#neither god nor wonderstorm can stop me

[kradogsrats]

okay just hear me out on this:

it would be funny as shit if the Moonshadow elf kid who appears in Aaravos's happy memories of Leola's friends actually did turn out to be Garlaath the Annihilator

[kradogsrats]

The Jailer comes to him, periodically.

She's three hundred years dead and he's never seen a portrait, but he knows it's her. The legend that haunts any high mage of Katolis foolish enough to accept her exchange. One little task, in trade for all the power and secrets of an unimaginably ancient and potent relic—protect it with all you have, and never use it.

Beneath the shadow of her hood, she looks, perversely, a bit like Viren's wife—the thick, dark hair and round spectacles, the aristocratic tilt to her chin. It's a resemblance he doesn't care to think about too deeply.

It doesn't matter. She's no more real than the staff in his hand. No more real than anything in this place.

The cursed tomb his tattered soul has made for him to wander is a sprawling maze of hallways and stairs and identical, windowless rooms that blur one into another like facsimiles printed from a cheap press. It's all dark corners and indistinct sheet-covered furnishings, everything coated in a layer of dust thick enough to leach all color from the world. Beneath the stale air and cobwebs curls the faintest scent of death, as if something below the floorboards is beginning to rot.

It could just be him—kept half-dead long enough for decay to eat away at his torn edges. He may be little more than a walking corpse, sick and bloated with guilt.

He keeps moving. Room after indistinguishable room, hallway to darkened hallway. Sometimes he wonders if he's meant to be searching for something. Sometimes he worries that something is searching for him.

It's the stairs that are worst of all. He has to extend the staff and grip it with both hands to climb, using it as a support to haul himself up each exhausting step. That means he has to drop the chains he'd wrapped around his palms to spare his wrists, so their weight drags at the shackles already resting on bruised and broken skin.

His gloves wore through years ago, or maybe it was only yesterday. He eventually discarded their shredded remains and rolled up his sleeves to keep them out of the way. Now the shackles chafe and cut, and so he bleeds. He's no stranger to bleeding.

Maybe that's what summons her, the blood of his oath running down to drip from his elbow. Maybe he's just insane.

Still, she sits only a few stairs above him, one leg crossed over the other and chin propped in her hand. She's close enough that if he strained against his chains, his fingertips might brush her extended boot.

"Poor Kpp'Ar," she says. Her voice lilts with amusement, rather than pity. Light glints off her spectacles as it always does, hiding her eyes behind flat circles of piercing glare. "Still at it?"

He ignores her and drags himself up another stair, arms shaking with strain and fatigue. She remains the same distance away.

The chains wrapped around his chest and waist clink softly, going slack as whatever they drag behind him comes to rest in its new position. He has never turned back to see what form his burden takes, and he never will. It's heavy enough to require leaning most of his own weight into moving it, and it makes no sound beyond a soft, stuttering scrape as it slides over the floorboards.

Maybe it's nothing more than plain stones. Maybe it's the sickbed where a little boy coughed out the last of his short life.

"You know you don't need to drag that around everywhere," she says. "You've only ever been bound because you convinced yourself that you deserve it."

He glances up in spite of himself, his eye lured by the glittering, idle twirl of her great ring of keys. Each flashes between her fingers, one after another, not magic but long-practiced sleight of hand.

None of them will free him. She's not his jailer.

She caged the Fallen Star when he was on the cusp of rending open life and death, alike. Now the instrument of his greatest servants was loose upon the world, in the hands of a man who had no idea what kind of devastation it could bring. He would use it, and he would be used by it, and if he was fortunate, in the end it would only kill him.

"Am I wrong?" he asks, gritting his teeth as he raises the staff, shackles dragging on already-raw skin. "I failed my student, my teacher, my king. Humanity. The world. Are you somehow going to tell me, after all that, I didn't fail you?"

"You did," she says calmly, "and the consequences are yet to be fully known—but that's not why you're here."

They've had this conversation before—it's a ritual, or maybe a test. If it's a test, he must be failing repeatedly. He could answer differently this time, try to divine the combination of words she's waiting to hear. He could, as he has done every time before, tell her the truth.

Maybe he only wishes it was a test. Maybe he gives the same answer every time not because it's the truth, but because he's afraid to find out that his response doesn't matter.

"I know why I'm here." He plants the staff firmly on the next stair. "I put the sanctity of your damn staff above everything, even a moment of human decency. Just like I promised."

"You blame me for this?" She laughs. It's a harsh sound, almost metallic in its jangling. "It's not even my staff."

"I could blame you." He hauls himself up, chains tightening around his chest as he drags his burden with him. He still clings to the staff for support after they go slack again, wheezing with effort. "I could blame Ziard. I could blame the Fallen Star, himself. It wouldn't change anything."

"So instead you refuse to blame anyone but yourself. Not even him."

She's not referring to the Fallen Star.

He's had what feels like lifetimes to consider whether he blames Viren for how things ended. He might have, once—he remembers hands dragging at his throat, being thrown to the ground with the finality of a broken toy. He remembers betrayal like a knife under his skin, peeling him open to expose rage and terror alike.

He also remembers what came before—the raw sobs of grief when he'd turned his back on the boy who had become everything to him. When he'd all but told Viren aloud that his son didn't matter. That he didn't matter.

"I refuse to blame him for being human," he says tiredly, resting his forehead against the cool metal of the staff.

Her mouth dances along the line of a smirk. "Are you not?"

Not when he should have been. Not when Viren needed him to be—when he was most in need of a friend, a mentor, even just a sympathetic ear. Not when a better man would have held him, wept with him, done something to offer comfort if he couldn't offer hope.

Once, between an hour and a lifetime ago, a single, perfect ray of moonlight had pierced the darkness around him. It was as if the moon looked in on him from a high window, light pooling like cool water at his feet. Then it was gone, as quickly and suddenly as it had come.

His foolish heart cherishes it, that brief glimpse of light. He knows he won't receive any other such mercies, here in the endless hell he closed around himself.

Yes, he's human. Only human.

He closes his eyes, still resting his head against the staff. He wants to stop, to rest—to lie down right where he stands and wait for death to take him. He won't. He can't.

Death is no more real than moonlight, here. Only worse things await.

He doesn't look at her. "Did the boy live, at least?"

"Poor, poor Kpp'Ar," she replies, and this time he can hear the pity. No gentleness accompanies it. "Maybe someday you'll deserve to find out."

Kpp'Ar + The Jailer

Reap What You Sow

[kradogsrats]

me using the exact same features of Kpp'Ar's cane to speculate that it contains a key and to headcanon that he has debilitating full-body arthritis

[kradogsrats]

The mage wasn’t like others Viren had seen before.

Mages didn't come to their town often, tucked away as it was in the foothils south of Mount Kalik. Any that did moved on quickly, collecting a few coins from the townspeople for spells to harden their vegetable gardens against frost, or keep worms out of the apples ripening on their trees. A few claimed, in hushed tones and with sly smiles, to traffic in other kinds of magic, as well—love potions, fortune-telling, or curses. Viren's neighbors didn't often have money to spare for such things, and the mages, real or not, preferred towns where they could reliably find customers. Most never returned.

The woman who scryed the mines was an exception, visiting twice a year to check the shafts and tunnels for hidden weaknesses, and to tell the foreminers where new ones ought to be dug to find the richest iron. That was real magic, paid for in gold—she stayed in the chief forewoman's fine house when she visited, sleeping on a feather mattress and being served the best food available. She hardly spoke a word to the townsfolk, and no one was allowed to watch her cast her spells, but there hadn't been a collapse since Viren was a baby and the new tunnels always produced generously. She may have been a snob, but she wasn't a charlatan.

A healer also passed through every few months, to trade with the town herbalist and confer with her on any illnesses or injuries afflicting the townsfolk. He was a kind man, worn thin and exhausted by care, and while Viren had never seen him do any magic, there were rumors carried from other towns of him straightening babies' club feet or knitting together their cleft lips with a touch. The herbalist was in charge of a small stock of potions purchased from him to handle severe injuries, paid for with a tax collected from the workers—salve to clean and heal deep burns from molten metal, tonics that restored bones crushed beyond setting with splints, poultices to halt the bleeding of even a severed limb. Each one cost at least a month's wages from an entire family, far more than what most of the wanderers asked for their thin, colorful vials. Viren suspected that might be because the healer's actually worked, but he wasn't likely to find out for sure. If he ever broke a bone, he'd be healing the normal way.

The mage currently idling in the town square was different from all of them.

He was young, for one—only barely a man. The traveling mages Viren had seen before were his mother's age or older, and weathered by a hard life on the road. Sometimes they had an older child or gangly teenager shadowing their steps, but Viren had never seen one so young traveling alone. He had sharp eyes set in a golden-brown face thick with freckles, and a faint stubble was just beginning to line his jaw. Sandy hair curled around his ears below the wide-brimmed traveling hat he wore. His clothes were plain and patched, and the worn pack he carried looked probably older than he was, but sturdy.

And he had a book.

It was a thick, leather-bound volume, the gilt trim on its ornate cover mostly worn away. He carried it at his hip, strapped to his belt with tongues of leather held in place by buttoned clasps—secured within easy reach, and never out of his sight. None of the other mages Viren had seen before had anything like it. Spellbooks were for mages in stories, not real. Everyone knew that.

But here was a mage, with what definitely looked like a spellbook. A real one.

If he wanted to know more—which he definitely did—he'd have to approach the stranger-mage. Adults didn't like being pestered needlessly by children, and the mage may have been young, but he wasn't a child. Viren would be more welcome if he had something to offer. He'd also have to hurry. If the mage's attention was claimed by others who had paying work for him, there was no way he'd ever speak to Viren.

He sprinted home, banging the door open in a way that would have drawn his mother's ire, had she been there. She would be tending the furnaces in the smeltery until nightfall, when she'd return exhausted and soot-stained to eat the supper Viren prepared and then collapse in her cot. It wasn't always like that—there were times when they cooked together, or he read aloud to her, or they joined the neighbors in one of their homes for music and singing—but the demand for the town's steel had climbed suddenly, and so she'd been working double shifts for nearly a month.

He grabbed a string of dried apple slices from where they hung in the cellar—it wouldn't be missed. The trees would be fruiting again soon, anyway. Vanished bread would be harder to explain if it was noticed, but he took the bun set aside for his own lunch, and risked swiping a second from the basket. He'd skip bread at supper, to make up for it. A wedge of cheese sliced off the big wheel, hopefully slim enough to not visibly change its shape, completed his offering. He wrapped everything quickly in a napkin, then took off running again, back toward the square.

The mage was still there, filling his canteen from the fountain. Viren waited for him to finish, trying not to betray his nerves by fidgeting. When the mage turned around, he thrust out the bundle of food. "Here," he said. "It's after midday. Have you eaten?"

His skin prickled under the mage's surprised scrutiny. Close up like this, Viren could see that his freckles extended even onto his eyelids and lips, denser and darker high on his cheeks. His eyes were warm and brown, darker than Viren's even though his blond hair was fairer. He looked Viren up and down for a long moment, head cocked to one side.

"I haven't," he finally replied, accepting the bundle from Viren's hands. "That's very kind of you."

Viren trailed after him toward a section of the low stone wall that surrounded the square, where it was shaded by a pair of trees. The mage shrugged off his pack, then sat down on the wall with an appreciative sigh. Viren remained standing, watching him open the napkin and survey its contents.

"You're a mage, right?" he said, unable to contain himself any longer. "Is that a real spellbook?"

"Sure am, and sure is." The mage tore a chunk off the first bun and chewed it slowly. It was ordinary, day-old bread, but he closed his eyes if savoring it.

Viren couldn't help himself. He thought he might burst, desire to know things previously beyond his experience bubbling out of him. "Where did it come from? Can you do any of the spells? Can you do all of them? What kind of spells are they?"

The mage didn't answer for a moment, dried apple crunching in his mouth. "We playing twelve questions, or are you always this nosy?"

Viren stiffened, blushing. "No! I don't—"

"Relax, kid—I'm just pulling your tail. How's this: someone gave it to me a while back, yes, not yet, and all kinds." The mage grinned, tilting his head to indicate a spot on the wall next to him. "Take a seat. What’s your name?”

Viren scrambled to sit in the place he'd been offered. “Viren.”

"I'm Luca. Came from Duren, originally." He pinched up the few crumbs shed into the napkin by the first bun, eating them off his fingers as he watched Viren expectantly.

“Duren's a long ways away," Viren said, trying to sound indifferent. He still bristled at being called nosy, joking though it had been. "What are you doing here?”

"I'm headed toward Evenere, eventually," Luca replied easily. He gestured toward the east. "I came south across Weeping Bay by boat, and thought I'd take a look at Mount Kalik before starting the walk to the capital."

"You added at least two days to your route just for Mount Kalik?" Viren looked incredulously in the direction of the looming mountain. He didn't even notice it was there, most days. "There's nothing special about it. It's just tall."

"There aren't a lot of mountains in Duren, so excuse me if I think 'just tall' is still pretty impressive." Luca paused to drink from his canteen. "But really, I'm hoping I might find some interesting plants or creepy-crawlies up there, something that fuels magic. I figure it's worth a day or two to take a look. Assuming I don't get eaten by a banther, that is."

That reasoning brought Viren up short. "Wait—you're saying magic comes from plants?"

Viren had only ever seen one or two spells actually being cast. A family living a short distance from his home had a persistent problem with mites in their garden, and their neighbors had pooled money together for a mage to get rid of them before they spread. That mage had welcomed spectators, as if putting on a performance, and Viren had assumed the bird's foot tied with strange herbs that crumbled to ash in their hand was solely to enhance the drama.

"Plants, bugs, bits of bigger creatures—humans don't have magic in us already, so we get it from something that does. Usually that something has to come from Xadia, where everything's full of magic, but there are also a few places hidden away here in the kingdoms where there's still a bit to be found." Luca smiled wryly. "Fortunately for mages with more skill than they have coin, like me. Otherwise every spell comes out of my own pockets, which are light enough, already."

"Why become a mage, then?" Viren knew most mages weren't rich—not even the mine scryer took collecting her gold for granted—but there was no sense in work that cost more than it brought in. Not unless it somehow paid out the difference in the future, but even that was like digging past good iron hoping to hit silver.

“Never was cut out to be a farmer.” Luca’s tone was light, but his mouth twisted slightly. “My parents wouldn’t hear of me doing anything else, so I got desperate. I didn't set out thinking I'd learn magic, but I convinced a mage who came through my village to take me with her—just to get away. Haven’t seen home or them since.

"Funny how things turn out—I'd planned to ditch her a few towns over and make for Berylgarten, but then she started teaching me, and I loved it. I can't imagine doing anything else, now." He smiled again, glancing sidelong at Viren. “Looking back, I suppose I always wanted something more. Something special. Know what I mean?”

Viren thought he might. He was clever—everyone said so. He'd read everything he'd ever gotten his hands on, most of it more than once. Some of it he even understood. Had he been born to a family with a bit of money, or even just a little closer to the capital, he might have been sent there to apprentice with a cleric or scholar.

Here, there were no such options. The herbalist had a daughter she was already teaching her trade, and no need for a second student. The schoolteacher, who'd provided Viren with books out of his own wages for years, was nonetheless assigned by the crown and would eventually be replaced the same way—with someone educated far away, who’d gotten chances Viren never would.

Here, he’d never be anything more than a miner or a smelter. Maybe a foreman, one day, at best.

The other choice was to enlist. Some of the older town youths counted the days until the recruiters arrived, training their bodies in hopes of being allowed on the wagon headed for one of the far-away training camps, but Viren had never found it appealing. To be honed into an obedient weapon and spill blood for crown and kingdom, hoping he survived long enough to collect a pension at the end of it—spend his life going where he was bid, doing what he was told, fighting who he was ordered. As humble as a miner's life might be, at least he could choose which rocks to break.

There was no shame in mining. His home was an honest town of honest people, doing honest work—important work, for the good of Katolis. They coaxed iron from the ground and wrung it into the raw steel that would become swords and helmets and breastplates to defend their sons and daughters, whether at the border or sleeping peacefully in their beds. They gave their labor until their backs were stooped and twisted, their hands scarred into gnarled lumps, and their last breaths wheezed from lungs choked with soot and dust.

Some part of him, kept smothered into unnoticed silence for years, now screamed in rebellion at the thought. He wanted more. He wanted to be more than a nameless son of the town he'd never been further than half a day's walk from, digging the same rocks as his father and grandfather, for a new king fighting the same war.

He'd never thought about being a mage. He'd never met a mage that made it seem like something worth being. Something he could be. But now—

Viren realized suddenly that Luca was watching him. "Looks like you're thinking some deep thoughts, kid," he said, snapping an apple ring in two and sandwiching the last bit of cheese between the halves before popping it in his mouth.

"Maybe," Viren hedged. He looked down at his hands resting on his knees. "Was magic very hard to learn?"

"Not hard at all." Luca grinned. "You don't need to be special—anyone can do it. Takes a certain kind of mind to get good at it, though. You have to be sharp, curious and creative. Confident. Stubborn.

"Some quit when it gets hard, or frightening. They're who you see most often in these parts—the ones who never learn more than a handful of simple spells, then parade around towns like this one lording over people and taking their money." His face twisted again, in contempt or anger. "They limit themselves, usually because they're scared. If you want real power, you have to be willing to do whatever it takes."

It made sense to Viren. More effort and bigger risk nearly always meant a better reward. Iron could be easily dug from open pits, under the sun—but it was poor stuff, good for nails and little else, even after refining. The purest veins were underground, down in the darkness where the earth closed in around you like a fist. People had died, seeking iron good enough to make Katolian steel.

"Are there a lot of mages out there? Not many come this far south."

Luca scratched his jaw, thinking. “I know of a couple dozen here in Katolis, give or take. Most of them are small-time and keep closer to the border, where it's easier to get Xadian materials. Weeping Bay has you a bit cut off here, unfortunately." He shrugged. "I hear there are a lot more in Neolandia, or Evenere. That’s why I'm pointed that way. I want to find a better teacher—my old one was okay, but I learned all I could from her pretty quickly."

“Who’s the best?" Viren sounded a little too interested, even to himself. He looked away. "I mean, if you could learn from anyone at all.”

It wasn't as if he'd be running off to learn magic any time soon. Or ever. Probably. But if he were—there was no point in learning from a teacher who wasn't any good.

“Well, both Neolandia and Evenere have what they call high mages—advisors to the crown itself on everything related to magic. They’d know more about it than anyone. Probably cast spells I’ve never even heard of just to warm their tea.”

Viren’s face fell. Evenere was already far away, and Neolandia might as well have been the moon. It would probably be easier to go to Xadia and learn magic from an elf.

“Katolis hasn't had a high mage in years,” Luca continued, seeing his disappointment, “but here, the best is probably old Kpp’Ar.”

“Kpp’Ar,” Viren repeated, fumbling the odd name in his mouth. He tried again, then gave up before he could embarrass himself further. “Why not ask him to teach you?”

Luca barked a laugh. “Oh, he doesn’t take students. Never has, according to rumor. I suppose I could track him down on my way through the capital and ask, but I'd be wasting my time."

"I thought you said mages had to be stubborn?"

"Maybe so, but from what I hear, even a mountain would have trouble being more stubborn than Kpp'Ar." Luca shook his head. "He's an odd one, by all accounts. Even among mages."

Viren frowned. "You'll go all the way to Evenere, then? Just like that?"

"Sure. It's only a couple days to the capital on foot. Maybe three, if you take your time about it. Plenty of trade goes to Evenere, so it shouldn't be much problem to find someone willing to take me on as a passenger in exchange for loading and unloading crates or other labor." Luca leaned back on his hands, tilting his head up to catch the sun trickling through the cover of the tree stretched overhead. "Might even ask around to see if anyone has work for a mage. The crown doesn't like too many mages idling around in the city for too long, but plenty of people still need magic—maybe I'll find someone who will pay for it while I'm there. Several someones, with any luck."

He shrugged, looking back toward Viren. "Either way, it'll be just a wagon ride with some merchant to the port, and then a boat through the isles to Evenere."

Viren tried to imagine it. He'd never seen the capital, much less the sea. He suddenly wanted to. He wanted to learn, to know real magic—the kind that could do something more than just lift blight from a field or proof wooden walls against fire. The kind that really made a difference, doing things that were otherwise impossible, the way it did in old stories of the early kingdoms. He hadn't known there was magic like that still in the world, and now he wanted it like a man entombed in the earth wanted light and air.

"Take me with you!" he blurted out. "I'm almost done with my schooling—I read and write better than most of the grown-ups, already. You could teach me, easy. I wouldn't be any trouble. I don't even eat much."

His face heated at his own impulsivity. It was a foolish request, and he knew it. He was a child, with nothing of value to offer, asking a total stranger to take him on as a burden—as much as he wanted to believe he could carry his own weight, he was well aware that he was just another mouth to feed, who would move slower and tire faster than a grown man.

He also already knew from Luca's face what the answer would be.

"I believe you. It's obvious you're both smart and dedicated, Viren," Luca said, not unkindly, "and I wish I could take you with me. But you deserve someone who can teach you properly. I don't know enough for that, yet." He looked down at his feet. "And while it may be fine for me to miss a few meals, or sneak into someone's barn to sleep out of the rain and then get chased out in the morning—that's not a life I feel right about bringing a kid into, but I wouldn't be able to provide any better. To tell the truth, I'd be trying to sleep on near two days' empty stomach tonight, if it weren't for your kindness."

"It was no trouble," Viren said automatically, ducking his head a bit in embarrassment.

"Yeah," Luca replied, in a tone that said he knew what it meant to feed a stranger in a town like Viren's, but also that any further display of gratitude would be an affront to his pride. "Hey, I tell you what—"

He unbuckled the book from his side. This close, Viren could see how smooth the leather was in places, polished like glass from the hands of dozens of owners over what must have been decades, at least. Luca flipped deftly through its pages, the edges yellowed with age but still butter-soft, until he reached a point a bit more than a third of the way through its thickness. Then, bracing it on the low stone wall, he pulled a slim knife from his boot and set it to the book's spine between the pages marked by his fingers.

Viren's eyes widened. "W-wait—!"

He winced as the knife slid smoothly through the binding, snagging only briefly on the heavy stitching that held the pages together. The book fell into two pieces in Luca's hands, and he held out the thinner, front section to Viren. "Here. This will get you started—I know that part well enough, already."

Viren stared at him, his eyes darting between the mutilated book and Luca's face. The book was old, and well-made, and magic—there could be no doubt it was also valuable beyond comprehension. "I don't have—I couldn't possibly take something like that!" he protested.

"Not even in exchange for the meal?" Seeing Viren's expression harden stubbornly, Luca rolled his eyes. "Then call it a loan, if you like. Catch up to me in Evenere, and you can give it back."

He waggled the chunk of book insistently, until Viren slowly reached out and took it. He held it carefully, afraid to wrinkle the exposed pages. "I'll take good care of it," he said seriously. "I promise!"

"Good. I'll see you there, then." Luca bumped his fist gently against Viren's shoulder. "There's probably a spell in one of these halves that'll serve to stitch it back up again. We can learn it together."

Viren nodded, suddenly unable to speak.

Luca craned his neck, looking at the sky to assess the position of the sun. "I'd better be moving on, if I want to get up Mount Kalik before nightfall." He shook out the napkin and folded it neatly, handing it back to Viren. He bent to rummage in his pack, pulling out a rolled-up oilcloth blanket and cutting a rectangle out from one corner with his knife. Wrapping his half of the split book in the protective cover, he returned it to its buckles at his hip and tightened them firmly around its reduced thickness. The knife disappeared back into his boot.

Viren stood when he did, watching as he stretched before swinging his pack onto his back and settling it on his shoulders. He headed across the square, then turned and pointed at Viren. "Evenere, yeah? Don't keep me waiting!"

A grin broke across Viren's face, and he waved. "I won't!" he called back.

Luca raised a hand in farewell, then turned again and started down the street that led west, out of the town and into the stretch of farmland claimed from the forests that spilled down the mountainside. Viren watched until he was out of sight, holding the book carefully to his chest.

He went home more slowly this time, but not by much—mostly to avoid jostling the book too much. He leaned against the door after closing it behind him, staring at nothing as his mind raced. There was some time before he had to start preparations for supper. He looked down at the book, running a hand over the smooth cover before thumbing gently through the pages. The margins were littered with notes inked in a variety of hands, some so faded as to be barely legible, others recent and clear. He brushed his fingertips across them, smiling.

Grabbing a stylus and the pot of ink from his mother's small desk, he dragged a stool to the larger table where they ate. Perched there with the book set in front of him, he inked the stylus and held it in his mouth as he carefully pressed open the cover. In an open space in one corner, he wrote Kypar, Katolis City as neatly as he could. He drew a small star next to the note, to mark it as important, then frowned and squeezed in a question mark beside the name. He'd never heard one like it, and had no idea how it ought to be spelled.

Waiting for the ink to dry, he considered his next steps. His best bet would be to start working the bins where those too young, too old, or with bodies not suited for the mines separated rocks with iron ore from those without it—the pay was low but steady, and if he quit school, he'd be able to work enough to contribute some of his wages to the household and save a bit for himself. He wouldn't need all that much. Just enough to get to the capital and stay for a few days. Just long enough to convince this Kpp'Ar he would be a worthy student.

And if he couldn't—he chewed the end of the stylus absently, thinking. There was no sense in getting worked up over the possibility of failure. He'd just have to cross that bridge if it appeared in front of him.

He turned the spellbook to the first page, and began to read.

[kradogsrats]

okay idk what kind of oc concepts other people start from but I feel like I’ve probably jumped some manner of shark with “she's Katolis's friendly local sex therapist and kink educator”

[kradogsrats]

Most of the ingredients in chebe powder seem to be from dry or dry-ish tropical areas with rocky soil and some elevation, so the equivalent would probably regions of Neolandia like the southwest, which looks to have some hills, or the areas where it meets Duren and Del Bar, which are probably savanna-like as they transition to woodland.

If you wanted to make it more of a broad human thing instead of being from a single region, you could probably get away with spreading the ingredients out—the main ones from southern Neolandia and western or northern Duren, and then various aromatic resins or seeds from across the other kingdoms.

Working on a tdp fic, where would chebe powder come from in the human realms ? Neolandia or Duren ?

@kradogsrats this is the kind of questions you are into, isn't it ?

[kradogsrats]

absolutely no one:

me: oh hey there’s nothing stopping me from taking that Katolian inventor npc from ToX, plonking him down in Neolandia with Claudia and Tressal, and having him invent firearms in the NCNE-verse’s

[kradogsrats]

I couldn’t work it into the fic but I would like it to be known that once Callum is old enough to go down to the city “alone” (i.e. with a guard) to hang out with Soren, Sarai keeps sending the same hand-selected guards because she’s low-key trying to set Lissa up with them

[kradogsrats]

anyway since we got no additional Puzzle House info I can go back to writing my Viren and Kpp’Ar fic unburdened by any kind of canon whatsoever

[kradogsrats]

unexpected side effect of “kim’dael and aditi, TDP’s official most passionate barely-subtextual D/s enemy lesbians” is that I now feel ZERO percent guilty about my current tooth-rotting Kpp’Ar/Viren fluff procrastination sink

somehow with every extremely self-indulgent fic I write, my next idea manages to be even more self-indulgent

[kradogsrats]

Logic-brain: Why do you write so many fancy parties happening during Harrow’s father’s reign? It doesn't make any—

Emotion-brain, grabbing it by the throat and shoving it up against the wall: Shut the fuck up or I swear to god I will write a goddamn masquerade ball

[kradogsrats]

today in “completely unburdened by canon,” not me making up a Del Barian folktale that’s half Koschei the Deathless and half a disguised list of materials for Aaravos’s ritual

[kradogsrats]

intellectually I know that Puzzle House will only disappoint me if I continue to imagine Kpp’Ar’s house as architecturally the Winchester Mystery House, supernaturally the House of Leaves, and thematically the House of Usher

but emotionally shut up I do what I want

[kradogsrats]

today in “neither god nor Wonderstorm can stop me,” some Kpp’Ar headcanons:

There is no formal Dark mage society, guild, or school in any of the five kingdoms--but there are certain traditions that are considered both universal and sacrosanct, tracing unbroken across the art’s thousand-year history.

One of these is the obligation to train a new mage, as you were trained, and ensure the continuation of the magic that was humanity’s salvation. The only reason this can’t be considered a true requirement for a Dark mage is that technically there’s no recognized authority to enforce it.

Most mages have fully trained a protege by the time they’re Kpp’Ar’s age, which is one of the (many) reasons they tend to think he’s a little... off.

Viren is determined to learn from the best, so after Kpp’Ar’s initial refusal to train him, he sits outside on the steps of the house and only leaves at nightfall. He stays in a cheap, run-down hostel on the edge of the city--because the city guard frowns on sleeping in the street--and is back at sunrise. He does this for a solid eight days.

On the ninth day, when he’s starting to think about what he’ll do when his dwindling supply of food and coin runs out, Kpp’Ar slams opens the door and barks, “Why are you lazing about out here, boy? I need those idle hands!” Viren spends the rest of the day chopping, peeling, grinding, and memorizing the distinguishing features of several important Xadian root plants. He doesn’t return to the hostel when night falls.

Kpp’Ar always assumed he’d never have an apprentice. Instead, his appeal to the obligation of legacy is a sprawling, unfinished encyclopedia. He meticulously records every reagent he knows and its properties, every spell, every enchantment. Every step of every experiment, every detail of the result. Compiling and organizing barely half of it has been the work of a thousand sleepless nights, and the notes to review and sort grow every day.

But it’s all he can do--he knows how he is, how other people are, and the vast, unbridgeable gap between the two. Most hopeful students, mercifully, leave after a single denial. After having seen his strangeness for themselves, they are relieved to go on to other, more able teachers.

But Viren stayed. Kpp’Ar does his best to honor that.

When the depth of his failure finally becomes clear, the encyclopedia is the first thing to burn.