A wizards flame a progre.., p.16
A Wizard’s Flame: A Progression Fantasy Adventure (Underkeeper Book 2), page 16
“Right—not what I meant. I mean the way they’re doing it,” Bernt said. “They cut off the roads and now they just sit there, sending these small groups at us. It doesn’t make sense. None of the groups could do very much damage, even if they got in.
“It’s not that strange,” Nirlig said with a mirthless smile. “They’re just sending adventurer parties.”
Bernt stared at the goblin. “You mean like in a dungeon?”
“Sure. I mean, I don’t really know how they do things, but there’s no practical difference from their perspective, right? They’ve put it under containment and now they’ve got teams of people trying their luck to get in and take whatever they can. The only thing missing is a real frontline party. Humans always send in a strong party first to soften the place up. I guess they must not be very serious about killing us. That, or maybe their high-ranking adventurers aren’t dumb enough to take a job like this. There are a lot of scary people in this city.”
Bernt sat down slowly on a misshapen lump across from them—his first attempt at a chair. What did that mean? What could that mean?
“Ahh.” Jori sighed contentedly, putting her cup down. “That’s the stuff. So, how did it go up there? Did you sell the spell?”
“Uh, yes.” Bernt nodded, looking down at his hand. “I got guild membership for it, and they’re going to help me figure out what to do about my arm.”
Nirlig looked curiously at his arm, but he didn’t ask about it. “So, how does that work? Isn’t it a conflict of interest to work for the Underkeepers and also be in the Mage’s Guild?”
“Eh. Not really. I mean, they both have their interests, but Ed and Iriala are friends, so it’s not really an issue. It just means I could theoretically pursue other kinds of work now without getting into trouble with the guild. And I can access their institutional knowledge and resources, which is a lot more important right now. It’s not a bad deal, really, just kind of expensive. Most mages join sooner or later—except most war mages, and people like Kustov, because he’s a foreigner.”
“Huh,” Nirlig grunted. “Why didn’t you do it sooner?”
Bernt sighed. “Because guild membership comes with strings. Guild members are required to respond to emergencies, follow all the guild procedures for various professions, protect guild secrets, and work directly with the government when called upon to ‘secure dungeons and contain threats as described in the guild’s charter.’”
“Oh!” Nirlig chuckled, taking a sip of whatever he had in his own cup. “That makes sense. We already have to do half of that as Underkeepers.”
“Yeah.” Bernt smiled. “Might as well have the benefits to go with it.”
After work the next day, Bernt made his way back up to the Mages’ Guild. Ignoring the receptionist entirely, he simply walked right in and headed up toward Pollock’s office. The man still busily copying papers behind the desk didn’t even appear to notice him. Now that he thought about it, he probably could have just gone up to Iriala’s office all along.
Oh well.
Letting himself in through the Wizards’ Society’s door, Bernt wandered down the hall, trying to remember exactly where Pollock’s office was. Unlike what he would have expected from the local guild’s research center, the place had an oddly abandoned feel to it. More than one door stood open, revealing that quite a few of the rooms and offices were empty and apparently not being used at all.
The doors of the occupied rooms were adorned with small plaques bearing the names and titles of those who worked there—they were often long and pretentious-sounding, but Bernt supposed that was just how things were done. Pollock’s door, when he found it, had an even larger plaque than most—he hadn’t seen it the day before because the door had been open.
Pollock
Magister—Wizard of Pyromancy
Director of Spell Development—Elementalism
Hoping he wasn’t late, Bernt knocked, or tried to. He barely made it to the second knock before the old man’s reedy voice answered.
“In!”
Bernt stepped inside.
Both the office and the man looked exactly as he’d left them the day before, except this time someone else was sitting in a chair across from Pollock’s desk. It was an old woman, very nearly as ancient as Pollock himself, but where his back was bent with age, hers seemed to have calcified in a straight line. She sat perfectly upright, sipping on a steaming cup with the air of someone who felt her tea deserved her full and undivided attention. She did not look up when he entered.
Pollock, on the other hand, shot him a long-toothed grin. “And there he is right now!” he exclaimed with a flourish, apparently continuing a conversation they’d been having.
Placing the cup down on its saucer with deliberate care, the woman turned to look at him, examining him with ancient, watery eyes.
“Boy, meet Master Alchemist Yrtrude. She used to run the whole godsdamned guild branch here back in the day.”
Unsure of what to do, Bernt nodded to her. “Hello, pleasure to meet you.”
Yrtrude sniffed, expressing her displeasure in a manner that only truly old people could pull off.
“You brought me an Underkeeper,” she said. “Really, Pollock. Why do you bother? And why are you bothering me?”
“Oh relax,” he scoffed. “The Underkeepers have been getting rehabilitated—here in Halfbridge, at least. Haven’t you been paying attention? Besides, young Iriala told me that the boy joined them deliberately. Bit of a rebel, this one, but he did fine at the academy. I looked at his transcript. Didn’t want to join the military and couldn’t bear to indebt himself for a guild membership with an apprenticeship.”
“My dear Pollock,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You just like him because he sounds like the same sort of fool you were sixty years ago.”
The old man shrugged and smiled. Yrtrude drew her lips into a line, but then she sighed and turned to Bernt.
“Hand!” she said, holding out her own by way of demonstration. Her voice was still strong, unlike Pollock’s, and brimmed with a natural sense of authority.
Deciding not to say anything, Bernt stepped up to her and held out his right hand, which she gripped by the wrist with her thumb and forefinger, turning it this way and that.
“Hmm. Nothing physical. Describe the poison used, any treatments attempted, and any other spells and magical substances it’s come in contact with since.”
Bernt did, as best he could remember. When he finished, Yrtrude didn’t say anything right away, staring at him with a strange expression.
“You mean to tell me,” she began, voice thick with disapproval, “that you found a strange alchemical metal lying submerged in filth and you thought it would be fine to just pick it up? With your bare hands? Don’t you even have gloves?”
Bernt shrugged, doing his best not to shift uncomfortably under her gaze. “You’d be surprised what you can get used to when you work in a sewer. And no, gloves get in the way of casting. You don’t always have time to take them off if something comes at you.”
“I see,” she said distastefully, and leaned back, keeping her back completely straight the whole time. “Pollock, what could you possibly want with someone like this? He’s a fool.”
Bernt frowned and opened his mouth to defend himself. Then he shut it again, thinking better of it. He didn’t actually know what he could say here that wouldn’t make him sound stupid, and besides, there was no point in arguing with the woman.
Fortunately, Pollock just laughed. “Oh, relax, dear. I can teach proper experimental procedures, that’s the easy part. He’s an ideal candidate. The boy successfully modified a pretty complex spell, and actually made it more useful in the process. Better yet, he’s willing to take risks. Else he wouldn’t have kept using the damaged arm at all, never mind throwing around spells he didn’t properly understand in the middle of a fight. You can’t teach that kind of recklessness. You can teach restraint, though, and tempered properly, he’ll make a damned fine wizard.”
Yrtrude frowned. “You were one too, but you still managed to cripple yourself.”
Pollock shrugged, apparently unbothered. “Risk is inherent to all real innovation. You can’t do animal testing on a new investiture like you can a new potion. Even my failure moved the entire field forward. Generations of mages and future wizards will benefit.”
Bernt cleared his throat. “Ahem. Weren’t we talking about my hand?”
He absolutely wanted to know more about Pollock’s apparent plans for him, but it seemed to him like the old man was skipping ahead. He wouldn’t amount to much of anything if he couldn’t improve his condition—he’d just keep stressing his mana network and probably make it worse.
“We were, yes.” Yrtrude nodded. “The metal you touched is called Arefinium. It looks golden, but it’s an alchemical alloy that draws mana out of an object—it has many applications. The reason your arm withered is likely because of tiny traces that remained stuck to your skin after you dropped it. Once those traces were saturated with mana, the withering effect stopped. Otherwise, it might have killed you.”
Bernt grunted, absorbing that for a moment. He hadn’t realized just pulling all the mana out of his flesh could have such a horrific physical impact on it. It wasn’t hard to imagine that part of his mana network would have been damaged, even after the lesser restoration potion he’d been given.
“And my mana network?” he asked, looking from her to Pollock.
“It was likely strained quite badly by this,” Yrtrude said. “But nothing permanent, considering that you received the proper treatment almost immediately. I expect, however, that repeated casting strain combined with exposure to some form of hellfire could easily do all kinds of damage to your spirit. Prior strain on your system would not have done that any favors. Hellfire is, of course, a valuable alchemical reagent in its own right. Several martial-type guilds and the military incorporate derivatives of it in their various enhancement procedures, specifically because of its ability to affect the spirit.”
Bernt blinked. He’d known hellfire could damage the spirit, and by examining the spellforms for simple fire as well as Jori’s blood, he’d learned fire was inherently a transformative effect. He hadn’t realized the alchemists were not only aware of this, but actually using this particular effect of hellfire.
“Uh, does this mean you can fix me? With one of these kinds of elixirs, I mean?”
“No, no. Your spirit is modified into a mana network. That would modify the effect—it would probably kill you. Never mind that any guild whose proprietary recipe I used would come after the both of us for it. Pollock here might believe in taking insane risks, but I don’t.”
The old man in question leaned forward impatiently. “Alright, then. What do you think he should do about it?”
The alchemist shrugged. “Wait, stop casting spells and hope for it to get better. Maybe try another restoration potion if he can afford it, but I doubt it would work. Those work better for healing recent trauma, not repairing these kinds of chronic problems. You can think of it like trying to remove a scar with a healing potion. It wouldn’t really do much.”
Bernt did his best to hide his disappointment behind a neutral expression, but he didn’t think he succeeded. He couldn’t just not do magic for who knew how long. There was no way. It was part of his job and, more importantly, part of what and who he was.
There had to be a better solution out there.
23 Treatment Plan
“That seems like a needlessly restrictive solution,” Tessa said, shaking her head. “Why don’t you just use your other hand to cast? Why haven’t you been doing that this whole time?”
They were sitting in the Underkeepers’ break room over a cup of tea, Bernt catching her up on what had happened since she noticed his spiritual injury.
Bernt sighed. “The strain doesn’t really come from channeling the mana out of my hand—at least not the worst of it, unless I lose control of the mana flows. That’s not how it works, I use my entire mana network to help manifest the spellform that I’m visualizing. The arm is just the weakest link, so that’s where I feel the strain. I mean, I guess it would be a little safer… but it’s not a solution.”
Tessa frowned, holding up her own hand. Over the course of a second or two, her fingertips darkened and long claws grew out. Then they melted again and the normal hand reemerged. “Doesn’t work that way for me. I have sort of a loopy pattern, a bit of my midnight hag’s spirit, inside my hand. It’s not like your mana network, though—it’s physically there, not just spiritual. If I sort of ‘push’ on it, the claws come out. It’s simple. The third eye works basically the same way.”
Bernt grunted. “Well, mages don’t. It’s probably just because you’re a warlock.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tessa replied, waving the topic away. “This magister is supposed to be an expert on fire magic, right? Why don’t you just bring him some hellfire and see if he can figure it out? I mean, there has to be some overlap with alchemy there. The alchemists have to use reactions with other magical materials to get whatever they’re making, but you can just rewrite the spellform for it, can’t you?”
“Yeah. It’s that easy.” Bernt laughed without humor. “All we have to do is figure out how to tell the spellform for soul-burning hellfire to restore my mana network instead of burning it up some more.”
Tessa frowned at him. “I don’t see the problem. Think about it. You’re reshaping your mana network every time you add an investiture, right? You’re just adding an extra step here, straightening it out a bit right there and maybe clearing out some kind of metaphysical obstruction, ironing out those weird wrinkles there. Hellfire seems like exactly the right thing to use, or something kind of like it, as long as you’re not too heavy-handed with it.”
Bernt froze, staring at her. If he had the right derivative, he might be able to wear away the malformed “scarring,” in a sense, and then heal or reinforce those mana pathways. Tessa was right, even though she probably didn’t know why. The best way to do that might be during an investment procedure, when he had a spellform to serve as a scaffold. It should also provide that reinforcing effect he needed to help the healing process along.
“Tessa. I think you might be a genius,” Bernt said. “That, or you’re going to get me killed. I need to find Jori, and I need to get something from my house—but I’m going back up to see Pollock today. At least provided that we don’t get an alarm in the next couple of minutes.”
Tessa didn’t respond. She had raised her head and was curiously staring right past Bernt’s arm over the edge of the table and down into his lap.
Bernt swallowed and slowly moved his hands to block her view.
She blinked and looked up. Then she leaned forward and hissed. “You saved the skin from the beaver?! How did you get it made into a belt? Tell me everything!”
Bernt grinned.
When he stepped into the Mages’ Guild this time, Jori half a step behind, the receptionist did not ignore him. Instead, he drew a slim metal wand from his robe and pointed it right at the two of them. Bernt stopped.
From the back room, the man’s monkey familiar screeched.
“No demons on the premises!” he snapped, scowling furiously. “What is the meaning of this?”
Taken aback, Bernt held up both hands in a calming gesture. “Hey! Easy. I just wanted to bring Jori by for Magister Pollock. We need her support for something.”
Jori leaned around Bernt to glare at the man. “He is rude!” She was surprised and agitated, and it showed in the way she spoke—simpler, a bit less fluently and with more hissing. “A bad man, I think.”
The mage ignored her, eyeing Bernt sternly.
“I don’t know how you do things in your sewers, but this is the Mages’ Guild. You’ll need to go and talk to Magister Pollock and request a Permit for Temporary Containment of an Extraplanar Entity on Guild Grounds. When that’s done, he has to come down here and escort the creature personally.”
Bernt groaned quietly. This couldn’t be happening. For a moment, he considered pushing his way past the man, but he looked deadly serious. Grinding his teeth, Bernt took a deep breath and chose the only way forward.
“I don’t suppose I can get one of those forms here from you?”
Nearly thirty minutes later, Bernt and Jori followed Pollock into his office. The imp stared curiously at the far wall, which was covered in half-erased spell diagrams and runes drawn in chalk. The old man shuffled straight over to his chair and sank down into it with a small sigh.
“Ah. That’s better,” he said, peering at Bernt. “Now. You’re telling me that you want to try to create a hellfire derivative that you can use to fix your mana network directly. And you think the best time to do that is during an investment process…” He paused, waiting for Bernt to nod. “Alright. Why the timing, though? You could infuse hellfire into your network right now without doing a proper investiture, just by carefully running a bit of your spirit out of yourself in a loop and holding the flame over it while you circulate some mana.” He waved a hand at the air. “I would advise against that, mind you. It’s been done. But why do you think so?”
“Too dangerous,” Bernt said immediately. “That might affect my entire mana network somehow, even if it shouldn’t. If I do it during the investment process, I would be able to limit the impact to the new investiture. Even in the worst case, it wouldn’t ruin what I already have, and I would still be able to finish the augmentation, whether or not it ends up modified somehow.”
“Yes,” Pollock said enthusiastically, “that’s exactly right! Being aware of and managing risk is a critical part of being a wizard.” He leaned forward, raising both eyebrows. “Now, what else have you got? I certainly hope you didn’t come here thinking you could just casually rearrange hellfire into some manner of spirit restoration spell.”
