chapter would be about.
2021-05-07 16:48:47 +0000 UTC
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I came to the conclusion that the ice foxes were lacking in intelligence. I had made a stone pit near the other experimental subjects and created canals connecting the trap pits to it. I only had a little more than a dozen of the foxes still living after the burrowing, and what did they do? First, they didn’t want to go down the canals after I woke them up. I had to cast fire spells to get them moving in the right direction, and then seal off the trap pits so they didn’t return. Then, the...
2021-05-07 16:31:00 +0000 UTC
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That afternoon, I organized the cleanup from the beastwave. My elementals in the moat had already done a decent job of moving the pieces and parts into the feed pit behind my tower. The full bodies were collected in a floating pile. I had them pull the condor bodies to the bridge and set my three guards to plucking them. The feathers they could use for arrows, and I wanted to see if Chelsea could cook the things. Maybe a jerky, considering the number.
I had no intention of keeping or do...
2021-05-06 16:31:00 +0000 UTC
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The first thing I did was gather several large-sized gemstones from the hidden places within my stores. Gemstones the size of my head, which only fit through the opening to my bag of holding with some difficulty. With these, I would be able to summon fourth-tier elementals. Several handfuls of the smaller gemstone types made it in as well.
Next, I remade the trap pits in my shallow lake. If this wave came from the same direction as the last one, then these pits would catch more experime...
2021-05-05 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
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Yesterday afternoon and this morning I spent doing recordkeeping for my latest experiment. I’d enchanted numbered markers for each of the wolf pits, and needed to annotate those dates and numbers. It wouldn’t do to forget and accidentally breed the beasts incorrectly.
Right in the middle of eating lunch, I was informed I had guests. Scout [Rangers]. If it were delivery of tea flowers, they would have dropped it off with a guard. That they were waiting for me meant it was...
2021-05-04 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
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In the morning, Lilly approached me. I was eating a breakfast of onions, eggs, and sausage baked into a hard roll. She approached balancing her breakfast atop her tome and say immediately to my right. Rather than eat, though, she opened her tome and pointed a tanned finger at one of the passages. In it, she described and measured one of the mushrooms from the dungeon.
“Master, Walker and I have searched through your books on herbs thrice and can find no mention of this type of mushroo...
2021-05-03 16:32:05 +0000 UTC
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I used the inkarnate website for a few hours to put together a map of the five kingdoms. It's a little rough, and I'm not sure I want to use it, so I thought I would see what you all thought.
First time using this software, so I'm far far from an expert mapmaker.
2021-05-03 04:28:03 +0000 UTC
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Our meeting didn’t last long after Baron Wilchrest’s response. I reminded Baroness Lark that Mirm Fenn was a landless noble trying to escape justice for banditry with his sweet words. For the [Bandit Lord]’s part, he silently brooded. We paused our conversation for a few minutes when Chelsea arrived with some tea and delectable honeyed rolls with jam. After the snack, I apologized for not preparing more because I hadn’t known they were coming. Then I began discussing the upcoming war ...
2021-05-02 16:31:00 +0000 UTC
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A week had gone by since the Baron’s visit. The merchant returned in that time, escorted by fledgling adventurers saving me a trip into Lark. I spent the majority of my free time following up on my ongoing experiments in the beast pits. When not doing that I was working to apply ornate etchings and designs throughout the varying rooms of the tower. Walker returned one day with a handful of gems, most of which were worthless to me. Kine had yet to find any more valuable than quar...
2021-05-01 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
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The next three days were a mixture of experimental bliss and grudge work moving the pits. Giving the additional duties to my pupil and assistants worked out perfectly in allotting me more time to pursue my own interests. The wolves being subject to two earth elementals’ mana infusion were doing well in that they seemed to be adopting traits of an earth subtype. Not completely yet, but I saw the beginnings of it. The wolves under only one elemental mana infusion didnâ...
2021-04-30 16:31:00 +0000 UTC
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The morning after the adventurers came and went, I ate a pleasant breakfast of sliced deer sausages in a yam sauce with biscuits. It was interrupted when the [Ranger] guard Eni presented an owl that he had tamed last night during watch. Apparently, it had just flown right up and landed on the edge of the tower, attracted to the wisps. The animal, its plumage orangish-brown with fine white speckles and a white face, wasn’t a beast or it would have been destroyed by the guardian wind elementa...
2021-04-29 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
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Nearly a week had passed since the unexpected visit from the Bents. Tomorrow, I would see if the decrease in tea consumption would have any noticeable effect, but I doubted it as the change would amount to less than a sip and I didn’t always finish my tea. Yesterday, Kine had declared himself caught up on his studies, which I felt to be a surprisingly quick time spent. We spent the entire day with me questioning him on his learning and him answering to the best of his abil...
2021-04-28 16:31:00 +0000 UTC
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