“I feel weird,” said Franco as he and Alex breakfasted on lukewarm porridge and hard bread while sitting on a rotting oak log about fifty feet away from the camp, “I went to sleep last night just feeling tired after a day of riding, sore as can be, but when I awoke, I felt terrific, like I could run all the way to Vontel.”
“Lucky you,” replied Alex morbidly, “I feel tremendous pain upon my rear whenever I sit down or just move in general. Besides, this doesn’t make any sense. Neither of us learned how to ride horses, and given the amount of complaining I heard on the road yesterday, no one could call you a natural.”
Before Franco could reply, a groan and the appearance of a zombie-like figure heralded the arrival of Jona. The boys could scarcely recognize her. Gone were her rosy cheeks, the glint in her eyes, and her easy-going stance. There were bags under her eyes that could have held a king’s ransom, her eyes were the dulled eyes of a prisoner who had been tortured on more than one occasion, and she hunched forward, each step sending her trailing arms swing about.
“By god,” Said Alex, standing to offer Jona his less-than-desirable seat on the log while Franco did the same a second after, “Don’t go stumbling back into the camp like that, or a knight may mistake you for a zombie, and have us all ride around looking for signs of necromancy.”
Taking Alex’s seat and snatching his breakfast from him, Jona looked up at Alex and said “What difference does it make? If there’s to be another day of riding like that, I’ll willingly give up my body and soul for a practitioner of the forbidden arts. But never mind that. Go get yourself another bowl of this dreadful ‘breakfast’ and come back.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
There were four greater schools of magic in the Empire, each with a tower that served as the capital of that school if such an analogy is appropriate. The fire mages had an orange tower that had a roaring flame that burned at the top, the white alabaster tower of the wind mages carried mages and visitors alike to their destinations within the tower through the use of wind magic, doing away with stairs entirely, so that every visitor must be flung around the outside of the tower until their destination was reached, and then the mages would land gracefully, while visitors were often deposited in an ungraceful heap on the floor. The earth mages had a tower of granite whose stairs shifted up and down to reach different floors, and the water mages stood on geysers that shot them to their destinations. It goes without saying that the water mage tower had a greater share of injuries than the other three combined, thanks to the geysers’ unpredictable natures, often sending visitors into walls, shooting hundreds of feet above the tower, or simply failing to reach the required pressure and dropping the hapless individual back onto the ground. The tower of necromancy had once rivaled the other four in power, but one too many mad archmages had done one too many mad acts of terror, and now the tower of bones lies shattered into fragments.
“Nice,” thought Franco, “Alex has to face the cook again, and I get to bask in the presence of Jona. What a wonderful day.” What a wonderful day indeed, for, unbeknownst to them all, the coming days were to be much darker.