A wizards flame a progre.., p.1
A Wizard’s Flame: A Progression Fantasy Adventure (Underkeeper Book 2), page 1
A Wizard’s Flame
Underkeeper
Book Two
Hankthemoose
First published by Timeless Wind Publishing LLC 2025
Copyright © 2025 by Hankthemoose.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Hankthemoose asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
First edition
Editing by J. Massat.
Cover art by Gery.
Contents
Recap
1. Apartment Hunting
2. Expansion
3. Preparations
4. Warlock
5. Skinwalker
6. Follow Up
7. The Undercity
8. Moving In
9. Meeting with an Archmage
10. Infiltrators
11. Firefight
12. Pursuit
13. Interrogation
14. New Neighbors
15. Acolyte
16. Siege
17. Patrol
18. Hostilities
19. Banefire
20. Magister Pollock
21. Catching up with a Friend
22. Expert Opinion
23. Treatment Plan
24. A Demon on Patrol Duty
25. An Unexpected Family Reunion
26. A Bad Day
27. A New Flame
28. Playing With Fire
29. Experiments
30. Light Reading
31. Sorcery
32. Clean-Up Duty
33. Opening Moves
34. Before the Storm
35. Contact
36. The Battle of Halfbridge (I)
37. The Battle of Halfbridge (II)
38. The Battle of Halfbridge (III)
39. The Battle of Halfbridge (IV)
40. The Battle of Halfbridge (V)
41. Consequences
42. Emotional Response
43. The Guild Library
44. All The Wrong Revelations
45. Warlock Propaganda
46. Confrontation
47. Help Is On The Way
48. History Repeats
49. Manaburn
Epilogue
Afterword
Groups
Recap
Bernt has always wanted to be an adventurer, and he considers his job maintaining Halfbridge’s sewer system as an Underkeeper a temporary arrangement—a way to save money for a few years. Adventuring is expensive, after all. With the help of his secret imp familiar, Jori, he can find and resolve maintenance issues quickly, leaving plenty of time to practice his spells during work hours.
When he runs into Therion, an old school acquaintance and a wealthy scion of an adventuring family, the encounter leads to Bernt unintentionally exposing a massive scandal within the Alchemists’ Guild. As a thanks, Therion has Bernt instated as a rank one adventurer and gives him a valuable pyromancer’s wand.
Not long after, Dayle, Bernt’s colleague and mentor, disappears. The Underkeepers run their own search in the sewers and discover that kobolds have dug their way in. The Underkeepers follow the kobolds into their heavily trapped warren where they free the prisoners and kill all the kobolds they can find before reporting the incident to the authorities.
The Mages’ Guild’s scryers investigate and discover that the kobold warren is actually the den of a young deep dragon, making this more than a mere pest control problem. The warren is legally designated as a dungeon.
Therion approaches Bernt about gaining illegal access to the dungeon—his party is ranked too low to be allowed inside, but the potential for treasure is too great to resist. Hungry for recognition by other adventurers as well as whatever arcane secrets might be hiding below, Bernt agrees to help, provided he can come with them. Sneaking Jori along inside his bag, he leads the party inside.
They initially make good progress before discovering that other adventuring parties are being captured by the kobolds. Realizing that something is wrong, they try to leave but are intercepted. Bernt is separated from the group and tries to make his own way out with Jori, tunneling up and out of the dungeon. Instead of the surface, he enters another layer of the kobold warren—a forgotten storage room. Digging through it for anything useful, he finds an old diary, a few scrolls and a demonology book, most of which are indecipherable.
Jori sneaks out in search of an exit, only to find the heart of the lair where the dragon lives. She discovers a room full of fresh bodies and devours their remaining soul fragments, causing her to evolve and gain access to hellfire.
Bernt is found by a kobold patrol and captured along with the many other adventurers. Jori saves him, and he starts a prison break. The survivors escape to the surface. Among them are powerful adventurers who served in the dungeon vanguard who reveal that the dragon is not a juvenile, but actually an elder dragon that deceived the city’s scryers. The threat is much greater than anyone previously thought.
Bernt is called in to explain himself to Ed and comes clean about his familiar bond to Jori. Demons that aren’t properly bound by a pact are normally not allowed on the mortal plane, and Ed tells Bernt that he’ll be forced to deal with an organization called the Solicitors over this issue. The next day, Ed swears Jori to good behavior on pain of death and has Iriala, court Archmage and head of the Mages’ Guild, place a magical tracker on her.
The Underkeepers work with the Adventurers’ Guild and the City Guard to contain the kobold threat while the military heeds Count Narald’s call. Bernt is kept out of the fighting and sent to deal with a maintenance request from the Alchemists’ Guild. The job ends up being a setup, and Bernt’s spirit is poisoned in retaliation for embarrassing the Guild.
Ed visits Bernt during his recovery. After a lengthy discussion questioning why Bernt has waited so long to begin the investment process and develop his mana network architecture, Ed leaves him a few books containing foreign war mage architectures.
Several days later, Jori is attacked by a rogue demon, and Bernt visits the Solicitors. The meeting goes poorly, with the head solicitor strongly suggesting that Bernt form a proper pact with the imp. Looking more closely at the terms, neither of the two want to do it, since it would place them—and especially Jori—firmly under the Solicitors’ control.
The kobolds open several new breaches and break into the city, overwhelming the defenders at multiple points. Bernt works the Underkeepers and City Guards, fighting back scattered groups of kobolds and trying to bring the situation under control.
The army arrives and reestablishes order, and the city licks its wounds as the general prepares to storm the dungeon. They quickly establish a foothold, cutting off the numerous kobold tunnels and bottling them up further inside the warren.
Meanwhile, Ed and Bernt outmaneuver the Alchemists’ Guild, finally getting payback. As a result, Bernt gets a drop of burning rain. With Ed’s help, he performs his first investment procedure, giving all his spells an aspect of liquid flame.
The army calls the Adventurers’ Guild to support various frontline exploratory units, and soon Bernt finds himself back inside the dungeon with his party of adventurers. But, much to everyone’s confusion, the kobolds are nowhere to be found. As they push deeper into the deserted tunnels, they’re suddenly attacked by demons and odd gray dwarves—the Duergar. Once the initial fighting dies down, an ambassador of the Duergar Empire arrives and an uneasy ceasefire is formalized.
With the broader situation under control, Ed and Iriala negotiate an agreement to keep the Solicitors from coming after Jori, and Bernt returns to working in the sewers.
Who are these Duergar, and why do they have so many warlocks? How long will the peace last? And what happened to the kobolds and their elder dragon?
1 Apartment Hunting
“Look, I’m sorry. I’m afraid I can’t offer you a lease at this time,” the sweaty, balding dwarf said with a professionally pained expression on his face. It was warm and muggy in the property manager’s little office and it smelled like he hadn’t cracked the room’s tiny window in weeks.
“Ah. That’s… too bad.” Bernt sighed tiredly and tried not to let frustration leak into his voice. “Why is that?”
He already knew the answer. He’d heard it often enough in the past few weeks. But he figured it was worth making him say it to his face.
“Well. We checked your references, and the building’s owner felt that you aren’t a good fit.” The man fidgeted with his pen, flipping it over his thumb and accidentally spraying a bit of ink onto his desk. “We have a strict pet policy, you see…”
“And you heard that there was an Underkeeper running around with a pet demon.” Bernt finished for him, losing his patience. “Yes, yes, I understand the situation.”
Another morning wasted on one of his rare days off, and
he’d spent it filling out paperwork, waiting pointlessly while the property manager processed his application and pretending all the while that he didn’t notice the unpleasantly musty scent of damp, unwashed dwarf that filled the room.
The damned little man had had the nerve to wrinkle his nose at him when he came in. As if he hadn’t just sanitized his stained Underkeepers’ robes and boots.
Rising, he nodded a little ungraciously at the man and made for the door. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand their reluctance. A fire-slinging demon could admittedly be considered a real risk—never mind that neither demons nor the people who associated with them were generally celebrated in polite society.
But he needed to live somewhere, and it wasn’t as though he could just put Jori out on the street.
Stewing in his frustration, Bernt made his way back to the inn where he’d been staying for the past month—ever since he’d been evicted from his old home near the docks. The Minotaur’s Head was located near the Adventurers’ Guild and run by a retired mid-ranking adventurer. It was a fairly nice establishment that served traveling adventurers and foreigners of all kinds, and it regularly housed people who were much more dangerous than a lowly lesser demon and a half-baked pyromancer.
Word had gotten around about Jori and him. He’d known it would happen, of course—she wasn’t incognito anymore, now that Ed and Iriala had signed Jori’s official paperwork. It was inevitable, and he’d been prepared for the dirty looks from strangers out in the street. Unfortunately, he hadn’t considered the more literal cost.
Living at an inn was not affordable and he was cutting into his savings just to keep a roof over his head. He needed to find a solution soon, but he had precious few places left to look. Bernt had even thought about creating his own home from scratch. He could tunnel out an entire complex of rooms under the city if he wanted. But that wasn’t a real solution. It would be illegal, for one, and he was a government employee. Worse, living in what amounted to a lair in the sewers would make him the walking stereotype of a rogue warlock and ruin whatever credibility or goodwill he ever managed to build for himself and Jori. Most importantly, he just didn’t feel comfortable in enclosed, underground spaces since he’d been trapped inside the dungeon a month earlier. He would get over it, he was sure. Eventually. But he wasn’t ready to sleep like that, buried in stone.
No, he needed to do this right. And that meant he would have to find a landlord who genuinely didn’t mind having a demon under their roof.
Bernt sighed. He’d just have to keep trying.
For now, though, he had another appointment to keep, as much as he would have preferred to go home and crawl under a blanket. He absolutely wasn’t in the mood to get his ass kicked right now.
Holding his wand out to the side, Bernt began humming under his breath, shaping a spell. Therion was standing across from him in the small training arena in the Upper District, a small metal wand held at the ready. Hopefully, the arcanist wouldn’t be able to hear him. On the sidelines, Oren and Elyn were betting on whether he’d land a hit this time.
Bernt had stopped trying to fight fair weeks ago, once he finally understood just how wide the skill gap between the two of them really was. Therion wasn’t any older than him, but he’d been learning to fight since before he’d even touched his own mana. Compared to him, Bernt was a rank amateur.
Without moving a muscle, Bernt finished casting his first spell. His burning rain investiture didn’t have much of an effect on his whispering wind cantrip, but it did do something. Instead of a simple whisper carried on the wind, Therion was treated to the sudden and disturbing sound of someone whispering nonsense into his ear, accompanied by the sensation of hot, humid breath on the back of his neck and his left ear, where he knew nobody should be standing.
He flinched, half turning, and Bernt savagely pressed his advantage. He flicked his wand forward to cast a fire dart, followed by a glue cantrip to lock his opponent in place. He didn’t fully load the spellforms with mana—they wouldn’t seriously injure anyone—but a direct hit from a fire dart would still burn and raise blisters. Anything less and the spells wouldn’t manifest.
He was much faster than he’d been just a few weeks ago, but it didn’t matter. Nothing landed. Therion turned his startled flinch into a step, avoiding the fire dart that struck where he’d been standing before. At the same time, he whipped his own wand in a circle, casting a magic missile in an arc to force Bernt to move. Bernt stepped to his left and raised his focus, but felt something grab his ear and pull up viciously.
With a yelp, he dropped the wand.
“Agh, shit!”
The spell released him, and he turned his head just in time to see the conjured phantom hand disappear. Therion was a terror with that mage hand, even if it was embarrassing more than actually painful.
Oren passed a coin to Elyn, glowering at Bernt.
“Come on, Bernt! This is the second time he’s done that today,” he groused.
Therion waved a hand at the thief. “Oh, leave him alone,” he said. “Bernt, that was pretty great! That wind spell was insane, I thought you had backup for a second there. That one can definitely work in a fight if you use it at the right moment.”
“Yeah,” Bernt said, trying not to sound as disappointed as he felt. “It didn’t do much to you, though. I need to come up with something better.”
Therion scoffed. “No, you don’t. You’re doing fine. You have all the spells you need, and you’re being creative with what you have. The rest of dueling is mostly about anticipating your opponent. That’s something you can only learn with practice—”
“—and by getting my ass kicked over and over again, yes. I remember.”
“Right!” Therion nodded, smiling. He looked over to the spectators. “Oren,” he called. “You want to have a go?”
Oren stood up, drawing a wooden practice dagger. He poked it down into a small bag at his feet to dust it with red chalk along the blade. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Moments later, Bernt stood facing the thief with one hand holding out his wand and the other behind his back, tracing a spellform. “Thief,” of course, was a bit of a misnomer. People in Oren’s line of work were generally called thieves because they were responsible for getting their parties into places they weren’t supposed to be. According to his friends, a surprising amount of adventuring involved trespassing, even outside of dungeons.
In actuality, though, any “thief” in the Adventurers’ Guild also doubled as a scout, trap maker and disassembler, and assassin. While Oren wasn’t as dangerous in a straight fight as someone like Furin, he was shockingly fast. Worse, he had a way of breaking his enemy’s line of sight and then disappearing in ways that couldn’t possibly be natural.
Usually, Bernt wouldn’t see him again until that stupid wooden dagger was drawing a red line of chalk across his throat. So far, Bernt had never even come close to landing a spell on Oren, but that was going to change today.
As the lesser fighter, starting the fight was up to him. Sweat beading on his forehead from trying to maintain the mental image of one spellform while casting another, Bernt cast a fire dart. It wasn’t well-aimed, and Oren didn’t even try to dodge.
With a slight frown, Oren exploded into motion, but he wasn’t faster than the speed of thought. Bernt had prepared his response ahead of time. He released mana into the spellform, activating it. With a rushing whomp of displaced air, heat erupted from him in all directions. This low-power version of a fire nova was practically invisible, but at close range it was still hot enough to sting and singe eyebrows. He wasn’t sure if Oren had any resistance to fire, but he was pretty sure that would count as a win.
