Victor cursed for the seventh time this morning. His boot was stuck in a particularly annoying spot of mud, which refused to let go. With a loud ‘Splorch’ his boot was freed and he could finally focus on other things. Looking about, he scoffed at the other mages who were all holding up their military issued spellbooks and muttering various phrases to themselves as they conjured up flame after flame to splash almost uselessly against the stone fortifications which were sitting almost a thousand feet away. Safely out of arrow range, Victor had ample time to wonder why the Marquis’ immediate response to seeing an enemy fortification was to—
“Burn it down!” The Marquis in question was riding his steed up and down the artillery line, moving around the catapults, and closing in on the only mage battalion in his army. The mage battalion that Victor was technically in charge of. “Warmage Victor! What is taking so long? I was under the impression you were a genius mage of some sort.” Victor ground his teeth slightly and struggled to keep an even tone as he replied.
“Well, my lord, true spellcraft takes time. Unless you’d have me lightly singe the stone, I’ll need to finish my scrip-”
“Just hurry it up, Warmage. We need to take this castle soon…” The Marquis sounded nervous for just a moment before clearing his throat and declaring, “I expect you to have this wall down afore noon.”
“Yes Milord,I’ll be sure to rush my craft as much as possible.” Victor replied through gritted teeth. As he said so, Cornelius trotted off through the mud on his somehow pristine white horse. Victor shook his head and went back to watching the other mages at work. These imbeciles are ruining everyone’s impression of magic, he thought. The mages in question were all decent enough casters, even Victor could appreciate that. The lack of creativity was the biggest failing he saw in them. They slung a basic fire spell with the kind of efficiency only someone who had practiced it for months possibly could. It was one of the easiest casts, really, Victor mused. First you would grasp a section of gasses from the air, then refine the air to be flammable, and finally ignite it. Then it was just a matter of quickly grasping the flames with a second spellcraft and throwing them at the intended target. A simple three lines of runescript for the flame, and another two to throw it that far. Victor snorted, any commoner was capable of such a thing if they just spent the time to learn it.
Victor was not satisfied with such simplicity, however. He looked once more at the nearly empty book in his hands, and focused on his spellcraft, ‘True spellcraft’ he thought. He’d finished the three intricate runic forms he needed to destroy the wall, and began scribing them into a single spell. An explosive payload to destroy the wall with, a vessel to contain the compressed explosives, and finally a built-in function to launch the deadly ball towards whatever it is he needed destroyed. He began by sketching the three runic forms in an appropriate place, connecting them all together in a circular spellform of his own design. Smiling, he looked up and saw that in his precision, he’d taken several hours to finish the outline of his newest spell, and the sun was getting high into the sky. The mages in front of him had begun taking shifts, several of them vomiting into the mud from overexertion while the remaining dozen or so continued peppering the obstinate fortifications. The stone wall in question blackened and charred, but ultimately stood firm. Seeing the other mages had not made any progress, Victor cleared his throat and spoke.
“Alright you all, find a place to rest for a moment, I’ll bring this wall down myself.” The red robed figures in front of him looked back incredulous, one of them smirking. As Victor walked forwards between them to get a clear line between himself and the wall, one of them muttered.
“We’ve been working at this for hours, what’s the prick gonna do to it? Char it a little more?” Victor turned and glared back at the man who had spoken. He thought for a second, unable to remember the man’s name. Luckily he didn’t have to as the woman next to him elbowed him in the side and quietly scolded him.
“Damnit Charles, he’s still the Warmage. You can’t just say crap like that.” Charles, for his part, was clearly still upset and opened his mouth to continue, before Victor held up his hand and spoke before the disgruntled man could.
“Charles. You are certainly capable of using the spells provided. The Marquis has certainly collected a decent number of simple” —Victor emphasized the word— “spellforms for you to use; however, a mage should not be satisfied with the bare minimum. Especially when given time to prepare, a spellcaster should be an unstoppable force. Instead of beating your head against a wall,” Victor gestured towards the still smoldering wall in the distance, “you should seek other means to solve a problem.” Done speaking, Victor held out one hand, palm facing towards the offending structure in the distance, his other hand holding his spellbook open to the most recently filled in page.
In the uncomfortable silence, the Warmage let a slight smile sneak onto his face for the first time today and inhaled. Around him, the air swirled, a new wind picking up, and flowed straight into a single point in front of him. The keen eyed would have seen a brief moment where a cloud of gas compressed into a point barely larger than a thumbnail, before a blazing shell of fire burst into existence around it. The shell was roughly three inches across, and was lit with a warm, comforting orange fire. There were a few snickers before Victor exhaled through his mouth, and the ball hurtled towards the wall, becoming a streak, which all nearby heads followed before it slammed into its target. A ground shattering boom erupted from the point of impact, and stones went streaking away from the explosion. Just as the mages recovered from stumbling back from the loud sound, a second shockwave of air rushed over them, sending more than one unprepared mage to the ground. As a weaker wind rushed past the group, several smaller stone chunks thumped into the ground twenty or so feet short of the group of mages. When the dust cleared a moment later, there was a forty foot wide section of the stone fortress that had entirely collapsed or been blown apart. A cheer roared out from the more mundane soldiers waiting in the camp behind them, as Victor continued to smile, happy with the efficacy of his magic. The Warmage turned, and walked back through the group of stunned mages, muttering to himself, “I think I’ll call this one… Fireball.”
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Watching from a comfortable distance away, Victor saw the rest of the siege unfold disastrously. The soldiery were exhausted from the weeks of marching, and the muddy terrain and lack of sleep did not help in the slightest. Still, they managed to hold their standard issue shields high, and marched into the breach Victor had created for them. Victor heard yells, shouts, and screams in the distance as he calmly sipped on a new cup of tea he had brewed a few minutes earlier. While he was technically a soldier, and could be ordered to march in and assist with the attack, Marquis Cornelius had seen the explosion, and noting the annoyed look on Victor’s face, had suggested Victor take some time off to look over his new spellbook. The memory annoyed Victor again, and his calm expression soured as he remembered how the old spellbook had been burned to ash in the retreat from the last city they had been to. The Marquis had been insistent that he share his knowledge with the other mages, and so they had been copying from his spellbook when the attack occurred. His spellbook being burned was only part of his annoyance, as he personally believed that copying from other mages was a weakness that only the most pathetic of spellcasters would do. Not that it had bothered the other greedy mages, who had been all too eager to benefit from years of Victor’s own work. A small smirk washed across his face, however, when he remembered that all of the other spellbooks had also been lost in that fiasco, so at least none of those idiots had made out with his work.
In the middle of his musings, he saw a large purple flag with gold trim hoisted up above the fortress gate. The flag of Caria, complete with the Marquis’ own emblem stitched into the corner. ‘Good,’ he thought, ‘the siege is over. Now I can inform the Marquis that my official time as his Warmage is over, and move on with my life.’ By Carian law, a soldier cannot end their time in the Legions until the most recent military operation was completed. Victor’s term had technically expired almost two months ago, but he couldn’t leave because they were on a march to capture this exact fortress. The Warmage could technically stay with the Legion until they were safely back in a city of Caria proper, but Victor was at the end of his patience, and he had absolutely no desire to continue playing soldier. He had already arranged for his compensation to be delivered to his house back in the capitol, and so had absolutely no reason to continue trekking through mud with imbeciles. Walking calmly through the camp, Victor once again rolled his eyes at how the Marquis’ war tent opened facing away from the fort they were besieging, before he suddenly stopped, hearing voices inside that were clearly trying to remain hushed, but were too anxious to actually do so.
“Yes, I know, Frederick.” The gruff voice of Cornelius came from inside the tent. “We’ll just have to hunker down here. With those barbarians sacking Caria, the whole damn empire could collapse!”
“But milord!” A much whiner voice that Victor despised, that of Frederick, the advisor to the Marquis spoke up. “We cannot abandon the Emperor! If we don’t come to his aid, he’ll accuse us of treachery! We must go back and assist the first legion, and,” He stuttered for a moment, “if we do go to assist, we might gain his favor.”
“Enough, Frederick.” The Marquis’ voice was suddenly loud and authoritative, before returning to a hushed shout that Victor had to listen carefully to overhear. “We will remain here, repair this fortress, and If the Emperor survives, we will offer him safety here. That should be enough to dissuade him from anything drastic, and if he does not survive, we can leverage the force of the entire Twelfth Legion to ensure our own survival.”
Deciding that he’d been standing suspiciously behind the Marquis’ tent long enough, Victor swiftly walked around the tent and looked at the three guards standing in front of the entrance, who simply stared at him with a bored expression.
“I am Warmage Victor Foreshock, here to speak to the Marquis directly regarding the end of my term with the Twelfth Legion.” The guards stared at him for a moment, before one of the three brushed open the tent flap and cleared his throat inside. Victor could not hear what was said from where he stood, but loud voices and what he was fairly certain was a curse emanated from the tent before the guard walked back out and gestured towards Victor.
“His lordship, Cornelius Tytus the Fourth, will hear you now.” his voice was dull and almost bored, as if he simply did not care.
“Excellent.” Victor responded, before quickly walking through the gap held open by the guard. The weighted flap closed behind him, and he was face to face with Cornelius and Frederick. Bowing exactly as much as was expected of him, Victor waited for the Marquis to address him first. He did not wait long, as the man let out a long sigh before speaking.
“Rise, Warmage Victor. I assume you are here about your term with the Legion expiring? I can offer you more, if it would convince you to stay.” His eyes flickered to the satchel hung over Victor’s shoulder, and the bulging pouches it held.
Victor stood back up straight from his bow, pausing momentarily as a twinge of pain struck his back, before he spoke. “Apologies, Milord, I have many matters I need to attend to, and I must work to fill out my spellbook anew. Something that cannot be done while marching, or fighting.”
The Marquis, sitting in a very nice wooden chair, placed his right hand on his brow in a gesture of annoyance. “You know, Victor, I could order you to stay here. It is very important to me that you remain for at least a bit longer.”
“Yes, milord.” The Warmage in question replied, evenly. “You certainly could legally order me to remain as part of an emergency. I would have very little recourse to that, and if we stayed in this fort, it would certainly give me plenty of time to create a new spell.” The thinly veiled threat sat in the air between the two of them, Cornelius moving his hand up to his forehead, resting his elbow on his knee and tilting his head to the side to continue his eye contact with Victor.
“Fine, Warmage.” He spat, flicking his hand in dismissal. “You are free to leave.” Sitting up straight, he waved Victor off, continuing, “Should you wish to return, I’ll not take you as my Warmage again, Victor.”
The ex-Warmage bowed respectfully, turned around, and left.