emergencycomplaints

Chapter 21

“I was practicing and just picked up a few things here and there as I saw them.”

“You were practicing. In the woods. By yourself?”

Nym shrugged. “I needed a place with things to dodge around.”

“Are you trying to get Babkin to kill me?” Cern asked.

“You don’t have to buy them. I just thought you might be interested.”

Cern handed him the pack. “You know I can’t. This was not the deal we had.”

Nym took it back and tried to pretend h...

Chapter 20

It took a day to get a coat in his size made, but Nym was happy with the results. He decided to hold off on the shoes until the group made their second run for supplies and used the rest of the money to pay ahead for his room at the Trough and Stall. He debated heavily on it, but in the end, it wasn’t much cheaper to buy meals without the room and he liked having a bed to sleep in. He’d gotten used to a warm bath too.

He visited the guildhall in the morning and Navarim took him to t...

Chapter 19

Nym spent the rest of his money on a second night at the Trough and Saddle. In the morning, he walked over to Cern’s shop to wait for the team he was supposed to go reagent hunting with to show up. The alchemist just shoved him in a corner and said he didn’t have time to deal with Nym.

Nym might have been offended by the brush-off, except right at that moment, something in the backroom let out a large boom that rattled the glasswork on display. Cern ran back off with a cry of dismay...

Chapter 18

Desperately, Nym conjured up a full body cushion of air, one that was thick and solid, strong enough to stop a grown man’s fist from hitting him. He could only hope it would be strong enough to protect him now. The ropes arced in from every different direction, and Nym curled into a ball, as tight as he could.

The air cushion held. At almost a foot thick all the way around his body, it deflected the ropes back as they lashed at him. Small burns appeared on Nym’s exposed arms anyway ...

Chapter 17

Navarim was sent off to a waist-high pedestal to be what Brogan called the arcana battery of the operation. He did not look happy about being assigned the task.

“Alright, what’s your name? Brogan said.

“Nym.”

“Just Nym? No great house or family?”

“Just Nym.”

“Fair enough. Better in some ways. Nobles play too many politics. It gets in the way of the magic. Well, Nym, while Mage Navarim is powering up the obstacle course, I want to see you do some...

Chapter 16

The mage guildhall was the largest building Nym had ever seen. It was three stories tall and filled an entire block by itself, not even including the support buildings and fields taking up space next to it. It was actually the only place he’d found in Zoskan with open fields. Space was at a premium inside the walls, and the whole town felt crowded and squished together. Apparently being mages allowed them to claim an extra-large chunk of land.

He'd passed a church on the way there tha...

Chapter 15

The three of them were seated at a table in Cern’s kitchen. It was fascinating to see what his home looked like, if only because it was a bizarre mix of work and personal life. Intricate glassworks filled random counters and tables. Jars and vials were filled with liquids of different colors and thicknesses. There were drying racks for herbs and leather bags full of powders.

All of this shared space with cutlery and flatware. There was old, hard, brown bread on a plate on the table wi...

Chapter 14

Nym didn’t want to speak ill of Ciana. She’d literally saved his life, after all. She’d been there for him every single day and he missed her terribly. He would always be thankful for what she’d done for him.

But the Trough and Saddle’s cook was so much better than her.

It wasn’t really a fair comparison. Their meals had consisted of a lot of root vegetables and small game, with occasional sea-food. The cooking method was pretty much always a stew or broth. She worked ...

Chapter 13

Skywort bloom, as it turned out, grew in significantly denser patches just under the waterfall where everything was wet and loud and extra difficult to get to. Nym resorted to a combination of flight and hydrokinesis just to get a look at the stuff, which looked like lichen studded with little flowers glistening with water drops.

Actually harvesting the blooms was a bit more complicated for two reasons. First, he didn’t have anywhere near the strength needed to divert the waterfall en...

Chapter 12

It was sorely tempting to just fly right over the walls. He doubted the guards could stop him, but it would just draw more attention to him and he’d come here to blend in and hide. He’d try to talk his way in first. If they refused to let him, he’d just go around and over the wall somewhere else once it got dark.

“I tried to take a shortcut through the woods,” he told them. “There were some spiders. I hit one with a stick. It was not fun.”

“And… who are you?” 2022-10-03 14:52:55 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 11

The forest was cold, and surprisingly wet. The only climate Nym knew was that of the coastal village, which wasn’t even that far away. There had been a lot of sand and bare ground and few trees over there though, and apparently that made a difference.

It wasn’t so bad during the day, but as night fell, the temperature plummeted and be came keenly aware of the holes in his pants and the lack of sleeves on his shirt. His first instinct was to turn to magic to fix the problem, but he�...

Chapter 10

Nym returned from his walk and ate mechanically, not really tasting the food. He didn’t really have a plan beyond not turning himself in to the guard. He was painfully aware of a lack of resources and that adults wouldn’t take him seriously. Whatever he decided to do, it was going to be a rough road.

“I’m going to Palmara now,” he said.

Ciana blew out a long sigh. “Right. Let’s get this taken care of. I’m sorry, Nym. This isn’t going to be a fun conversation.”<...

Chapter 9

“What happened here?” Ciana asked as she examined the driftwood log.

Nym shrugged. “It was like that when I got here.”

“It looks like someone started carving it up with a knife.”

“Sure does.”

“You don’t own a knife though.”

“Nope.”

“So who did this?”

“That is a good question.”

Ciana squinted at Nym. He looked back at her, expression blank. “You know something,” she said. “And you’re acting weird.”

Chapter 8

With the loss of the oars and Ciana’s general refusal to let Nym go out by himself, they no longer had the ability to check the crab traps. Unfortunately, that combined with Senman’s interference with the snare lines left them with nothing but vegetables to eat and not much to trade or sell in Palmara.

The two of them stood next to a snare line which had been very obviously cut with a knife. “This is too far,” Ciana muttered. “Senman’s messed with my traps for the last time....

Chapter 7

Nym could barely see grim death coming his way through the murky water, but he knew what being out of the boat meant. The other sharks were still circling, but his shark, the one with the scar near the fin, was coming straight at him. He appeared in the dark water, barely feet from Nym, jaws open as his powerful tail propelled him forward.

Then his arm was in the shark’s mouth and teeth punctured his skin around his bicep. Skin broke, blood wafted into the water, and pain blocked out ...

Chapter 6

Nym worked on it for the next week, but failed to make a breakthrough into the second layer. It wasn’t really a surprise, but it was frustrating. What he did figure out though, was that he could use magic to do more than lift things with his mind. It started with him trying to expand the garden and realizing they didn’t really have good tools for it. Ciana had borrowed them from a friend of her father’s years ago and had been making do with what she could do by hand.

It started wi...

Chapter 5

“How do you know all of this? Can you use magic too?” Nym asked.

“Er, I live next to the magister. Amos goes there for lessons twice a week and I overhear a lot. He was on his way back from his lesson today when you bumped into him.”

Nym noticed she hadn’t exactly answered his second question, but he decided to gloss over it. If she didn’t want to talk about it, he wasn’t going to force her. Besides, she’d been nice and helpful so far. It would be rude to pry into ...

Chapter 4

Days turned into weeks as Nym and Ciana settled into a new routine. He went into town a few times and subsequently learned that there was a whole section they hadn’t visited during their original trip. That was farther up the road and while there were only three homes there, all of them were for rich people and could easily house four or five families.

They stayed far away from that part of town at Ciana’s insistence. There was no reason to go that way and nothing good could come fr...

Chapter 3

Ciana wouldn’t let Nym help that day. She just kept insisting that he needed to recover his strength and telling him to rest. If he was being honest with himself, she wasn’t wrong. He could barely walk on his own and he was still feeling weak from the arcana poisoning he’d somehow given himself prior to forgetting every detail about his life.

“What even is arcana poisoning?” he asked while she diced some vegetables pulled up from a scraggly garden right next to the shack.

Chapter 2

The sound of arguing woke Nym up. Ciana and another man were talking, and the conversation was getting heated.

“I’m not bringing you food to waste on some shipwrecked orphan who’s going to die by next week!” the man shouted. Nym could see him throw his hands up through the wall slats.

“No one asked you to bring me anything! I’ll take care of myself and him too!” she yelled back. Though the man was a foot taller than her, she had no problem getting right up in his fac...

Chapter 1

His whole body ached, a dull but insistent pain. His eyes were crusted shut, and it was almost too much of an effort to pry them open. Even then, the world was a blur of blue and white sky. That was strange, but he couldn’t say why, like looking at something familiar from an unusual angle. His mind struggled to catch up, but it took several more seconds for him to register what had woken him.

“Wake up!” a woman’s voice yelled. “You’ll get dragged into the cove with the tide!...

Chapter 0

Once the most powerful ascendant in the world, Niramyn was celebrating his latest victory when his supposedly vanquished rival blindsided him with an impossible working of magic. Trapped in the form of a child and bereft of his magic and his memories, he finds himself without place or purpose. With only fragments of his forgotten past to guide him, he sets out to learn new magic and discover the truth about himself.

As Nym travels, he learns the differences between mortal magic and his ...