emergencycomplaints

Chapter 46

This whole time, I’d been thinking of the barrier as something of a myth. The village obviously functioned fine without a barrier and had been for years. Based on Father’s story, I’d made some assumptions about local history that it seemed were incorrect.

It didn’t take more than a glance to confirm that this ward stone was designed to project a huge barrier, though exactly what kind would require a few minutes to read the runes inscribed on its surface. That was largely irrelev...

Chapter 45

I started by doing a quick lap around the manor. There were six alarm wards and two more trapped doors, both of which I marked for further investigation. I’d come back and see what was behind them as soon as I finished my initial circuit.

The manor was, for the most part, a big, long rectangle made up of connected rooms. There were exceptions, like the servants’ hall and the governor’s loop at the end, but the majority of the layout was room after room. There were several small ro...

Chapter 44

It was the moment of truth. I’d snuck down the hallway, made sure my mana core was topped off, checked every single doorway for wards and traps, removed yet another paralysis trap on the handle, and now was standing on my toes with a finger hooked around the handle, ready to turn it. If I was right, Noctra was sleeping not twenty feet away from me. This could all be over in the next five seconds.

I turned the handle. It twisted partway, then stopped well short of unlatching the door. ...

Chapter 43

I did not have the luxury to explore all night. If nothing else, it was significantly darker inside the manor than it had been outside, requiring me to expend a steady stream of mana to maintain sharpened senses just so I could see. I had a decent idea of where I needed to go already, thanks to my scrying efforts, but it was going to be slow going since I needed to check for wards in every room and at every doorway.

My goal was a hallway on the east side of the manor. It had four doors ...

Chapter 42

Author's Note: Keiran is currently number 1 on Rising Stars! I don't know how long I'll hold it, but we're celebrating while we can. Bonus chapter!

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I had never been near Noctra’s manor, and my first impression was that it was far bigger than necessary. It was still rustic by my standards, but compared to the rest of the village, the manor was beyond luxurious. In terms of sheer size alone, it dwar...

Chapter 41

We were about a mile from the village when Mother abruptly stopped in place. Father, who’d been walking next to her, glanced over and halted as well. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Dusk was upon us and our shadows stretched out before us, courtesy of the setting sun at our backs. My own shadow was engulfed by Nermet’s massive, steady presence behind me, leaving only four shadows darkening the scrub grass on the trail leading home.

“I thought… No, sorry. It’s nothing,”...

Chapter 40

My first impression of a dust jackal was that it looked like a dog with stork legs that were far too long for its body. It had dark brown earthy-colored fur on its back, and lighter dusty brown, almost yellow patterns on its legs and face. Everything about it was squished, like it had been pressed flat. Its muzzle was long and narrow and its ears were long and pointy, so close together that they practically touched at the base.

All in all, it was a rather ugly creature. Judging by how s...

Chapter 39

“I don’t want to do this,” Father said.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Mother told him.

“You can do it, Dad. You practiced a lot,” Senica added.

He turned to look at me. I shrugged and gestured for him to get going. We were going to need at least three hours to travel, probably more considering Senica and I were both children with short legs and low stamina. The sooner we got started, the sooner we’d be done.

“I really don’t think I’m ready,” Fa...

Chapter 38

“Raro aevinta temin,” Father said in time with the mana swirling through him.

“No. Not temin. Temun,” I corrected.

“Does it matter? You said the words were just for the tempo?”

“Not just for the tempo, and while you can get away with saying the wrong runes now, being slipshod isn’t going to help you in the future. Verbalizing runes has some leeway for novice spells; that’s why they’re novice spells to begin with. You can make mi...

Chapter 37

It took me a second to get back into the rhythm of things, and even though I’d given this speech many, many times in my past life, it suddenly felt awkward to be doing it again now. But I’d given magical lectures under worse conditions, and I could do it again now.

“Inscription is similar to enchanting, except that you are inscribing the language of magic onto a physical object. The primary purpose of this is to allow anyone to pick up that object and, assuming a base requisite am...

Chapter 36

I waited for Father to finish congratulating Senica on her new bracelet before I stood up. None of us were exactly getting any privacy here, but then again, it wasn’t like we’d had a lot back home either. It was a miracle I’d managed to be born at all, once I thought about it. Then again, considering that most huts held at least two and sometimes three generations, and rarely were they any bigger than mine, I supposed there were some differing cultural notions about privacy and what a c...

Chapter 35

Author's Note: This is a bonus chapter for hitting the 250 new patrons milestone! This one seriously couldn't have happened without all of you guys directly. Thank you so much for your support.

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The first thing I wanted to study was the wand I’d taken from Iskara. It wasn’t going to be much use to me personally, but it would be an excellent tool to help Father along if I could adapt it to work with him. That assumed I was able to get it w...

Chapter 34

Iskara stared at my father, waiting for an answer. I could practically see the gears turning in her head, measuring, cataloguing, and assessing him. She took a step forward, then another.

“That’s far enough,” Father said, snapping her out of her funk.

“Hmm? Oh. Where was I?”

“A big mess,” Mother said dryly.

“Ah, yes. But that was before I realized your husband had been blessed by the spirits. You must tell me how this happened.”

There was a hung...

Chapter 33

Whoever the person walking across the dry, dead earth was, they could obviously sense mana from a distance. It was impressive, in a way. Almost no one I’d met since awakening had that kind of skill at even the most basic level. From what I could piece together, Father had been considered something of a prodigy at working with mana as a child, and only the unfortunate accident that I was still missing some details on had prevented him from becoming someone important as he got older.

In...

Chapter 32

Author's Note: This is a bonus chapter for hitting the 2500 follower milestone on Royal Road.

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The procedure to transfer control of Nermet to Father went surprisingly smoothly. I kept expecting something to go wrong, some flaw to reveal itself in Father’s mana core or some trap in the subjugation spell Noctra had cleverly hidden away, or some monster attacking right as I got to the most delicate part of the job.

Nothing like that happ...

Chapter 31

The mana sniffer slowly picked its way up the face of the cliff. Considering just how bulky and thick-limbed it was, I was a bit surprised by how much agility it had on display. I wasn’t convinced that it was going to make it to the top, but if it made it to the halfway point before giving up, I was going to kill it.

Of more concern was the second mana sniffer that had joined it. Apparently, they weren’t as territorial as I would have supposed, considering how scarce food must have ...

Chapter 30

Once Father’s mana was spinning as fast as he could get it to go, I started pulling mana through my own core and releasing it into the air. A basic storage crystal would have been better here since I could have shunted the mana directly into a cloud around Father, but it wasn’t worth breaking my mana crystal to replicate that effect now. Besides, Father was much slower at gathering ambient mana than I was anyway, and if I’d dumped the entire amount all at once, too much of it would have...

Chapter 29

Author's Note: This is a bonus chapter for reaching the front page of Rising Stars. Boy, there are some harsh critics up there. Lots of bad ratings in the last day!

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“I don’t understand,” Father said.

“Which part?” I asked.

“The why of it, mostly. Why does this ignite a core?”

We were sitting outside our temporary home after our family nap. It was late afternoon, and I was busy lecturing my father on how best t...

Chapter 28

Breaking the sleeping enchantment on my father took about a minute and a half. Noctra had poured far more mana than was necessary into it, and that ended up working against me as it had been used almost like a layer of blubber wrapped round the enchantment’s artificial mana core. What a waste. I could have used the extra mana for myself if it hadn’t been so clumsily utilized.

Father’s eyes flickered open and he let out a soft groan. “Gravin?” he asked, his voice full of confus...

Chapter 27

Author's note: This is a bonus milestone chapter for reaching 1000 followers on Royal Road.

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It took a bit more scrying to pinpoint exactly where the cart hauling my Father’s comatose body was at. One of the drawbacks with low-level scrying magic was that it wasn’t good at pulling back from the target to hunt for landmarks, and even if it could, it wasn’t like this part of the world had plenty of unique and diverse landscapes going for ...

Chapter 26

Author's Note: Keiran is doing fantastic right now, but it is starting to stagnate on the Rising Stars list. If you haven't already I would appreciate if you took the time to visit the RR page (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/77820/keiran) to follow/favorite andleave a rating or review to help the story keep its momentum. Thank you.

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Bef...

Chapter 25

The hardest part of cleaning out the storage room was reaching the draw stones on the top shelves. There was a chair, but even standing on that, it was a struggle to get to the top two rows. I ended up climbing the shelf to sit on the top while I was accessing the uppermost row of draw stones. Sometime while I was working, the two Collectors left the bedroom they’d been standing in. One of them left the building, but the other went and woke the remaining four up.

At that point, I only...

Chapter 24

Author's Note: This is a bonus milestone chapter released because 100 people have subscribed to my Patreon since Keiran went live on Friday.

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I had less than twenty minutes to get some more mana into this crystal before the enchantment broke and it became unmovable. Under better circumstances, that wouldn’t have been an issue. I would have adequately filled the mana crystal’s reserves before cast...

Chapter 23

Author's Note: Keiran broke into the top 1000 ranked stories on Royal Road. I'm posting a bonus chapter to celebrate the milestone!

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First things first, I checked for more wards. It wouldn’t do to get caught in here after all. It only took a few moments, and I was sure that opening the door wouldn’t trigger any sort of alarms. The most common place to put such a trigger was a sort of trip line be...

Chapter 22

Author's note: This is a bonus milestone chapter for reaching 1000 followers on Royal Road.

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The village didn’t really have a problem with theft despite the fact that none of the homes even had doors, let alone locks. One part was that people just didn’t have much worth stealing, but another part was that the population was so small. Everyone knew everyone, and if someone did steal a bracelet or a shirt or a garden spade, they were going ...

Chapter 21

Author's Note: Keiran is doing fantastic right now, but it is starting to stagnate on the Rising Stars list. If you haven't already I would appreciate if you took the time to visit the RR page (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/77820/keiran) to follow/favorite and leave a rating or review to help the story keep its momentum. Thank you.

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