CH.1
The bell tower's ring was almost imperceptible, ringing in tune with the harsh strikes of a young smith's hammer. A mere three town blocks away from the artisan's forge where he practiced his art, a house fire was being fought by the guard's garrison. The young Smith, little more than twenty summers with a youthful face and the personality of an aged librarian, struggled to ignore the bustling crowd of people in the city square before him, why Fehrun wanted to build a shop here is beyond me... he mused, and continued to work away on his sword, requested by the gruff old town guard Dale. It wasn't to be an intricate thing; such trivialities shouldn't matter in a weapon in the first place. It was meant to be efficient, and deadly in its design, with a straight edge of folded steel at the base of the guard rising up a great length before harshly curving out to its apex. The Smith carried on meticulously working the steel, blasting it with heat before quenching it to shape. He lost himself to his thoughts while autonomously repeating his actions, it almost resembles the weapons the foreigners carry... I believe they call them Yakau's, something to do with their heritage...
He was so involved in his work that he had little time to react when his master's voice boomed over his shoulder, "Ah-ha! Look at that!" throwing his massive hands up in excitement before settling a single finger down, pointing at the blade, "That's some beautiful steel there, lad. It's singing to me with every strike of the hammer!" as his master, Fehrun, brought his hands down to rest on the young smith's shoulders, he tensed up in anticipation of the following remark but was met with silence instead.
In the absence of conversation, the apprentice chimed in while fitting the guard and hilt, "When have I ever fallen short of your expectations?" angry that Fehrun would always doubt his ability, despite the constant workmanship he showed.
The old blacksmith looked almost sincerely hurt by his remark, "Not once, Bastion. But trusting a boy with his first bit of weapon-bound steel is nothing to joke over."
Bastion hung his head at his master's remark, "Sorry... " In the midst of the silence, the bell tower rung clearly, drawing the attention of both Fehrun and himself. "What is the commotion all about, anyway?"
"Some idiot 'sorcerer's' apprentice dabbling in things he doesn't understand." Fehrun scoffed as he did his air-quotes and moved to grab a drink, "Too many untrained people aspiring to be real sorcerors these days. Two-bit incantors is all they are." He reached for his mug and moved to leave the forge, obviously trying hard not to sway from the alcohol already in his system.
Bastion shook his head, "What kind of blacksmith drinks while on the job?" As if in response, Fehrun fixed his stride and walked out into the crowd smirking, heading towards the garrison. When he no longer saw his master's large fighter-like build and white hair bobbing a good half foot above the other busy townsfolk, he popped his pair of blaster plugs into his ears and lay back down to work. The only thing he had left to do was fit the pommel and give the sword it's final sharpening and polish, which he would prefer to do in silence.
As he finished with a final slide off of the grindstone, the bell tower rang unthinkably loud, shaking loose portions of dust from the beams lining the ceiling of the forge. Bastion winced, raising his hands and pulling the plugs from his ears to discern what he just heard, aching slightly from the continued reverberation of the bell. No longer able to simply feign ignorance to the activity happening so close to his shop, he tied the finished sword to his belt and stepped outside to try and get a good look at what was going on. Where is everybody?... It's too early for the square to be vacant like this. As he braced himself against the intense light from the sun to look towards the bell tower, his mind finally snapped out of the autonomous fog it had been in while working in the forge. There, barely two blocks away, a pit-demon hung ominously from the tower. Its bloodied tail latched firmly onto the belfry, it glared directly down into the square at him before unleashing a blood-curdling howl, throwing itself into the fiery chaos below. Bastion, almost entirely petrified, finally noticed the fading screams in the distance, steel clashing uselessly against steel, and the terrible fire from a block downtown slowly creeping along the stone slabs of the alleyway before him, almost more liquid than flame. How the hell did I not notice anything?! he thought, and just as he was about to turn and run for the garrison, a town guard burst out of the inferno in the distance and onto the cobblestone, his armor scorched almost entirely. If it wasn't for his Ignideus heritage, easily denoted by his blood red skin, he would've been burned to ash from the flames; an uncannily useful trait of the race of so-called Volcano worshippers.
"What the hell are you still doing here?!" were the only words that escaped the guards mouth before he was caught by the tail of a shrieking pit-demon and slammed into the ground. "You son of a-!.." he bellowed before torqueing his body back upright, being dragged on his back along the ground towards the liquid inferno. The soldier drew his broadsword as far back as he could while grounded and slashed with blistering speed through the creature's tail, severing it clean in two. A flaming spray of white blood lined the arc of his strike. As he moved to gain his footing, he yelled at the petrified smith with the rasp bark of a veteran, "Move your ass, Bastion! We have to reach the garrison before the town is taken!" Barely recognizing the guard as Dale from his voice, Bastion had little time for his words to sink in before another pit-demon burst out of the fire at the end of the street. Without another thought he forced his body to move and burst into a sprint behind Dale, running full tilt in the direction of the massive stone citadel near the center of town. The guards garrison.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
----------------------------------------
"Wake up, you tiresome children." The old scryer, Berkley, grumbled; calling into the room where all of us adepts slept. "Briefing is already underway in the grand study. Some clueless ignoramus of a so-called 'sorcerer' set fire to an entire town block, and I expect you to assist the garrison with it immediately!" The combined shuffling of feet and general commotion in our bunk room was seemingly enough for the old man to understand that he had been heard, as he left down the winding hall barely as we were all adorning our robes.
Liam, a tall but lean built boy in his twenty-second summer, groaned as he was searching for his tome of incantations, "I'll never understand that batshit crazy monk. All he ever does is bark orders at us to do jobs we aren't here for. I mean, isn't he meant to be teaching us the silent arts?" his eyes lit up as he found his tome hidden deep in one of his far-gone bags, a tiny little link to a portion of the nether. It was a neat little trick, being able to pull on those energies and create one of those bags. Most apprentices usually picked up on it in their third or fourth year, but Liam had a knack for things above his ability.
"You shouldn't be hard on him, Liam. He may sound like a tavern keeper in the body of an ox, but I heard from Eris that he's almost three hundred Summers. He knows what's best." said Sandriel, a slender fire-haired beauty of short build, the only fourth year in our group. "And I bet he managed to put together a far-gone bag in his first year, hotshot," she said with a wink. Liam cringed. He hated being called that. It had been his nickname ever since he managed to turn a basic fireball incantation into a Mael-Bog's Inferno back in his first year's spell recital.
"Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But those maesters looked damn impressed by my incanting! I bet they've never seen an initiate pull off a Keter-class spell before." said Liam, trying to tend to his bruised ego. "I mean, they pretty much skipped me through the second half of my first year, so obviously it stands for something..."
"Yeah... That you have no control over your magic pool and need advanced catering to deal with it..." said Dust, in his usual gravelly monotone. Nobody knew his real name, but his robes were always covered in a sodden layer of dirt and soot and since he was of the djinn race, with the typical sandstone-esque deteriorative complexion that is so common of them, we all just began calling him Dust. It fit. "Also, would you both please shut up... Berkley seemed to be pressed for time... We should hurry..." he nodded his head subtly towards me and smirked, "Even Ridley is ready..."
"Ready?" both Liam and Sandriel said in unison.
"He's just laying there on his bed. He's barely even dressed." Sandriel said, looking upset with my utter lack of concern over the general hum of their conversation. Liam nodded in agreement. Dust just sighed.
"Dust's right, you know." I admitted, "We do need to hurry. I have a creeping feeling that what I dreamed about wasn't as ethereal and intangible as I would hope." At that, they all gave me a concerned look, Dust's being more melancholic as usual. He always had a very uncomfortable aura about him, but that may simply be due to his eccentric nature and "slow and steady" personality. I shrugged, "I'll meet you all down in the briefing hall. Get going."
Both Sandriel and Dust were quick to move, finally feeling more urgency, but Liam paused in the doorway, "Is it like before?... Back in Meshviit?" All I could do was shrug and give him an apologetic look. As he hung his head and left the doorway, I felt a pang of terrible guilt creep over me. He was one of my closest friends from home. We found out that we had potent blood on the same day. His manifested in the form of conjuration, and mine in the form of scrying. It's always different when magical blood awakens in your system. Unfortunately, predicting that your best friend would summon a Gael'akar horde-beast the size of a tavern only a single day in advance isn't exactly a believable story from the town guard's perspective.
"I barely got him out of there alive..." I muttered. I couldn't say the same about anyone else left behind in the town. The screams of agony were still fresh in my mind. I sat up groggily, having left my robes on from the night prior. "Better get down to the briefing hall. Berkley gets wound up way too easily these days." After a quick snicker at my terrible pun, what with Berkley being stuck winding scrolls in pretty well all of his spare time lately, I pulled on the magical power of the nether to bind my right arm in the bristling blue mantras of incantation. A more convenient method than carrying a tome around everywhere, although a bit difficult to maintain and a tad frightening for those untrained in the arts to see. I noted the array of symbols briefly before mouthing a particular few, "Tacitus, trafero" and with a slight audible pop and displacement of air, my body fell into the ethereal state donned when traveling through the nether.
----------------------------------------
"Hey Liam, hurry up!" Sandriel called back from the bottom of the stairwell. "Why are you lagging behind? Are you walking slow trying to conceal something perhaps?" she asked with a grin while waggling her eyebrows. Liam frowned, if it wasn't for her obviously trying to bait him into a snarky remark, he would've believed she actually cared to know. She laughed, "Such a stony demeanor! You're such a grump!"
"Get your head out of the gutter. I just wanted to remind Ridley to get a move on as well," Liam said, "What with him being the one to rush us in the first place." Sandriel stopped laughing and looked as if she just tasted something disgusting.
"Well, whatever. It's his ass that will get in trouble, not ours. Hmph!" She said, motioning to the thick iron-bound door that Dust was leaning against. "I can't wait to see Berkley chew him out."
Liam laughed at the sadistic look in Sandriel's eyes, "You're really bloody weird, Sandriel." She shot him a look resemblant of daggers.
Dust cleared his throat gently as he placed his hand against the reinforced door to the grand study, currently in use as a briefing room, "Will you two please stop having a lover's spat?..."
"Who are you calling lovers?!" Both Sandriel and Liam said in unison. Dust simply sighed.
----------------------------------------
As the door to the grand study croaked open, I arched an eyebrow at the outburst of laughter I heard from Liam when he saw me. "What's so funny?" I asked. Dust and Sandriel both looked annoyed, seeing me arrive ahead of them thanks to my magic.
"You always have to one-up us like this, eh?" Liam joked, wearing a sinister grin. At this point, Berkley cleared his throat in an attempt to regain our attention. "Sorry, scryer." Liam chimed in while putting a little too much effort into straightening his posture, "Please, let us join the briefing." I choked back laughter, unsure if my childhood friend's respect was feigned, or sincere. Oh well, I thought, best not lag any longer while there's trouble afoot in the city.
"So what is it exactly that's happening out there?" I asked, "You mentioned a fire, but can't the local garrison deal with that? Is it because it was caused by some sor-"
"Deviant." Berkley interrupted, "He's not a real sorcerer. He obviously lacks discipline, responsibility, and, most importantly, caution. Traits that he would have if he had thought to seek proper education and training."
Dust took a seat in one of the large cushioned chairs beside the table and sighed, "Why are we getting involved, Berkley?..."
Berkley shot him a glare, at which Dust did his best to avoid, "Because, you adepts need the field experience." he pulled his glare off Dust and eyed each one of us in turn, "show the town that we aren't just some poncy institute of magic."