“You have received Wizards Traveling Staff. This weapon is dual purpose as both a walking stick and an arcane focus for magical spells. Weapon Information: 1d6 damage. Rarity: Uncommon. Quality: Good, Magical. Durability: 150 + 2 rune bonus = 152.
This staff has been enchanted with runes, Steel +3 damage. Mersary, 1d4 poison damage over an equal number of seconds, does not stack. Urtasium, + 1 hardness, durability, and damage. Eithercite, +2 spell enchantment slots, +2 to the skill check of casting all spell types.”
I thanked Shil’a’kin profusely even going so far as to take her gloved hand and kiss her on the knuckles before I took off. Her hand smelled like soot and sweat like the entire forge did. Not necessarily an unpleasant smell, but certainly an oppressive one.
When I showed it to Ailsa she oohed and aahed at the wear wood staff banded in steel. “You know how lucky you are? Not only to find a piece of wear wood the right size that wasn’t taken by the foraging parties that go hunting for these things, but also to have a friendly elf smith nearby with the right skills and abilities to take advantage of the runes you carved into it?”
I nodded sheepishly. I knew intellectually of course, but honestly, it just seemed like things were falling my way recently, and I was trying to enjoy it as much as possible. I guess after you almost die from getting your entire face caved in by a nearly wild man, the Lucky part of the Unlucky/Lucky trait kicked in, and hard.
“You’ve been very lucky, and that's not even mentioning the books that the librarian of all people just gave you, you realize some of these are Magic Books don’t you? The Pyromancy one there? Magic. The Biomancy, and Force books? Also magic.”
While she was ranting at my uncanny fortune, I quietly slid to the table and found the books she was listing off, five in total. I pulled the pyromancy book over first. It was barely held together by string and the pages where nearly soiled with age and handling by others. This is a well-read book, most of these are. I thought as I glanced at the others. The only one that wasn’t as hard up as this was the Biomancy book, and I had a feeling it was because it was a book primarily about human healing spells, not elven magic, so it probably wasn’t nearly as popular with the elven practitioners.
“You have found Magical Tome of Pyromancy Mastery. Item quality: Masterworked. Item Durability: 5 / 5,000. Chance of success: 180% (90% from the book, 90% from Master ranked literacy skill).”
I was worried I would destroy the book if I used it. From what everyone had said, that was the likely fate of most Magic Books when used. I was iffy about turning the book to dust, as it was originally a Masterworked item and no doubt was painstakingly crafted eons ago. Such an item had history, it had gravitas in and of itself. The Historian in me screamed at the ignominy of it all. But I was given these gifts for use. Besides, fire magic is awesome! So I thought, what the heck, let's do this.
“Are you even listening to me?” She asked as she floated stock still in the middle of the room. “You should be grateful to the gods and the cosmic being of your home realm for, what are you doing?” I pulled open the pyromancy book, and a bright red light engulfed me. Magic flooded my mind with experiences and I learned faster than I had ever learned before.
I felt what it was like to finally synchronize my will with the resonance of Fire. I experienced the excitement and power that came with creating the first sparks with my fingers, and to cast my first Jet of Fire spell. The magic ran through a handful of such experiences at first, before beginning to speed up, at first a couple per second, then tens, then fifty a second. Finally, I found myself lost in the memories.
The experiences were devoid of specific memories, they were void of identity, sex, or personal ego. The persona I was experiencing these things through was essentially Link, an androgynous personage that it would be easy for the individual to project themselves onto as they experienced what was in the book.
I felt and learned what it was like to study for years to earn the attention of a true Master Pyromancer. Then after I burned an entire gang of thieves alive for trying to steal from me, I became an acolyte of the Master. I felt what it was like when I defeated and humiliated the other acolytes one by one over years of service, even as I defended myself from their machinations, earning a coveted Apprenticeship with the man I nearly worshiped as a God.
I studied under that master for years dedicating myself to him and the secrets of the Flame that Burned Brightly. He was harsh and demanding, but fair and even-handed. After all, equity was the essence of fire, before the most terrible of flames, what were we all but ash? Finally I felt the grief at my masters passing at the hands of a red wyrm, the living essence of fire and death. I felt what it was like to track the beast across plains, through valleys, and over mountain ranges, finally, I knew the pleasure of slaying the beast with the very thing it breathed, Fire. At that moment, I knew what it was to be known as a Master of Flame.
Just as quickly as it had started it ended. And a torrent of emotions, and prompts assaulted my mind. I gasped for air to calm my racing heart and only found ash coating my lungs.
“Congratulations! You have learned a new skill, Fire Magic! Current skill level, 1”
“Congratulations! You have learned a new skill, Fire Magic! Current skill level, 2”
“Congratulations! You have learned a new skill, Fire Magic! Current skill level, 3”
“Congratulations! You have learned a new skill, Fire Magic! Current skill level, 4”
…
“Congratulations! You have learned a new skill, Fire Magic! Current skill level, 11.”
I couldn’t breathe, a strange fairy spun around me in a frenzy screaming about the foolishness of humans. All Fae were arrogant creatures, but that was just rude. I tried to speak through the coughing but only succeeded in getting more ash and dust into my mouth and lungs.
I panicked, standing up and running for the door to the unfamiliar cottage, not knowing where I was, what I was doing in this strange place as I had just succeeded in killing my greatest of foes only to wind up here, and as I reached the door handle, I couldn’t remember, even my own true name. As I flailed for the door it opened with shouting, commands, and a lot of force. The world went red with pain, my vision went black, and I drifted in the void.
----
I dreamed of nothing for a long time, simply existing in the black void. Slowly flashes of my life before this world came back to me, cars, trains, busses and terrible mass transit systems that really needed to be reworked. That annoyed me, and then I remembered I had gone to school so I could fix all of that. My family had supported me through school and my family. Dach of them flashed before me, starting with my youngest sister Katherine, who loved My-Little-Poney and hardcore punk rock, which only frustrated my parents. She had a heart of gold, but she didn’t want anyone to know about it. She reminded me a lot of someone else. Someone I couldn’t quite recall yet.
Then there was the second youngest, only about two years older than Katherine, Aaron. He was the soft-spoken giant of the family. The kid was six feet five inches tall, easily dwarfing the rest of the family by two or three inches save a few of our Great Uncles. In high school, people tried to recruit him for football, but he turned them down. The coach kept pestering him about it until one day he asked them to stop, or he would tell our mother, one of the most feared women in the school district. Things went well for him after that.
Aaron loved to draw, he wanted to learn to paint, and when he had tried his first few times, he had proven dang good at it too! His latest painting he had just finished in his freshman year of college had been a panorama of important religious sites around the world, the Taj Mahal, Notre Dame, both before and after the fire and subsequent renovation, the Dome of the Rock, the Wailing Wall, and in the penultimate position, though tiny by comparison the the giant buildings of faith constructed around the world, barely visible as it blended in with the clouds near the top of the painting, was the Salt Lake City Temple, post 2020 renovation.
Donny was there celebrating with Aaron in my memory. Oh Donny, our oldest brother. He was always the trouble maker. He was far too smart for his own good. The reason he got into so much trouble in high school and in college during his undergrad was that he was bored. Something we both had in common was our love of Delving, and video games. In fact we had been playing when… I remembered who I was, where I was, and why I was there.
The rest of my family quickly flashed before my eyes, other siblings, my mother, and father, Donny's children, but it went by far too quickly, I wanted to see them all again. I began to cry as everything went by faster and faster until I woke up sobbing, in the arms of an elf I didn’t know, Tol’geth looming over us, and Ailsa hovering nervously above the scene.
Chapter 9: Works of a Wizard
“It is said: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.” - Gildor, Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
Lo’sar City, Lo’sar Forrest under the Home-trees. Frega, 28th, 2987 AoR
After I had calmed down enough to speak, and coughed up enough phlegm to fill a river, all under the watchful gaze of a strange elf and Ailsa who each used healing water and biomancy magic to check on me from time to time, I asked Ailsa what happened.
“I should ask you the same thing, you meathead! All I know is that you looked down at one of the Magic Books, activated it, there was a blinding red flash, you inhaled nearly the entire books worth of ash, which was the oddest thing in the world to see a man do on purpose, never seen that one before so thank you for that, then you got up and ran for the door as you, quite predictably, where coughing and choking. Then you got yourself knocked out as Tol’geth opened the door to see what all the fuss was about.” Tol’geth grunted his assent to the story. Ailsa got a faraway look in her eyes for a second as she looked at a screen. “And, and now you're a master Pyromancer?!”
I wanted to laugh, but I was so tired from all the hacking and coughing I had been doing I don’t think I would have sat up on my own without help. Instead, I got a stupid grin on my face and proceed to wheeze weakly a few times. “What, what is he doing?” The unfamiliar elf lady in the green tunic with a red stripe down the middle asked.
“I think, yeah I think he’s trying to laugh,” Ailsa said as she blasted me with another minor healing spell. “We can’t give you muscle relaxants, or use those spells on you, as we need you to be able to walk in a straight line tomorrow morning.”
“I think I will be fine after a nap.” I turned my attention to the elf woman who was poking my arm trying to get a read on my pulse. “I think I'm alright, just a bit too much ash in the lungs.”
“I’m not worried about that, you had a nasty bump on your head, from Tol’geth of all people. The fact that you’re alive at all is a minor miracle.”
The large man winced, and I just nodded that I understood. How powerful is this guy if even his door opening is nearly lethal! I thought. Glad he’s on my side.
“You should thank whatever deities you worship, plus Tyre’lin, the elven goddess of luck, for that fact. She’s the one whose domain random acts like this typically fall under when they happen within elven lands like Lo’sar.”
“How would I do that? Offer thanks to her?” I asked knowing that different gods and goddesses in this world accepted different things as thanks. Pyris, the Flame that Burns Bright, the female goddess of fire, spirits, baking, and minor magics to the eastern peoples, accepted only burnt barley, or boiled whiskey as one example.
“Well, you take a coin, doesn’t matter the denomination really, as long as it has some meaning to you. So if you were poor for instants, a single copper penny would suffice, whereas if you were wealthy, and entire gold bar might not be sufficient, and then you drop it in a lake somewhere. Did I mention she’s also the elven goddess of still bodies of water?”
“No” I croaked out. “But that's interesting…” I knew what she was doing, she was trying to keep me awake and talking. With the amount of trauma, I must have taken both from the hit on the head, and whatever the heck I had just experienced with that book, It was probably a good idea to stay awake at least for now. We talked about random things for the next half an hour or so, and I learned some about the elves, and why the Lo’sarian or Green elves, viewed themselves as ideologically different from their high elf cousins.
I didn’t get an in-depth explanation but from what I gathered it had to do with the importance of trees, the forest, and the elven pantheon of nature gods. So it was partially religious, but also partly philosophical and historical divide. For a race as long-lived as the elves, those three things must often blur together often.
After the elf left declaring me hale and whole, whose name I realized too late that I hadn’t gotten, I sat down with Ailsa and we went through what had happened. I explained about the flashes of experiences that I had just lived, I read the entire prompt I had received with the name of the book, and what it would do, its durability and the general plotline of the book. When I finally got to the slaying of the great red dragon Ailsa spoke.
“I think what you experienced were the memories, or the knowledge of Parthotex, the pyromancer. He was a human mage who was known for his ruthful vendettas and ruthless tactics. He once burned down an entire village to kill a particularly annoying troll who had vexed him.”
“I remember something like that, but instead of it being a troll it was just this giant hulking shadow. So, he was a bad guy? Because I didn’t get that feeling from what I experienced.” I asked as I sat back in my chair and sipped some pure water from a cup that Tol’geth had poured for me before he left with the elf earlier.
“No, he was somewhere in between. He was ruthless, merciless to his enemies and the enemies of his master. After he killed the red wyrm whose bones were used in the construction of Tor’s capital walls, he wondered Ethria for a time, before finally settling here.
“It is said that he lived far longer them even most human magi and that he had even learned the secret of the eternal mortality, one of the deepest secrets of the Cult of the Flame.”
I spoke up then, remembering something from the book. “The cult has a few names, and it regularly changes, just like fire, or so the cult's adherents will tell you if you ask about contradictions in their doctrine.” Ailsa buzzed her wings inquisitively as she looked at the small piles of dust and ash that remained on the unswept floor.
Ailsa picked up the story from there. “He must have eventually ended up here, and spent some time writing Magic Books pouring his knowledge into them. The way you describe the experience, he must have been deep into the craft when he wrote it.”
She buzzed her wings again, playing with a small pile of ash as it danced with the wind her tiny wings created. “Usually such experiences are far more damaging to the mind, as a person attempts to grapple with experiencing the life and mind of another. That's why most magic spell books only convey a single spell or concept. Parthotex must have been at least a master level book crafter and enchanter if he was able to craft one without imprinting himself into the magic.”
Ailsa looked at me suspiciously. “Are you sure you don't feel the need to, oh I don’t know, burn all of Lo’sar to the ground because a bug bit you?”
I did laugh this time, “No, no, no. I would never do that. Maybe a pesky fairy…” I grinned, and Ailsa sighed in relief.
“Well you should get some sleep,” she said as she flew over and turned down the thin sheet that passed for a blanket to the elves.
“No, I think I am okay. Tired, but not in such a way to sleep. It's still early yet, only a few hours past noon. I just got a new staff, and some new magic skills, and I want to test them out.” I stood, downing the rest of the water in the cup, and grabbed my walking stick, and I was out the door, Ailsa protesting behind me as I walked.
She caught up to me when I found a small pond and began rummaging around in my pockets for the few coins I had with me when I was snatched away from Kingdoms of Ashe. By the
time I found one, Ailsa was there but she went silent when I produced the platinum coin. It was the only one I had, and the only one of its kind on this plane of existence.
“Uh, what is that?” She asked as I tossed the coin into the air and caught it again.
“It's a platinum piece, worth nearly a hundred gold coins in Kingdoms of Ash. It's my only one, and I have a debt of gratitude to the elven goddess of luck, and the Pervolin gods, not to mention the Big Guy Up Stairs. So, here it goes.” I tossed the piece into the pond, and a flash of light engulfed the small clearing we were in as the piece of extremely precious metal landed square in the center, as if guided their. I was pretty sure that was the case because my aim was off, and it was going to go to the right of center, but it somehow self-corrected mid-air, and landed as it did. A few elves looked on to see what new strange thing the human wizard was going to do.
The light wasn’t blinding, more like the turning on of a computer screen then a flashbang. I thought I heard a whispered, ‘your welcome’ but I could have just been hearing things. The deep woods, like here in the settlement, sometimes does that to you. Whether or not I did, I nodded and moved on satisfied that my debt was paid.
I made it to a small clearing before I sat down in the lotus position, waiting for Ailsa who was still oohing and aahing at the pond, which had gone from pond scummy green to crystal clear, with the flash of light. A sign I was sure, of divine favor. When she did eventually fly on over, I asked her “What are ways I can say thank you to the Pervolin Gods? Even if they didn’t have a hand in this, and this isn’t their domain, it is probably a smart thing to do regardless. I’ve had a lot of luck lately, an even split of good and bad, but it has all worked out for the better. That's what I want to say thank you for.”
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