Nyubi Kardo was seated in Bolak Hall, in one of the middle tiers. It was early morning and the light from the sun was still too soft to make the metal work on the ceilings and walls shine. She twirled one of her many braids as she focused on the piece of slightly brown colored paper right in front of her. On the seat next to her a roll of the same paper, some pens, and her purse, sat idly.
Every few minutes she wrote down a few new words in the magical rune, every few words she would erase something and replace it.
After about twenty minutes she felt satisfied, she held up the paper and called out the first word in a sharp voice
"Esin oke!"
The first rune ignited immediately, Almost like the top of a matchstick, plumes of smoke wafted upward, the rune next to the first one ignited next, and slowly the runes started to ignite, in the order they were written, from left to right, top to bottom, incinerating the paper, and unfolding the spell that had been bound to it.
Right in front of Nyubi, as the spell unfolded, a three dimensional image of a running horse had started to form, starting only as an amateur like construct, it become more and more fleshed as the spell unfolded, Nyubi smiled, watching watching her spell unfolded… halfway down the page the legs of the horse started to detach from the body… Nyubi cringed and quickly invoked a spell dampener to snuff out her broken spell.
Half of the paper had burned off, and Nyubi read through the bottom half to see where she had gone wrong. Then a bell rang, she looked up and started packing up her things, getting ready to leave. She folded the half burned sheet of paper into her purse, carrying the roll of paper on the other hand.
As she was getting ready to leave, others were starting to come in, the Lord mages. Lord Daron recognized her first.
"Ahh, Nyubi Kardo! How are you?"
"Lord Daron! Good morning," she replied," How's the family?"
"They are fine. I was just with Lord Kardo yesterday," Lord Daron said." He says you're a top performer in the military. That's very good, Nyubi. Do you have any ambitions of becoming a Lady Mage?"
Nyubi laughed awkwardly, "No sir, I'm just focused on the military for now."
Lord Daron smiled. "That's fine, however I will encourage you to attend their meetings. There's one meeting just after ours, you should check in, sit at the top benches and listen in, you and your peers are the future of Aku'anda"
Nyubi smiled politely, knowing there was no way she would be caught dead or alive in either a Lord mage or Lady mage meeting. Both of them were filled by boring old people talking about politics.
As soon as Lord Daron left to take his seat, she fled the scene, walking out to the street and heading towards a different empty hall. The streets were buzzling with commerce. People were selling spell papers, textbooks and cheat sheets, pens and pencils of all kinds, some others were selling magical liquids of all kinds, potions, reagents, and spices…
Crossing a few streets, she arrived at hall Rosseyu, a slightly smaller and less decorated hall a few blocks away from hall Bolak, she headed in. It was mostly empty except for one person who was seated across the hall from the door, spellbinding. He looked up at the entrance and saw her.
She cringed.
"Hey Nyubi!" He shouted across the hall. Breaking into a wide grin.
She waved at him, he invoked a spell and jumped out of his seat, crossing the entire span of the hall, crash landing on her.
"Goddamnit Dodi, you idiot!" She shouted, scrambling to get up. "Who the hell uses jump spells indoors?"
"That's literally the best way to fine tune jump spells. Look how I crossed the hall. It's almost perfect." He replied, dusting his shirt.
"You crossed the hall like a thrown brick!" Nyubi exclaimed "what are you even doing here?"
"what do you mean? I'm practicing" Dodi replied. "Rosseyu is free all of today."
"What are you practicing?" She asked.
"Well not fancy art, that's for sure." Dodi replied, smirking.
Nyubi gasped. "You were spying on me?"
"I was going to use Bolak this morning, but after watching you butcher 3 horse constructs, I decided to move to Rosseyu"
“You really sat there and watched me make 3 constructs?” She asked, rhetorically, “You have way too much time on your hands.”
Dodi ignored her jab.
"I'm trying to figure out a fast field construct for fire" he remarked.
"Bloody hell, Dodi no one cares" Nyubi groaned. "If someone hits you with a fire blast, just throw up a defense spell, why do you want to redirect their fire?"
"Because it's cool as hell," Dodi replied. "Not to mention it'll freak them out"
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Nyubi laughed but she was used to Dodi’s insistence on constructing the most elaborate possible spells.
“By the way I had the chance to talk to one of the Pirun Wizards yesterday.” he said, suddenly getting serious. “They want to launch an attack on Pirun and take it back, But my dad and the rest of the Lord Mages are stopping them.”
“Why though?” Nyubi asked, frustrated. “My friends from Pirun have been cut off from the waves for weeks now, and I can’t even vist them. We really should just attack ganz and get him off into prison.”
“Yeah well we can’t do that.” Dodi said. “I complained to my dad about it also. He said we have to figure out Ganz’s magic first.”
“Did he tell you anything about Ganz?” Nyubi asked, leaning towards him.
“Hey back off. Your Grandpa is a Lord Mage too, ask him!” Dodi said, laughing.
“Oh come on, My grandpa doesn’t discuss politics with us.” Nyubi complained. “He keeps asking me to come to the meetings to see for myself-”
“But the meetings are boring.” Dodi finished.
“Yep.” Nyubi agreed.
“Well I got to read Captain Rodo’s account of the attack.” Dodi said. “He said Ganz can cast field magic inside a dampener”
Nyubi’s eyes widened “What? that’s so cool, How is that even possible?”
“Yeah exactly.” Dodi said. “That’s why no one in their right mind would attack someone like that.”
“Because if he can bypass dampeners, what else can he do?” Nyubi contemplated.
“Yeah,” Dodi said.
“But what if that’s the only thing he can do?” Nybui asked. Dodi raised an eyebrow.
“I’m serious.” Nyubi said. “What if the only thing he can do is to cast spells that don’t get crushed by dampeners? And all you have to do is turn off the dampener and all of a sudden he’s meat?”
Dodi stared at her incredulously for a long while, and even throughout the day he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
---
Later, at night, Lord Daron, Dodi, and the rest of the family were at the table, eating and talking about the day’s events.
“The Nobles of Pirun are currently only a few months away from death.” Lord Daron said. “We have no communication from Pirun, Ganz has locked their portal to the waves, but undoubtedly they must have realized their own poisoning by now.”
“There is a way to get rid of arcanite poisoning,right?” Dodi asked, looking at his mother.
“Well arcanite is relatively harmless in itself.” His mother said. “The problem is the spell. It latches on to the arcanite and spreads around the body, and once there is nowhere left to spread, it triggers the second phase, shutting down the body.”
“There are ways to cure it.” She continued. “But Ganz will have undoubtedly taken control of Pirun’s hospitals. It’s not clear if he will allow the nobles to be healed.”
Dodi brought up Nyubi’s suggestion.
“That is not the only thing he can do.” Lord Daron said immediately.
“He has an army of 12 highly skilled warfare images which… don’t even get me started on that, those mages were able to defeat scores of Royal Army members, so that means they were all Elite Warfare Mages. Where the hell was he able to find twelve warfare mages? That’s over half the entire Pirun warfare team!”
There was silence…
“Ganz is…” Lord Daron sighed. “We do not know what to do about him. But we know that aggression is guaranteed to make things worse. We need diplomacy now, at least until we figure out what makes him tick.”
“Nyubi is worried about her friends.” Dodi said quietly.
Lord Daron laughed.
“We all have friends in Pirun. My dear.” he said. “It is for that reason that we mustn’t rush into war, lives are on the line. The last major war amongst the kingdoms killed a third of Gan people. even though the actual combatants were less than hundred.”
“The war of peace.” Dodi muttered.
“Yes my boy, the war of peace, very accurately named. Gan does not have the stomach for war, we have seen it, and we prefer peace. No more fighting.”
---
The very next Lord Mage meeting was anything but boring. The Sungans, despite Lord Defon’s attempts, had found out about the poisoning. General Makon, as well as many of the nobility of Sungan were in attendance at the Lord Mage meeting, and they were very angry indeed.
“Lord Defon we are highly disappointed in you.” Lord Arabambi, A tall and proud Sungan Noble began, He was dressed in red robes and had an extremely long beard.
“I saw it fit not to tell you because you would want to retaliate in some way.” Lord Defon said, obstinate in his decision.
“And why should we not attack?” Lord Arabambi shouted. “Why should we not invade Pirun right now and separate that Usurper’s greedy head from his long neck?”
“Because that usurper took a whole city by himself with twelve henchmen!” Lord Defon shouted back, His voice was naturally loud, and his anger only made it reverbate even more across the hall.
“That usurper used a field magic spell inside a dampener!” He continued.
“And so what?” Lord Arabambi said.
“And so he could destroy your entire army in seconds!” Lord Defon said.
“Lord Arabambi” Lord Fugap began, “We do not know the extent of Ganz’s abilities. He may be a well skilled Wizard, or he may have discovered a new class of spells that render him undefeatable.”
“We will know which is which, when we meet him on the battlefield.” Lord Arabambi replied.
“You stupid Sungans.” Lord Defon said. “And what if it turns out he has discovered a new class of magic? You go there, lose all your best men, and then Ganz invades your kingdom, kills your nobility in cold blood and rules over your people. Is that what you want?”
“That will never happen.” Lord Arabambi said.
“How do you know that?” Several Lords shouted back, as the meeting erupted into rowdy cacophony. After several minutes, Lord Defon managed to calm everyone down.
“My Lord Arabambi… I beg of you.” he said with a soft voice. “Do not doom the children of Gan to a needless war. We must find a different way to deal with ganz.”
Lord Arabambi glared at Lord Defon for several seconds,
Then he sighed.