FLUNKOUT ARCANA: A Failed Wizard Quest

[Laplace]

Well, it happened.

You've flunked out.

Set the stage. You've just received your transcript from the Academie de Rei, and it's clear as day that you're not staying any longer than the end of month. You can see your marks, and there's no amount of begging and extracurriculars that can convince the Dean to retain your moron ass.

Outside your garret apartment, thirty minutes walk from the Academie, students who'd gotten good news from the institution race through the skies, leaving varicolored contrails slashing across the sky. Hooray for them.

You've been drinking. Heavily. Granted, you were drinking-period-heavily even before the Fates, the Gods, and the ineffable turning of the universe at large conspired to cleanly bean you upside the head with a chunk of bad news. You would also, presumably, be drinking-period-heavily if several things in several different time periods went differently and you were a successful student instead of a sad sack of borderline shit. Actually, hey, what's to say that you actually failed?

Consider: the outside world is full of demons and malign influences. Bad stars govern the fates of the teeming mortals. The psychic pressure of lurking jinn and maeljinn press into your Mind Palace, threatening to overrun the mental constructions that allow any spellslinger worth their salt to toss a spell. Slacking your powerful control may induce hallucinations, to name a single one of the manifold symptoms one may suffer from a Breach. Mental control, therefore, is paramount. What is non conductive to mental control? Drinking-period-heavily. Perhaps you are haunted and the transcript is an illusion placed by a demon to mock and taunt you.

Okay, close your eyes and return to your mind palace…

A mind palace was and is a technique that aides memorization. You close your eyes. You visualize something-- a house. What's the build, doesn't matter, what's important is that you can intimately place yourself there. Feel the floorboards under your feet, every creak of the eaves. Associating memories with physical, concrete locations here is better than rote. If you want to get last week's travel retinue, you could, for instance, ascend to the second floor cabinet, where you could extract a mental handbill with your travels all cleanly written down.

Very neat. Very pat. The fact that the techniques to construct a mind palace also breaches the Empyrean, the source of the secret workings of the world, and allow one to cast what is commonly referred to as magic. Look outside the window. In the case of every adept, they see the same stars. Swift Mercury. Bountiful Venus. Warlike Mars, waning Saturn, jovial Jupiter, and the paired Sol and Lua. These stars only change in prominence and luminosity, according to each Adept's tutelage.

Describe Your Academic Track
[]- Evocatii- The sign of Mars dominates. Your mansion is made of red iron and ruddy teak. Hot winds howl outside your walls. Red stand piles up against your mansion, which stands as solid and stubborn as old soldiers.
Evocatii is the art of summoning and directing energy, in various shapes and forms. In your current state, you can generate enough lightning from torches and mirrors in your Mind Palace and project it to the Real to seriously injure a man, or use telekinesis to move small objects around.

[]- Alchemie: The sign of Mercury dominates. A swift band of light crosses the sky. Your mansion is an airy affair of open vaults and tall columns, pure water mixing with liquid mercury running in streams in the floors and dripping over the eaves.
Alchemie is the art of transmuting and reshaping base matter. You are absolutely incompetent at the transmutation of basal forms into higher forms, but you can reshape roughly your body weight in unenchanted material to whichever shape you want, but prolonged use like this taxes your concentration heavily.

[]- Divinarie: The sign of Saturn dominates. Your mansion is made out of pale wood and bright mirrors. You cannot walk an inch without a bright glint of reflected starlight stabbing into your eyes. Outside the garden of wan flowers rustles.
Divinearie is the art of shaping malign or beneficial influences on human action. After intense concentration, you can map out someone or something's near term future, but always hazy and frequently subject to error. You might, and this just might be the trance state talking, be able to influence that future.

Aaand nope, nada, nothing. Everything's peachy keen, you are not possessed or under a malign inclination. The ink on the parchment doesn't change at all. You've just flunked out.

You've flunked out.

Repeat that a couple times to yourself. Get used to the idea.

Getting into the Academie de Rei was painful. Hours of studying, of intense visualization. You were forced to take up realistic sketching and you were ass at it. Once there was a king who ordered all his subjects to bring fifty pounds of dirt to built a great wall, but the problem was, a lot of his subjects were sharecroppers who didn't own the land that the king asked for. No problem, said the king, you're a little scrawny, but you'll serve. And he took those sharecroppers and in a stunning display of magna fortis, mighty hand, a common Evocati technique, compressed the sharecropper into a brick and continued on his architectural efforts. You bring this up, not just because you want to think about anything other than your current situation, but to draw an analogy to the pain that poor peasant must have felt as his tendons and bones were compressed into a solid material, to your decade plus of preparatory work before you were even able to light a candle across the room with the power of your mind (First Year Practicals. You took five minutes and nearly ran out the instructor's patience). Indeed, is your pain not greater? Your suffering more in perpetuity? Being compressed to a brick hurts like hell, but it stops. You're stuck here forever.

Getting here is a journey of a thousand miles of interesting life decisions, but one of them sticks out in the mind the most. If you were asked why you've flunked out, you've got an explanation slash excuse right here:

[]- Potion Addiction (Glug Fiend): You don't have a drug problem. You have an incompetence problem, which the mana potions help fix. Yeah they make your brain buzz and your heart flutter, and you've been noticing this black ivy crawl all over your memories, and you've been diving into your scholarship fund to buy more potions, and you've been drinking them outside of academic purposes, but you don't have a drug problem. Period. It's only a problem when you can't stop, and you can stop. You just choose not to. For real.

[]- Former Gifted Child: You breezed through prep. Memorization? No problem. Music as a discipline came naturally to you, but you struggled a bit with art and was always merely okay at mathematics. But you choked and you choked hard when you stepped into the Academie. The moment you realized you weren't the smartest aspirant in class was the moment you fell to pieces. Every time you saw one of your classmates make good progress on their term paper, your stomach knots itself into a ball. Every time you burned the midnight oil to get an okay result, only to overhear that some other guy thought it was the easiest thing in the world, you consider the rope.

[] - Irreconcilable Class Issues: In the Academie dei Rei, you've concluded that you simply don't have the class for it. You see, your parents were barbarians. Bar bar bar, they drank blood out of human skulls, and weren't they oh so proud when their child went off to the big city to make a name for themselves. Cons: it sucks shit in here. You'd rather be in the craggy mountains of your childhood, wrestling ice trolls to submission in a variety of holds. When someone expects you to hand in coursework, you dream of burying an axe in their skull. You are also mildly concerned that you are quickly becoming a stereotypical pastiche of your culture.

 

[Laplace]

You are named Hieronymus Ish. This is your wizardly name, and your birth name is quite different and entirely unpronounceable.

Right now, you are thinking that you shouldn't have left the Craglorn Mountains. You face the prospect of returning and informing your clan that all the money and effort they spent to prepare you for the Academie de Rei would have been better spent buying some more horses after the last bunch got et by that wyrm. The thought makes you reach for the bottle, which contains nothing but the stale smell of lukewarm beer and a slightly sticky sensation.

You need some more beer. You need to figure out where you're going next. The pub, where one can buy a six pack of swill on the cheap, but also in general, in life.

The stairs creak dangerously as you descend the narrow stairwell and cross the hallway of some cloth merchant's house to open the door. They do their best to ignore you, which is quite hard, seeing as you stand a full head and shoulders above most people here in the city, Fleur. Nevertheless, you do your level best to return to favor.

First of all, you've got some money left to fund your six year tuition. You are in your fourth year, so that's two years worth of money to start with. Now, that's not your money, technically, since it's a loan, and locked up behind a banker's cheque and goes directly towards the Academie de Rei per semester. Now that you've flunked out, it'll remain in the bank, but you know from gossip that those guys take forever and a day to update their records.

Second, you've got your academic stuff. Notebooks, textbooks, and your various foci, such as the classic staff, the lyre, your alembic… You'll have to sell them all, you're afraid. You have to recoup some of your losses. You can't get your fourteen plus years but you can get some of your cash back for the road.

Thirdly…

How do you get your pocket money?
[]- Grave Tending
A wizard never dies. Something of them remains in their mental constructions, and it is a public nuisance when their corpse sits up straight and shambles about with all the blithe confidence they had in life. That is where you come in. Grave tending, a thankless job for public servants and wizard interns, tasked to keep bodies squarely in the ground where they belong, and only occasionally suffer from necromantic despoiling, something you have totally never done. You have certainly never used forbidden procedures to desperately steal some snatch of understanding from a stiff wizard corpse.
[]- Professional Gambling
What started as tableside entertainment to add color to an evening with the lads blossomed quickly into another calculated addiction. It's a matter of probability, a cool head, and a good memory. All skills that the wizardly trade inoculates as well. And of course, since you mostly play with other students, you have gotten exponentially good at cheating, although in tough cases you simply stare at the other guy from your towering height and allow a little lightning to manifest, in order to cow them to give the game up.
[]- Value Assayer
All around the world, animalii monstrum, are born. Dragons and cockatrices, basilisks and jinn manifestations. They are hunted and sold to cities where they are processed into a variety of useful items. You work for a butchery house that creates those items, verifying their purity and authenticity via magical means. It is a job far under someone of even your academic calibre, but it pays and no one expects anything of you. Furthermore, you have been defrauding Melusine and Daughters via the mysterious disappearance of certain small items, for your own use.

…come to think about it, whatever your side hustle is, you might have stuck in the Academie a lot longer if you used that time to apply yourself to your studies. It's water under the bridge, you repeat to yourself. No use crying over spilt milk.

Enrolment Day is basically a civic holiday in Fleur, where the Academie de Rei towers over the rather small and shabby municipal palace of the Duc d'Armagine. Thousands of students are out in the street celebrating their continual participation in the greatest academy of higher learning in the civilized world, thousands of students are seeking consolement in their eventual eviction, and the means of both are pretty much identical. The only way an observer can tell is by mien. Happy? They're in. Desolate, drinking in gutters and corners while others revel? Yeah, they're out.

Ha. Look at you, implicitly excluding yourself from your fellows. Along the cobblestone way to the pub, you repeat to yourself that just getting into the Academie is worth something, isn't it? It's a selective institution. It usually teaches legacy students or the upper crust, ducal and royal scions. The fact that it picked you had to speak for something, right?

You're just in the bargaining phase of grief, you're afraid. You've just flunked, implicitly validating every veiled comment of "what's this barbarian doing here?" Doesn't that just blow all.

Your steely thews are quite useless in every area of academic endeavour, but it's efficacious in pushing aside the mob that throngs the cheapest student bar in the district. It is only ten in the morning and it's already thronged. Celebrants, check. Depressives, check. You also brush pass someone that stinks of sweat and jangles with knives and possessing a generally rakish attitude. At least he took one look up at you and decided that he doesn't want none. He's not the only one there. There's a lot of well, adventurers, is what the polite term is. One could also use grave robbers, mercenaries, and this is the most devastating one if you know how to pull an uptown accent, the help. Immediately identifiable by how many weapons they carry on their person-- sabres with glowing runes, jingling pouches of shot, and a lot of gold rings for some reason.

You rap your knuckles against the cheap pinewood bar and shout, "six pack pale!" The harried moustachio'd barkeep has them stacked up in piles underneath the counter. The bottles clink against the cheap plywood box. Already you are courting envious stares from the poor fellows off to the side, where it's clean to see that they've run out of drink. Worse luck, a wizard never shares his food. Or was that a dragon? Or was that a cat? The crate goes against your hip as you shoulder your way outdoors, where you stop, blinking in the sunlight.

Where do you go from here? Well, there's a very nice, very inviting gutter. Getting a head start on things is very nice. Also, you really don't want to go back to your shitty apartment. The sun's out, it's warm, thank the small mercies.

You experimentally lay down in the gutter and pull out the cork on the first bottle with your teeth. Nice, cold, and tastes like piss. Everything you want in a lager. You nurse the bottle as a unicorn pulled wagon trundles by.

Somewhere something explodes in a deep, bassy thum that makes the earth shake. A faint, rosy color diffuses across the sky in a ring. Evocatii, a third year spell, A Means of Roses, combined with an explosive form. You can do the first and tint your spells but not the second. But how hard was it, really? Did you just fumble, or was the instructor trash, or was it, and say this to yourself perfectly clear, Ish, you were just not cut out for this thing. Magic in general.

Aaand there goes the first bottle. You stare up into the bright blue sky, feeling the sewer water trickle around your head, as if you were a great still stone in a river. Of shit.

You should find something to do.

[]- Keep Drinking
Fuck it.
[]- Find your Academic Advisor
Your Academic Advisor also happens to be the Dean of the Academie de Rei. As it stands, you should still avail yourself of the facilities of the Academie while you still can.
[]- Scope Out Thirdroyal Bank
You need your money, and as long as it's stored in the form of a letter of credit in the vaults of the Thirdroyal, you don't have it. The solution therefore is highly simple.

 

[Laplace]

Glass clatters against the pavestones as you laboriously lift yourself up with legs alone, in a motion that has more in common with a clockwork gear than anything living. You wedge the beer crate against your hip and tread that familiar road to the Academie one last time. You also realize that you actually never paid for your booze.

You look back. The bartender isn't rushing out of the pub, yelling at you. You chew on your lip as you consider the thirty trachy in your pocket. Fifty trachy to a nominista. A nominista is a golden coin, marked with the seal of Fleur. You have somewhere around two hundred noministas, and ten noministas a month buys you a month's rent for an apartment. Half a nominista is enough to buy you a pair of bad boots, cardboard soles and cheap offcast leather. Half a nominista is enough to buy a plowman's lunch of some meat baked into a pie, apples, and cheese…

You pick up the pace instead of returning. He's making good money, anyhow.
Somewhere along the Rue Tresmagus, you realize that this is the end of your long habitation in Fleur. It's back to the mountains with you. You'll never see a building taller than yourself again. All the roads will just be paved dirt. You've fallen from Empyreal heights, and all that you have to drink is either the weak hoppy ale that everyone and their mother knows, or that harsh burning thing made of fermented turnips.

The thought of that makes you take out another bottle from the crate. Now whenever you walk, you produce an annoying rattling sound. No one has yet to accost you, and you are hoping one of them will.

Fleur is a good city, a beautiful one. With so many wizards and maguses produced yearly, most of them who don't fly off abroad stay right here, erecting their very own tower and contributing in some way to the civic good. That means nine phantasms per street, each made by a separate wizard, sent to clean the streets. That means a smorgasbord of dead useful objects, such as scrying-glasses, leashed-elements, more kinds of alchemical substances that you can recall off the top of your head but most of them are some form of major hallucination, bags of holding and thousand league shoes, sold all over the world, with the profits plowed right back to Fleur.

Even the beggars eat good. You know because you pay the head dimmer on schedule after one of their boys caught you eating wizard deader brains on a moonless night.

(You wonder if the dean knows.)

Rue Tresmagus rises up to Academic Hill, where the Academie de Rei sits redundantly. You can see all of Fleur and the surrounding Armagine countryside. A forest of towers. Spellbound trees fight for sunlight with each other, forming a tangled, rustling green sea. Look deeply, Ish. You're not getting this view anymore.

"I need to get over myself," you say out loud. The mantled passersby ignore you. Eccentricities such as talking to yourself is quite common amongst the arcane profession. "It's just a place."

One of the skills fostered by the meditative exercises needed for wizardry is a sense for introspection. Furthermore, when the source of your arcane power is an image in your mind, it's impossible for a little bit of that vast, oily, subconscious sea to seep into it. Every time you return to the mind palace, you can see the cityscape of Fleur in the horizon. It's towers, it's roads, blowing red sand at your embattered palace at skin-strip-off speeds.

You stagger up the nine floors where Hieronymus Delt, the Dean of Academie de Rei, a research fellow of Astrology and an all around respected academic figure. He bears a halo of respective academica that repels you better than salt does slugs, which explains why the last time you've talked with Hieronymus Delt was when you were a first year student, still unsure which track you'd like to specialize in. In the end, you chose Evocatii, mostly because there will always be a war going on, and therefore you'd always be in for a job. Granted, a lot of that was because of a condettiore guest speaker, who really talked up the monetary benefits of the forever war with the necromantic empire of the Four Ivories.

You reach out a hand to the bronze knocker. You hesitate.

You're shaking like you've just dug up your first grave. For a moment, you imagine the worst-- Hieronymus Delt with solid evidence of your necromantic prolictivities. How would the transmutation of most of your flesh into fire feel like? Painful. Your hands shudder visibly. For a second, you stand there, in the middle of the hallway, gathering your nerve like a bale of lightning bolts.

The door opens. You cannot say if you were the agent behind it.

The Dean is sitting behind his great desk, covered in sage green leather. Parchments cover his desk-- while mundane scriveners had made the switch to pulp paper, wizards have stuck to dead animal skin, from lamb to dragon. The floor ends somewhere behind him, dissolving into a diffuse nebula of violet light, as if you had stepped out into the Empyreal instead of an office at the Tresmagus Campus of the Academie de Rei. Gravity has been ordered to deactivate, such that there is a small library of books floating in the empty space. Most disconcertingly, there is also a tall window that shows the skies above the Academie. The Dean himself is seated as a king, shadowed by the brim of his long hat and framed by a silver beard that spills deep into a rich, burgundy robe covering a cloth-of-gold vest. The only thing you can see of him are his papery hands, twirling a pen, and his glowing eyes, pale and blue as river stones, which also happened to be fixed to the half empty crate of beer wedged against your hip.

Poor start.

"I'm sorry, are you a beer seller?"

Really poor start.

"No, I'm-- I'm Hieronymus Ish," you say, quickly dropping the crate with a rattle and pushing it beyond the doorframe. "I'm here for an academic consultation, if you have the time."

Hieronymus Delt gives you the Look. Patrician disdain sharper than a knife. "I remember you," he replies. "You came in once when you were in your first year. You failed your exams. The last time I could have helped you was in your second year. Your record is right--" he waves a hand, and a scroll materializes out of thin air "--here," Hieronymus Delt continues, running a glowing eye down it. "Only two core classes? And you barely passed? Good heavens, man, that should have been a warning sign to switch, or take a gap year or something. Hunt some dragons, explore some dungeons." He tosses your record over his shoulder, where it spontaneously catches fire.

Your teeth are ground together so tight that one, you feel like they're about to break into bits, and two, takes a conscious effort to pry open. There is a heat in your mind, a dark dim angry ember, threatening to burst over.

"Well? Say something, man. I don't have all day. In fact, I believe I have another appointment, a scheduled one, coming up soon."

"I wanted," you enunciate with precision, "to talk to you to see what my options are."

"Do I look like a failure? I wouldn't know. Go out in the world. Have some adventures. Have some fun. You can't stay here, and I wouldn't recommend another stint in academica. You people don't have the aptitude for it."

"Uh."
"Don't give me that look," he snaps. "I mean, look at you. You're half drunk, you smell like the gutters. Whatever skill you had, you lost it. I'm not obligated to coddle you, I'm a professor of the Academie, not some backwater hick town school teacher."

"You wrinkled old bastard," you snarl on reflex. "Who's balls did you fondle to get your hat? I came here because I'm at my wits end, and I don't pay an arm and a leg to get this sort of thing."

"You should have thought about that before you came here like that. Get out of my office."

There is a smell of ozone. That burnt smell you get in high altitude. You're losing control of your mind palace. It's manifesting itself in the material. "Fuck you, Delt. Fuck you! If we were anywhere else, it'd be axes on the field! You sit in the… you sit in that fuckin' chair and you think your shit don't stink?"

"I'm going to ignore that," he states, steepling his fingers. "You're making a scene. Remove yourself from my office or be removed."

Now it seems that of all the possibilities in the world, of all the paths down this forking road, the single most logical course of action would be to turn Hieronymus Delt into charcoal. You pursue this course of action.

Lightning sparks to life in the metal fixtures of your palace. For this purpose, you choose fulminata, a simple spell that consists of clearly visualizing copper lightning rods to draw down light from Mars and directing it through a symbolic doorway that represents controlled access from the mind to the real. The question isn't if you can find enough energy, it's if you can control it properly. At this juncture, you don't give a damn.

A thundercrack. For a moment, the only thing you can see is a bright blue flash.

When it recedes, you see the spell captured clearly in a frozen time crystal, within Hieronymus Delt's hand. You dimly remember reading through the theory of that, but it all flew over your head. "Decent fundamentals, at least. Poor control. Fulminata's a poor choice. At your level… well, I'm not your teacher anymore," Delt remarks. "Vade retro!"

With those two words, an invisible force seizes you by the lapels and throws you bodily out of the window.

You land on your elbow, a join not made for such an action. Something cleanly snaps. As you lie gazing up on that bright blue sky, you notice another projectile shooting out of the window.

An open beer bottle hits you cleanly on the nose. That breaks too, and it's two brothers smash themselves to bits around you, embedding small glass shards into your skin and dousing you with its warm, sticky contents.

Once again, the passing crowd parts around you. This time more out of disgust and pity than for your towering frame.

Before you black out, you know for certain that you have that figure in your mind for eternity. It will be an all consuming obsession. Hieronymus Delt's shadow will loom over you.

How Will You Deal With it?
[]- Killing Him: You will kill him. One way or another, that great wizard is dead meat. At this point, you don't care if it's upfront and fair, or if it's from some evil plot. If possible, you will eat his brains and use his bones to make your focus.
[]- Showing Him Up: He says you're nothing? Well, you'll show him. One day, you'll have him coming for you for a job-- you don't know how, but you'll make it happen. You'll sign up for the hustler's university, in short.
[]- Running Away: You can't deal with it. You can't deal with any of it. He says you should go on an adventure. That's grand. As long as you can find something to occupy yourself with, he won't show.

 

[Laplace]

Here is the shape of the world.

In the farthest north, Ultima Borealis, a great black mountain of magnetic iron squats on the earth. Such is its weight that all the world's oceans flow towards it. In its crags, its valleys, there lie various forms of troglodytic life, undead shades and man eating giants, driven mad by the mountain's constant atonal humming. Due to strange interactions of the mountain's unique magical properties with the light of the Empyrean, shimmering bands of light snake through the skies, like racing dragons. And because of these interactions, Ultima Borealis is renowned for the qualities of its produce. Giant livers, shade ashes, starlit iron, leviathan guts and mercury rich mosses; this is an unexhaustive list of things adventurers travel to Ultima Borealis, risking life and limb, to gather.

As you travel south, the monolithic mountain breaks up into islands. The craggy coast is home to a race of ruddy skinned, iron thewed half giants, of which you are a member. Your forebears were once the elite shock army of a great wizard that conquered Ultima Borealis, and in its madness, decided to make a solid go on the rest of the world. From the great shambling cannibal-giants it fashioned your forebears, blood drinking, smaller but still towering, city burners. They wore human skin.

Of course, nowadays your people wear comfortable black wool, and they build cities with far too many canals, and make stacks on stacks taxing the routes to Ultima Borealis. Quite profitable!

The northernmost redoubt of 'civilization,' though you wouldn't know it from the sniggering about the redblacks here in Fleur, is the island of A-Alach, ruled by semi literate barbarian warlords from an entirely different but equally as desolate region as Ultima Borealis. Now this country is striven with marshes and deep gashes lined with a mysterious black glass, an artificial substance. Who caused this? No one knows. A wizard did it, probably.

As a student, even former, university honor compels you to say that their Blackbridge University doesn't hold even a candle to the Academie de Rei, and all their tenured professors are fit for is to polish the boots of a teacher's aide.

The inhabitants of Fleur and surrounding regions would be quite content to ignore Prittani except to traduce them as roast beef consuming, beer swilling and inexplicably red barbarians if not for the fact that somehow, someway, the degenerate barbarian sword waving kings of A-Alach have a legitimate claim on the royal throne of Gallia, and are vigorously pressing their claims for nigh on forty years by occupying duchies and fiefdoms, willingly or unwillingly, and generally raiding, burning, warring, being raided, being burnt, and being warred on. Another reason you picked the Evocatii track.

Duc d'Armagine has taken a neutral position, claiming that as the secular guardian of the Academie de Rei, it is unfitting for him to intervene in the affairs of Gallia. Tongue wagglers say the reason is more base: the Professor's Board at the Academie thinks scry'n'dying nobles for one side or another is a waste of time and applied wizardy, and thus not fit for their consideration. But his city is rich, even though everyone knows it's the Academie who calls the shots, and he only gets the gate tariff. The burghers of the city don't respect him, the tradesmen say that the Armagine and the Academie should step up and finish the war. The masters complain about the nobility, the journeymen complain about the masters, and apprentices complain about both.

So in his rich duchy, unburnt and unsinged, has a rich city, where on a grand plaza in the crowning intellectual jewel of the age, you, my poor Hieronymus Ish, look up at the sky, wondering what went wrong with everything.

Glass once again clatters as you lift yourself off. You operate on a mode of thought more befitting a wolf in the woods. You cast around, whilst tearing strips of cloth from your mantle to bind up your broken arm, searching for a twig. The branch of honeymaple planted in a planter-box serves nicely. You snap it up and create a workable splint.

Exit, stage left, with rapidity.

You ought to be grateful that Hieronymus Delt rendered a merely physical impediment on you for the high crime of pulling a kill-spell on him. A magus of his calibre has any number of interestingly nasty retributions he can levy on you.

The obligatory safety lectures each course started with flashes through the corridors of your mind as you stumble like a teetering stack of potatoes, set on a careening cart. Any spell necessitates a baring of your mind to the outer world. A wizard of grand skill can exploit that, and Hieronymus Delt, who has personally forwarded the arcane sciences in his dissertations on the achronal nature of creatia, is certainly able to. Look inside yourself, Ish. Is that shadowy figure, sitting motionless at the table in your palace, coming from your own heart? Or is it some phantasm, constructed by Delt, as some sort of diabolical scheme?

Such thoughts drive you to drink. However, you have lasted at least three years in the Academie, so you are still somewhat capable of recognizing that your current state of being is caused by drink, so as of now you abstain.

You need to get started on the next chapters of your life. But your thoughts are dominated by that burgundy wearing prick. What are you going to do? Kill him? Maybe. But that's so slow. What if you make him lick your boots? Okay, good plan. How are you going to get to that point? Take up politics, maybe? Except you're a corpse digger, what kind of political patronage are you going to get out of that? At most you're one of those guild flunkies the professors complain about in faculty meetings…

There's something salty in your mouth. You pause and notice that you've been chewing on your thumb.

You can't drink. You can't bear to find your friends, who you would bet your broken arm have all passed. There is nothing for you to do but to darken the doorstep of your apartment. At the very least, however, you are courteous enough to darken the doorstep of the neighbors two doors over that your landlord hates.

You've been sitting there like a depressed crow when a shadow crosses your sign of vision. It's Eochuer. Stupid rakish hat, fake eyepatch, and very real silver tooth and all. "Damn, you're a sad fuckin' sight," he whistles.

"Thank you," you reply.

Eochuer is a criminal. He was hung by the neck for banditry, and it was one hell of a surprise when you were out doing your usual grave robbery when your shovel hit his skull and he lept up from his shallow grave yelling like hell. He'd purchased or robbed some sort of second-life talisman, which saved him from the gallows, but not the glancing scar you gave him on his brow. Currently he is working as muscle for one of the bigger criminal fraternities, the Oarsmen's Guild, and occasionally the two of you clink mugs together when you see each other at the pubs.

He grimaces, spits, and eventually comes out with, "I don't know how to tell ya this, Ish. But we're friendly right?"

"I would say so."

"You wouldn't turn me to dust for giving you some bad news, would'ya? Your own dear mate."

"I already got hit with the bad news. What can you do that's even worse?"

He fingers a leaden ring. A common magic defense charm, twisting it around his ring finger. "It's like this," he starts, before taking two steps back. It's not going to help him. "Thirdroyal Bank sold your debt to the Oarsmen Guild just now."

You look up at him. Whatever in your eyes makes him take another two steps back. "I just got the news from my capo," he continues, speaking faster and faster. "Your student loan debt is part of the pension now. And they sent me to talk about payment plans…"

You think. Deep in your mind palace, imagined mechanisms churn. Static sparks between flying sand and grinding gear. "Delt," you come to a conclusion.

"Er."

"Delt did this," you snarl. You stand up in a flash, like a panther springing up, "that motherfucker! It was Hieronymus Delt, that two bit warlock, wasn't it!"

"I mean maybe! They said the Academie okayed it, so I mean, maybe!"

You are at a loss for words. Well, you have several words, which you use at length, but none of them coherent and none of them worth putting to text.

After you've finished your tirade, Eochuer is still there, holding up his ring like a shield. "Listen," he says, finding a seat on the curb. "Ish. You and I both know that the guild masters are going to get their money. But they're realistic, they know how much blood they can squeeze out of a stone."

"They'll want me to be muscle for them," you say bitterly, pacing on the street.

"So? That's not the worst thing to be in life. We're all someone's hired thugs, at the end of the day."

You motion for him to go on as you continue turning around in circles.

"There's that dragon den, remember?"

You do, and you nod. Young greenback came a-flying up south, and settled down in some remote mountain. Everyone is gearing up to have a go. In fact, it's honestly more likely that the hunters will suffer more casualties from each other than from the dragon.

"Well, we've got a guy on the lam. Found her in the hunting party, right here. Now, she's of the blood. We can't touch her legitimately. Our best guys… well, guild business, I can't talk with outsiders about this. But, if, hypothetically," and at this point he's got an arm around your shoulders and is guiding you to a back alley, "if she were to gack it in the hunt…"

"I can see where this is going."

"Splendid."

So?

[]- Accept: Fuck it.
[]- Bargain: You'll sell everything but the clothes on your back. You'll work a double shift. You won't kill anyone that hasn't crossed you.
[]- Reject: The old fogeys in the Oarsmen Guild can pound sand. The only way they'll get their money is from your cold dead body.

 

[Laplace]

[]- Accept: Fuck it.

In ages past, men and women trapped themselves in feuds, tore the flesh of their fellows, and generally put bones to bleach under a pitiless sun for real reasons. Real insults. The stuff of destiny, vast spirals of violence, feuds and counter feuds that cracked the skin of the earth with the passions of heroes. .

You are going to kill someone because you are some couple thousands in debt to the overgrown criminal fraternity called the Oarsmen Guild, and if you don't pay up, they'll recoup their losses. Possibly via the dismemberment and sale of your corpse to your own criminal fraternity, the unnamed gang of freaks, weirdos, and just incredibly odd people, for the use of necromantic rituals. You figure that the Oarsmen can squeeze, let's say, two nomenista, not even enough for rent.

"Fine," you had choked out to Eochuer, who smiled. No 2, thief's special: the conclusion of a successful con. At the very least, your sign on bonuses with the Oarsmen Guild include a free meal.

Eochuer explains in the Last Rat, a sit down bar located near the western gate. Owing to the war, the clientele here are ransomers, traveling bank agents, and wagoners-- the third order of war, the people who make sure that war is always a profitable enterprise for someone. "So, you're aiming for Aimee d'Agevine. Looks like this."

You look at the small painted icon of Aimee d'Agevine. Young. Green eyes, but could just be blue and the painter messed up the color. Freckles. Red hair. White plate, geeze. "What's the story?" you ask.

"Debt," Eochuer shrugs. "Bosses only ever kill for money. I dunno if you keep up with the news, but the Agevines are a big name. Nearly royal, if not for a few twists of fate. She is a bit wild, but whatever, the family thinks, she's got a good claim on some duchies in dispute, we can indulge her. Unfortunately," and here all the friendliness that Eochuer once had drops out of his face like a lead weight thrown into the air, "she insulted our fraternity one too many times. We didn't want to do this, we'd much rather have a going arraignment with the future lady of five fiefs, but it is what it is."

You feel a sudden and involuntary spike of sympathy for Aimee d'Agevine. Maybe you ought to start a debtor's guild with her, however that may work. What would even a masterwork be? A stunning legacy of debt delinquency? Finding the biggest, baddest bank with the strongest employed thugs, take out a loan of ten thousand nomenista, and then vanish?

"What's the dragon like?" You ask.

"Oh, the dragon?" Eochuer drains his mug, and then calls for another. "Why for?"

"Well, if I'm going to sneak into the hunt, I should act like a dragon hunter, shouldn't I?" you point out. "It'd be a sorry fucking end, if I stick out like a sore thumb, this Aimee snaps wise, and slits my throat in the middle of the night."

"Damn," Eochuer nods. A server drops something that's dark and fizzly in front of him and doesn't do it for you. "I didn't think of that. Either that Academie has damn good electives or your kind are still that good at war."

"Thank you." Your voice is dry and so is your throat.

"Well, it's like this…"

---

Dragon hunting is a universal experience. So was dragon worship, but erecting a golden idol to some fire breathing lizard has much worse returns than simply killing and butchering said lizard, so one mode was simply outcompeted. For a good, smashing entry on any prospective hero or founder of a kingdom's curriculum vitae, there's just nothing to beat the act of dragon slaying.

Of course, the days where once could simply walk into a den with a good set of enchantments, provided by a local magus in exchange for the dragon's blood, a nice, sharp axe, and a lot of guts are gone. The dragons that remain are cunning buggers, the survivors of a thousand year war between cthonic lizard an hairless ape. Nowadays, one must bring hunting parties numbering in the hundreds just to pin them down, soon becoming an unwieldy, argumentative, and indecisive beast, which a more noble monster can swoop down with breath hot enough to slag stone to pick apart at its draconic leisure.

The prospective dragon hunters have gathered at a market town some distance away from Fleur to the east, where solid land yields to a depressingly level and treacherous swamp before suddenly rising into a spike backed mountain range. The hunters, as representative a slice of society as you can get, are fulfilling their economic role with aplomb.

No sooner did you step off the wagon, sore and abused, did someone jump out of the crowd and grab your arm. "Hey, brother!" he says, "you here for the dragon?"

"Aye?"

"Well, you ought to join us! We always need your type!" After the last five got got, you imagine. "No? Your loss!"

You shake him off and press forward.

You've been thinking on how to approach this matter. You figure you should finagle yourself into d'Agevine's train. Poisoning's a no go, if you studied Alchemie, you could have simply transmuted her wine into a neurotoxin. Quick and clean, unfortunately, your field of study is as subtle as a royal barrage of cannons.

You blink, nearly walking face first into a veiled procession of blue robed warriors from far Imusay. That wouldn't work, you remind yourself. She's doubtless got something to defend herself against such amateurish attempts…

Needless to say, you head directly to the largest and most lively tavern without even considering anything. Not only do you need to wash the dust off your throat, isn't it traditional to start this sort of thing in a tavern?

This rustic country alehouse is not at all prepared for the crush. What would be more than enough to serve the local dirt grubbing yokels is not at all enough to serve, at a brief survey, the retinues of at least four middling knights, what appears to be a dozen various mercenaries picking their teeth with chicken bones, and four of your own countrymen, who even sitting nearly scrape the roof with their heads. And this is just the core, the fighting men. The butchers, the bank agents-- they're all outside. These sorts of people wouldn't suffer the common salt to dine with them.

You take a deep breath. You (were) are a wizard. You rank higher than these sword swinging morons. "INNKEEPER!" You shout above the crowd.

The cry elicits a single glance from the knights, a more measured study from the mercenaries, and--

"Lout," calls a young, pimply squire. You put him at about… your age, plus or minus some. "Lower your voice! Don't disturb the chivalry at rest."

"What, too loud for your ears? You're in a public space, get used to it!"

He flushes, as the mercenaries laugh. You note with some nervousness that your countrymen are merely watching, as if they were enjoying a dogfight. Confronted with such a loss of honor, the only thing the pimply squire can do is get up into your face about it. With, as it happens, a misericord. "Is that a university stole? Oh, you're a bold thief indeed. After I tan your hide, I'll return the property to the university."

Here's the state of the room. Your countrymen have placed the noble burden of representing the home country, generally in terms of national pride and bravery, on your shoulders. The mercenaries are making bets. The knights have all gone utterly still, and that's the most frightening thing of all. Around a handful of psychotic military nobility, juiced up with hereditary blessings that make them strong enough to punch through stone curtain walls and dash through fireballs at speed, just waiting for you to make a wrong move.

You recall the chivalric literature. You're absolutely, utterly in your rights as a wizard (even in training (even flunked)) to defend your name against this squire's accusations, with force. In fact, preferably with force! But here's the thing: can you really trust them to hold to their traditions when you lay hands on the squire?

"Well? Answer me, you shitty pedlar!"

And counterpoint, you'd really like to shut this twit up.

You Will
[]- Throw Hands: Assert dominance.
[]- Throw Magic: Wait, you're a wizard, you're far above this sort of thing!
[]- Apologize: Do nothing. You're either sensible or you're a coward.

 

[Laplace]

Casting a spell with intent to harm is a witchcraft crime in the city of Fluer, attainting the guilty with the status of a witch-- an ontological malefactor who is declared, as the easterners say, vogelfrei, that is, free as birds. Free for anyone to hunt, free for anyone to bait, and in general blessed with a life of complete and utter freedom. This legality is hammered into the skulls of every student in the Academie, by the proctor-knights of the university, who's general role of hunting down maelfactors makes it quite clear that anyone who contravenes this law will enjoy their status for about three seconds, before they incinerate the wrongdoer in a flash of flame.

This law ends at the city boundaries, for the simple reason that the Academie is quite apathetic about some wizard earning their trade by incinerating companies of slack-jawed yokels with malicious intent. Therefore, you open the shutters of the room in your palace where you contain the spell fulminata, drawing out the white-blue lightning and modulating it as per best practices through an arresting medium-- in your case, a pine tree made up of copper wire.

Once again, you manifest a bright flash of lightning through the medium of your index and middle fingers pointed at the squire. Enough power to make him seize up and dance like a puppet, falling over in a rictus deadlock, but not enough to kill. At least, you think it's not enough to kill.

The squire hits the floor with a thud. You turn your sparking fingers on the knights, in a lowered position. The air is tense, not helped by the occasional crackling. "Well?" you say, "does anyone doubt my credentials?"

No sooner have you said those words did the squire pick himself back up, seemingly no worse the wear but for some charring around the breast of his padded doublet. His right cross catches you quite slack-jawed, tippling you onto the floor.

Some cheer, adulating the squire for his fortitude. Others groan, disappointed that you would be taken down with such a cheap shot.

You see the world as if through the bottom of a beer glass, but your mind is steady and sharp. The pain doesn't deter you, not enough for you to cast fulminata a second time from the ground.

Another flash, another crack. You can see the squire's hair stand on end, turning him in appearance somewhat similar to the puffball of a dandelion. You stand up, carefully keeping him in your sights, two fingers still arcing with electricity, with the aid of a handy barstool.

It doesn't keep him down. What did their ancestors get? Five draughts of trollskin? Did they practice infant exposure to storms and come back alive? You're getting sick and tired of him, you think, as he spits into his hands and smooths down his hair. "Very well," he says with some dignity, "I retract my words. You are certainly no thief, as I have seen from--" he breaks off into a coughing fit here-- "your spells."

"Apology accepted," you reply stiffly. The gawkers are disappointed. It's a poor day with poor entertainment if someone isn't spitting teeth, but instead have used higher faculties to defuse tensions.

"However," he says, withdrawing a dagger, "it is churlish to reply with magic against a mundane opponent. An insult! I'll lesson you in steel for that!"

"You ought know when you're beaten, kid!" you snarl. "In fact, I give you leave to beg for talismans and protective spells from your family, because the next one is going to come out hard. You'll be lucky if you remember how to chew your food."

A tall, weatherbitten knight stands up, hand on his sword belt. "I don't recommend it, orc," he says, using that old ancestral insult. "I won't interfere in this dispute, but I swear to you, anything you start, I shall finish."

Before you even have time to process that threat, your own countrymen jump into the fray. "Oho!" a sea-tanned fisher shouts, "defending the sprog? Afraid that he'll lose? Let them fight, damn you!"

"The chivalry of this land," another takes up the thread, "are indeed a spineless bunch. They say they like a scrap, to spill some blood, but every time an occasion rises they make their excuses!"

The squire and you share a moment of intense, shared embarrassment. You do not need any spell to know what he is thinking, because he's thinking the exact same thing as you: that there would be nothing better in this world if the sun would politely incinerate you where you stand and spare you the fate of being the conversational ball.

Or, considering how he's rapidly reddening, he might be thinking he'd really like to kill you and avenge whatever slight on his honor you construe.

Your arm is getting a bit shaky after pointing at the squire, and he doesn't seem too hot either.

The argument seems to be ramping up to a head-- steel has been drawn, the mercenaries have carefully backed themselves into a corner with a window-- when the door bursts open and a voice with all the cheer of summer yells "INNKEEPER" loud enough to make the rafters shake.

Your control is good, but it's not that good. You instinctively turn and lose control of the spell, unleashing yet another arcing blue flare.

"The hell did I do to you?" Aimee d'Agevine asks the silent tavern. Her cuirass is singed, but not particularly damaged. Good enchants, you suppose.

Before you can similarly instinctively apologize, the squire pushes in front of you. "By god, woman! There's an affair of honor going on. You should know better than to interfere!"

"Oho! In the middle of a packed tavern? Butt out, squire, and pick your fields with a tad more care." He flushes, but there's no shame in acceding to a chivalric superior. You watch him run off with relief. Your savior (and target) turns towards you. "Well? Let's get a drink."

Do You?
[]- Yes
[]- No

not the best update but w/e

 

[Laplace]

Every shopkeeper makes you pay upfront. For a member of the knightly estate, a shopkeeper will take their purchases on credit. Credit where it's due, Aimee d'Agevine doesn't forget her noblesse oblige, having purchased for the two of you a beer soup thick and greasy with dumplings and cheese curds, an entire ring of blood sausage, and a half of a cold capon that was no doubt the remnant of some other night's feast. You are entirely unsure of the moral implications of accepting a gift from someone you will most likely kill, but you didn't pay any attention to Morals 101. In fact, you didn't even show up.

In your defense, the professor was an utter bore of a man. One day, halfway through the term, you showed up to his class mostly out of curiosity. There were three people there, and you were one of them, and the old man was still up there, running through his lecture notes. Benefits of tenure, you suppose.

But you're not in the Academie anymore. You're in a tavern with dirt floors. Across from you with glittering eyes is a young woman of the highest rank, who thinks nothing of thumbing her nose up at the Oarsmen's Guild.

You have no idea how to handle it. Fortunately, Aimee seems bent on handling it for you.

"So, I realize that I haven't introduced myself yet (I do like to get ahead of myself), but I am Dame Aimee d'Agevine, yes, of the Agevine family, but don't feel the need to bow or scrape. Firstly," she raises a gloved finger. Your mystical senses recognize it as chamois. "It annoys me. Secondly, we're all on the selfsame enterprise, so let's not take airs with each other, eh?"

"An interesting wish. If only your fellows followed that."

"Hey, bad apples in every bunch. Let's eat, though. Aren't you hungry? Thirsty? What's one of you people doing so far down south anyway?"

As she is demolishing the table's spread with rapidity, you are forced to match her pace. In seconds the two of you have collaborated to reduce the capon into a handful of bones, some of which are cracked under your jaws in the frenzy. "Can't you see my stole? Education, what else?" You throw a snapped bone over your shoulder.

"Well, again, it is a bit far. There's plenty of masters up near Ultima Thule, isn't there?" You nod to her question. "See, I learned arms and whatnot from my castle master, not the… university of knighthood, which doesn't exist. I think personal tutorship is a much better educational path."

It's instinctive, and you probably can't help it, but you feel a strong, overriding urge to not listen to her anymore. As she blabbers on quite helpfully about what she considers to be the benefits and drawbacks of institutional education versus mentorship, you are more acutely aware that whatever she's talking about, it no longer holds any relevance to you. In your mind the winds blow more harshly. Mooring ropes-- a reflection of your youth spent near docks-- snap as a tower marked with a sign labeled 'Contemplation' tumbles to the ground.

"Do you think they'll trust any old Magister Anonymius from Ultima Thule?" you snap back. "Sorry. No chance. I'll be lucky to get a post overseeing dragon dung farming with those credentials."

"Oh, come on," she laughs. "It can't be that bad! There's always a way. For instance, us, right here. You're only a student, and here you are, hunting dragons! What's there to worry about? We'll be the victors, you can write off your debt--"

You narrow your eyes. "What debt?"

"Uh, student loan debt? University students, universally, are poor, ragged, and in essence overeducated beggars. What, you particularly rich?"

"No."

She sits back and makes a 'well, there you go' gesture with her hands. You mirror her-- she takes a drink, you take a drink. Your hand shakes.

Does she know?

Put together the facts-- she knows you're from the Academie in Fleur, and the Oarsmens Guild has a big presence there. She can smell the ozone from when you tazed the squire, and in fact can clearly see the charred doublet on him right now, so she can draw conclusions as to your martial capability.

Say she does. What are you going to do right now?

…that might work. You haven't noticed any defensive amulets on her. You focus again annd… yep, waves are clear, there's no telltale dissonant hum in the higher frequencies. You nervously look over to the knights. How fast can they run, and more importantly, is it faster than your top sprinting speed?

"Hey, what're you looking at me like that for?"

"Like what?" You're snapped out of your intense calculation.

"You've been staring at me like I killed your dog. What for?"

Crap
[X]- "I was wondering how easy you would be to knock off in a fight."
[X]- "Nothing! I was just thinking about you."
[X]- Run away. She's got you numbered. You don't want to find out.

A/N: Sorry for the late update, folks.

 

[Laplace]

"That's weird," she replies. Her tone is perfectly flat and level. You could use it to level floors. "And what's worse, it's weird in a boring way."

"I-"

"I don't want to talk with you anymore. Uninteresting peasant. Came all the way down from Ultima Thule for the light of learning and all you can do is talk about if you can win in a fight. Even twelve year olds have more interesting discourse! Insects are interesting. Snakes are interesting! Fighting? What rot!" She stands up with a harsh squealing sound. "However many years in the Academie, and you're still a boor," she shoots like a carcole, retreating behind verbal venom.

She leaves you, door squeaking on its hinges, to a full table and to stew.

Damn. The table creaks under your new weight. You kinda fumbled that one, to own the truth.

Maybe you should just disappear. It would be extremely embarrassing to show up to the hunt tomorrow in front of her, and it would be extremely fatal to return to Fleur, a beaten dog.

Except here's the rub. If you vanish, anonymous and unnamed in history, without even doing the very basics of turning Hieronymus Delt into a stiff corpse, you don't think you could stand to live in the same skin. Actually, you can clearly envision a future where you've done nothing but take odd jobs throughout the continent and blowing off your own head at age forty, so--

"Uh, sir…?"

The innkeeper creeping up on you like the earth shadow of a cloud. "Your… ah, companion. Is she going to pay?"

You make yourself smile. It is not a very pretty sight, more of a threat display than a genuine smile. "Absolutely. You can send her the bill."

After that you find a reason to skedaddle: you don't want to pay money.

In time, you've made a clean drift around the village. In the end, as the sun dips slowly beneath the mountains and paints the sky red, you sit down on a low wall, listening to the cows low. Overlooking the same road you came here from Fleur on. Here, alone with nothing but your thoughts.

That's weird.

You scream an impolite slur, very loud, scattering starlings from the trees, following up with a frustrated punch to your thigh.

I don't want to talk to you anymore. Uninteresting peasant!

Remove yourself or be removed. Do I look like a failure?

You screw your eyes shut and fold up double. You're not a failure. Primo, even getting to the Academie means you're not a moron. You've just… you've just made some mistakes. Seconduo… and nothing. You don't have anything other than the vague idea that you are saved from mediocrity by your former association with the Academie dei Rei.

Unless you can kill a dragon.

(Or Aimee, something whispers. Wouldn't it be fun, being a mobster? Look at Eochuer. He's having such a blast.)

"That's in the cards."

Night falls, and when morning comes, you've had a good night's rest in a rut on the road and what's more, saved yourself the expense of a night's rest, at the expense of utterly ruining your stole. But what's done is done, you have more pressing matters, such as figuring out exactly what to do.

Depressingly, all you can do is return to the town square and attach yourself to a likely group.

"Let's see here," you mumble, "I've completely ballsed my relationship with the knights, so that's a no go." A cart rumbles past you. The driver doesn't yell at you or threaten you with his whip. You catch the smell of something acrid and burnt. "There's my countrymen, I guess, but do I really want that? What's wrong with going with them? I mean, I don't hate Craglorn, do I?

"But did I sail all the way here just to go back? No, didn't I? Wait, why am I thinking they'll go back?" So taken up with your monologue that you don't realize that you're in the town square again. But, to be fair, it's taken on a completely separate atmosphere. Gone is the festive mood, replacing it is the tense air of a campaign about to launch.

Leading men from three of the groups represented in the inn last night are standing around a table, arguing loudly. You can hear brief snatches of the conversation, and it appears they're arguing over the pay.

"Three companies, three by three! What's there to argue about?" shouts a moustachio'd easterner.

The knight in charge, a fairly young brown haired fellow, points at the same fisherman who spoke up in your defense last night. "There's only four of them. Twelve of you, and nine of us. Do your math, cannoneer, does this seem equitable at all?"

"So? It's a dragon, sir, they're rare as hens teeth this south! We'll beat the tariffs and recoup any of our losses."

"Besides," the fisherman cuts in with an ugly smile, "who's to say we'll all be standing here after the hunt? It's dangerous work, sir, and there's always losses…"

The knight waves his hand. You're not paying attention to the conversation anymore. Look around-- yes, there's Aimee D'Agevine, not looking at you, there's that squire, taking care of his master's horse, and there's a bunch of dead bodies lying off to the side, covered in various rags and still faintly steaming.

Professional interest prompts your interest. You walk by the table, squatting near the deaders.

Fire's a bad way to go. It's never the flame itself that kills you, it's the smoke, or heatstroke. The old saw about wizards throwing fireballs is fake, as kill spells go, fire's a no go. A man can live for quite some time after having most of their flesh charred and singed, especially with enchantments and mystic bloodlines. Unless you pack enough power to instantly turn flesh to ash, but that's just overkill when a lightning bolt will stop a man's heart snicker-snack.

Dragon's don't know that. They stick to the ol' flaming breath, all the way. Even now, some of them are hot to the touch, although you'd diagnose the majority of them dead by toxic inhalation, like some miners and cavers you've seen. Age… range of anywhere from adolescence to middle aged. You note with some regret that their gold jewlery has melted into their flesh, no fast way to cut it out, more's the pity.

So, put it all together, what do you know? Well, the great big fire breathing lizard does indeed, breath fire.

Man, your education is useless.

"I don't trust any of the wizards here. More frauds and charlatans, but nary a drop of learning. At best we have someone who's stolen a grimoire from a second hand shop and learned a cantrip or two."

"Aye, but what's to do? We go to war with the army we have, not-- hey, you! Get away from the corpses, you disrespectful sod!"

Ah, that's you. You repress every instinct to leap up and obey, for the speaker's got a voice like army brass. Instead, you stand up slow. "Not to worry. I'm trained."

You can see the knight, the easterner, and your countryman look at each other, and at once you know that you've finally hit your lucky break.

Things proceed quickly after that. They've been arguing over which road to take, and at the end, they've agreed to each go their own way and regroup at a predetermined spot.

You have..

The Choice of Three Roads
[]- The Coast
The mercenaries propose to travel via boat to the northern end of the mountain range, closest to the rendezvous point. The seas are treacherous, the shoals are sharp, and infesting the shores are an outbreak of migratory Stymphalian birds. At the very least, that should be all of it. No humping across jagged mountain.

[]- The Valley
In the south, there's a rich river valley full of shepherds and small farming villages. Flush with ancestral cash, the knights propose to ride up there, find guides, and meet up at the rendezvous with the benefits of civilization. Pros: it's very safe. Cons: you will be travelling near the squire you nearly killed and Aimee, who you have fumbled epochally.

[]- The Mountain
Your countrymen have climbing gear. They propose to travel straight through the mountains, even as the dragon circles overhead. There's a lot of nooks and crannies to hide in, although what you carry is what you get-- forage is scarce, but there's always the option of eating a cave troll or something.