emergencycomplaints

Chapter 170

Nym had known that, intellectually, he’d be stronger without the curse. He understood that they worked by setting down roots in the victim’s body that drained arcana away whenever any was pulled in, and they were impossible to starve out. They stuffed themselves with massive reservoirs that, if sufficiently drained, would force a conduit to open so they could refill, regardless of how much damage it might do to a victim.

He hadn’t known it at the time, but he’d probably come per...

Chapter 169

“That’s one nice spell,” Nym said.

“I built it myself,” Archmage Veran told him. “I don’t think I’ve ever taught it to anyone else.”

“Yeah, I can see that. This thing is a monster.”

The spell in question, a long distance scry, was without a doubt the most complicated spell Nym had ever seen. He’d thought the golem series were bad, but this was so much worse. It was like mashing together teleportation, the detection portion of a communication spell, an...

Chapter 168

Ambushing the drug runners wasn’t hard. Nym and Analia floated a hundred feet in the air over the group, safely hidden behind his camouflage screen, and hit all four of the adults with paralysis spells. Two of them started casting immediately, so he peppered them with arcana injections. The other two apparently weren’t mages, and there was very little they could do to fight back.

Though he hadn’t ever seen anyone besides himself push through an arcana injection to keep flinging sp...

Chapter 167

Nym expected some complaining at the very least. Cern was a fantastic complainer. But it didn’t happen, not this time. He supposed the alchemist probably knew a lot about ocean tears and the kinds of people who were involved, because all he really did was direct Nym on what to do in order to keep the project he’d been working on stable, then got started whipping up the medicine.

Analia came into the workshop about half an hour later, by herself now, and walked into the room. Before ...

Chapter 166

They left the drug runners behind, paralyzed and gagged in the back room. Nym planned to go back for them later, when things weren’t so pressing. Analia assured him that she could handle this on her own, but she was still only second circle, despite how strong she’d gotten. He would feel much better about her fighting a cartel if he went with her.

They flew over to the docks and stopped to look around. “It’s bigger than I expected,” Analia admitted. “The building we’re loo...

Chapter 165

Nym waited for Analia to explain. Instead, she just glared at him. When he didn’t say anything, she said, “I don’t need your help with this.”

“Didn’t say you did. Just wanted to know what’s going on.”

The glare faltered, and she said, “It’s complicated.”

“Okay. Are you going to be in any trouble for this?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Not with the law or anything. They’re criminals, so it’s not like they’ll go running to the bluehats...

Chapter 164

“The challenge with all communication-based magic is finding the recipient,” Archmage Veran said. “This is by far the biggest arcana investment in even the most basic message spell, and that has a range limited to mere miles and relies heavily on the caster’s knowledge of the recipient to direct the search.”

He gestured to the fox ring and said, “This circumvents part of that problem by establishing a link not to a person, but to an unchanging item. The spell looks for the r...

Chapter 163

“Oh, and I guess I need to set up a postal box,” Nym added to the end of his explanation. “That has nothing to do with all the other stuff, just a thing I need to take care of and haven’t figured out how to do yet.”

“Ah, yes, plague-bug infestations and mystical animals possessing stronger magic than me, and being reachable by drop box.”

Nym’s face flushed slightly, and Archmage Veran’s expression turned shrewd. “Who, pray tell, are you expecting a letter from?...

The God Machine

Hey guys, for the last few weeks I've been working on a new project. I am tentatively planning for this to go live on RR and Patreon Monday, Feb 13, but if you'd like to get a sneak peak of it now, here's that the first 3 chapters.

I'm calling this one the God Machine, and it's a story inspired by the idea of why the system needs to exist, not just what if there was a system.

Blurb:

When Luke Bennet gets pulled into a world full of deadly monster...

Chapter 162

The entire class was gathered in the lecture hall, which Nym had gone ahead and thrown stone warming spells onto multiple walls to heat up. Everyone was sick of the cold, everyone was tired, and everyone was annoyed at having spent the whole day freezing and walking only to get nowhere at the end.

“Alright, before I release you all to go gather your possessions and head to the teleportation platform, I thought you’d all like to know what went wrong today. First, a powerful mirror fo...

Chapter 161

As it turned out, for once, it actually wasn’t that hard and didn’t require Nym to put himself in any sort of danger to identify the source of the feverish corruption that had infected the Garden of Winter. He circled around the outside edge to examine the arcana from a few other angles, and it didn’t take long for a pattern to start to form, one that pointed not to the middle of the garden, but towards the back.

That was the hardest part, because what he was looking for was under...

Chapter 160

Nym hadn’t been idle while he spoke with the mystical fox. One air golem had shadowed the class as they moved, and the other had scouted ahead. He knew exactly where everyone was and, now that they were outside the draining radius of the fox’s magic, they were progressing much more quickly.

Professor Lakton wasn’t at her normal position near the front. Instead, she was somewhere in the middle, close enough to the back of the line to respond immediately, and was repeatedly remindin...

Chapter 159

“I don’t see where there’s much to talk about,” Nym said. “You’re stealing arcana from the students I’m supposed to protect. You’re a threat to them. At the rate you’re draining them, they’ll die out here.”

“That is all true,” the boy agreed. “I suppose you’re not doing a very good job of protecting.”

Nym’s fists tightened. The construct for lightning bolt was half-way coalesced and could be triggered in an instant. The only thing preventing him f...

Chapter 158

Nym hadn’t had to use the stimulant spell he’d learned back in Ebalsan in a long time, but that morning it was necessary. By the time he’d gotten to bed, there had barely been an hour left before the sun came up. Fortunately for him, his suite had no windows. Unfortunately, the field trip started early. He got maybe three full hours of sleep, and that was with skipping breakfast, so magic was very, very necessary.

The class started out with Nym watching over them as he flew overhe...

Chapter 157

Nym sat a thousand feet up in the sky, surrounded by a shell of arcana that held both him and Risa aloft without so much as a stray breeze to ruffle their hair. In the soft light of the stars and moon, he could see the valley stretched out for miles below. Risa sat next to him, a soft smile on her lips as she shared the view.

“It’s incredible,” she said. “How much arcana would it take to duplicate what nature made here? Would it even be possible?”

“Not for a human, I d...

Chapter 156

Their path ended in a box canyon with a massive frozen waterfall at the north end. Smaller falls blanketed the walls, anywhere from ten feet in height to over two hundred at the very end. The walls themselves were thick ice instead of stone, and they walked on a frozen lake where the wind had blown the snow up against the canyon walls.

Professor Lakton set her students loose to explore, to “make memories forever associated with the brisk coldness of the environment,” in her words. N...

Chapter 155

The class set out in the early morning hours, fully expecting to spend upwards of three hours traveling through the ice and snow. It was a bright, clear day, the kind that Nym hated to fly over snow during. Even with a perfect vision spell active, he quickly found himself with a headache from the glare. He wished he still had his old flying goggles, but the destruction of Ebalsan had taken those from him.

Unfortunately, he lacked the ability to create glass. He suspected he could find a...

Chapter 154

After they returned, Professor Lakton directed the class to the lecture hall to discuss internalizing the memories of the ice cave so they would associate it with the intent filter they were trying to create. Nym sat in the back of the hall, several rows behind the students, and tuned out the lesson. It was not new information to him, and he was much more focused on the air golem he had patrolling outside the facility.

There was no guarantee that the trolls would attack again, or even t...

Chapter 153

Nym’s first thought was to use hydrokinesis to divert the snow. It couldn’t be that heavy, after all. Then he watched it obliterate a fully grown tree on the way down and decided that it could in fact be that heavy, and that the better course of action would be to get everyone out of the way.

He flew straight up and used greater telekinesis to grab seven students who were walking on the snow. Panicked yelling filled the air, though it was barely audible over the rumble of the avalan...

Chapter 152

Since Nym wasn’t at the glacier to get in touch with his inner icicle, he saw no reason to suffer. The others could shiver and cope; he’d already done his time with that. Professor Lakton had probably done this trip quite a few times. She already had a personal heating spell going before Nym even turned to look at her.

She was also already cutting through the complaining her students had started up. “Get used to it,” she said, raising her voice. “This is why you’re here. Int...

Chapter 151

With Analia comfortably settled into her new home, a two room house a few blocks away from the workshop that was costing her seven dakars a month, Nym left the pair of them to their work and returned to Archmage Veran’s sanctum. His own studies were progressing somewhat smoothly, though he was still failing to bore through the fourth layer. He could, if he wanted, pull in the arcana, though it was practically unusable in its base form.

There were techniques to learn how to process it,...

Chapter 150

Nym eyed the trunk doubtfully. “Why don’t I come back for it later? We don’t want to haul this around all day.”

“Then I’d need to pay for another day’s lodging,” Analia pointed out.

“Might be doing that anyway. There’s no guarantee we’ll find a place on the first day,” Cern told her.

“I know a team of contractors who could put a place up pretty fast,” Nym said.

“I don’t think we have the funds to have a workshop built.”

Nym and A...

Chapter 149

Nym’s first impression of Shu-Ain was that there were a lot of people with much darker skin than him speaking in a language he didn’t know. Even on the outskirts of the main city, the streets were packed. A great number of people lived in the city, or at least were visiting it today.

The language barrier wouldn’t be a problem, Nym hoped. There was a spell he’d picked up specifically for the occasion, a third circle translation spell that worked by establishing a telepathic conne...

Chapter 148

After a year spent wasting his time mucking around in the minds of various weak-willed humans, Abdun was desperate to be off this job. He was of the opinion that Nyramin had actually died when he’d fled, but Exarch Myzalik wasn’t interested in the opinions of a lowly sixth layer ascendant such as himself. Then again, even if he’d reached the eleventh layer, Abdun doubted it would make a difference. Exarch Myzalik listened only to Exarch Myzalik.

This lead was a bit more promising ...

Chapter 147

“If you don’t mind international travel, there’s a city in Byramin known as the birthplace of alchemy. It’s called Shu-Ain. Many alchemists still go there to train. It’s an incredibly fertile region, flush with the types of materials we need. However, the prices are correspondingly low. There’s an easy supply so…

“But!” Cern said, gesturing to Nym. “But most people don’t have a master mage capable of transporting the stock to better markets. The fortune we could sa...

Chapter 146

The refugee camps were functional at best. They were made completely from earth magic, which was fine for making thick walls and large buildings, but didn’t do much for insulation. Nym understood why they’d raise twenty long halls each capable of holding fifty or more people, but keeping that warm was going to be impossible and the people stuck living in them would be getting little to no privacy.

Hopefully, the forest would soon be completely clear of undead. With the tear no longe...

Chapter 145

“We’ve hit something of a dead end,” Lord Feldstal said. “I’m not saying it’s impossible to solve, and we do have more time now that this current crisis is all but dealt with. However, our funding is going to drop drastically and we’ll need to show our progress.”

“What does this have to do with me?” Nym asked.

“You’re our most successful case study. I’d like to get new scans to present.”

Nym almost couldn’t believe the audacity of the man. The C...

Chapter 144

Nym took the next few days easy. It turned out he’d botched quite a few things trying to heal himself, and what he’d done right had been more of an accident than anything. Archmage patched up enough to keep him alive, but neither of them had the energy to further right then. The problem was easily remedied by a visit to an accomplished healer, one who just looked at the hack job he’d done of it, shook her head, and recommended not trying to do it himself next time.

He agreed with ...

Chapter 143

Nym felt something invading him, not physically, but grasping at his soul well. If he hadn’t already injured himself, hadn’t already spent so much time staring inward while he tried to fix it, he would never have been able to stop the root.

Thankfully, and that felt odd to think, he had destabilized his matrix. He could feel the root attacking him, and more than that, he could see it. He knew how to look at what was going on. Inside him, it had split into a thousand little tendrils ...

Chapter 142

Nym shared illusions he crafted from what his scrying spell showed him. The first root-corpse in the link was embedded in a random tunnel wall, almost completely buried except for its face. It would require some excavating to dig it out, but not so much that anything other than basic terrakinesis was needed. Sakaro and Tiramaya were assigned to that one.

The second root-corpse was trickier. It was in a cavern near the ceiling, with maybe a third of its body visible but heavily concealed...