Dream II - Chapter 11 (Patreon)

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Race: Saurian

Bloodline Powers: Strength, Rending, Emberbreath
Greater Mysteries: Fire (Noble) 3, Wind (Noble) 1
Lesser Mysteries: Heat 4, Oxygen 4, Embers 4, Pressure 4, Current/Flow 4

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Samazzar let his eyes close, instead turning to his mastery of wind to perceive the world.  His clawed toes scraped against the slate shingles of the roof.  Fifty paces to his right, Takkla was creeping around a smokestack slowly approaching a hunched silhouette perched on the lip of the building.

A cart rumbled down the street below, scattering Sam’s attention.  Suddenly, rather than a clear view of Vereton’s rooftops, the world became a blurry sketch of outlines in a sphere around him.  He could ‘see’ everything that the wind touched, and there simply wasn’t any way for his brain to process all of that input.

Several shaky breaths later, and he had narrowed his ‘vision’ once again.  Sam was ‘only’ accepting input in a hundred and fifty foot hemisphere around him.  The breeze rustled past him, helping clear his mind as he tracked it without a second thought.

On the other rooftop, Takkla leapt toward the shape she had been stalking.  It burst into the air to escape her, a flash of wings and feathers as the child sized bird flapped toward freedom.

Takkla’s response was immediate.  Bars of condensed wind, air under so much pressure that it might as well be solid, sprung from her back, forming the ghostly wings he’d seen her grow hundreds of times.  She jumped after her quarry, her wings closing the gap between the two of them.  Then she tossed a weighted net over the bird, trapping its wings to its side.

The bird tumbled to the street below, and Takkla let herself fall as well, flapping her wings a second time as she dropped to slow her dissent.  Seconds later, she was out of Samazzar’s intentionally limited sight and he returned to his own hunt.

It had been three weeks since his return to the city.  The flame garnets more than paid for all outstanding tuition, and at Rose’s suggestion, the three siblings had sought out lower paying but more regular work in the city that suited the mysteries that they were pursuing.

Takkla had quickly found work hunting the pretty songbirds and falcons that dwelt among Vereton’s twisting maze of roofs and chimneys.  It didn’t take Dussok all that much more time to secure employment with a magical smith, a practitioner of the mystery of metal.  The two of them had struck up a fast friendship with Dussok working the forge, maintaining the heat at a magically constant level while his employer wove steel into breathtaking works of art.  There was even some talk about Dussok learning a little of the uncommon mystery of metal, strictly off the books of course.

As for Samazzar?  Pothas had him splitting time working with both of his siblings in between his lessons.  He refined his knowledge of air by hopping from rooftop to rooftop, tracking agile songbirds with his mind as they darted away from him with impossible speed.  Then, on his other days he joined Dussok, thrusting his arms directly into the forge to help separate impurities from the molten metals as they were being combined into their final forms.

His head snapped to the right.  The wind flowed over the gutters of a nearby home, deviating slightly from its course as it traveled over an unexplained bump.

Sam opened his eyes to find himself looking at a small songbird sitting in a nest made of mud and twigs.  The top of its head was crimson, just a flash of color to contrast with a deep, indigo body that somehow managed to blend into the surrounding shingles despite its brilliance.

A grin crept across his face as Samazzar slowly backed away from the edge of the roof, slinking back slowly before he spun and hurried away in a half crouch.  Once he felt he was far enough away from his quarry, Sam stood up.  He glanced both ways before taking a running start and throwing himself into the air.

Wind whistled past him, carrying the sounds and smells of the busy city as Samazzar sailed across the street.  He had intentionally picked a second story building to jump to, hoping that the extra altitude would help make up for absent wings.

His shins slammed into the side of the roof, bruising instantly and jerking Sam face first toward the uneven, stone surface.  He caught himself on his elbows and forearms, wincing as the slate shattered under his impact.  With a grimace, he rolled over onto his back, reaching down to rub the dull pain in his legs.

Moments later the grin returned as his wind sense found the bird once more.  Long accustomed to the loud noises of commerce, the songbird barely even noticed Samazzar’s landing.

The saurian rolled back to his hands and knees, pushing himself back up into a half crouch.  He glanced back at his earlier perch and nodded to himself.  Sam’s bloodline abilities might not be as fancy as Takkla’s wings, but the added strength was nothing to sneeze at.  Even with the allowance of the extra story, the street was almost twenty paces across.

Samazzar reached into his satchel, pulling out a double handful of fine mist netting, weighed down at the edges by smooth river pebbles.  Takkla may have been able to get away with heavier equipment on a dawn hawk, but songbirds required a lighter touch.

He closed his eyes once again, relying on the wind as he snuck closer.  One of the beauties of the mystery was the way air bent and flowed around every corner.  It was easy for Samazzar to conceal his approach behind chimneys and other obstructions on the roof, all the while keeping track of the resting bird despite his inability to see it clearly.

Finally, after climbing up a level and creeping at an agonizing pace for almost ten minutes, he was a scant five paces from the animal, face down on the shingles just before they angled downward in order to clear rain and snow.  It couldn’t see him over the angle, or if it could it was too placid to care about the large lizard shimmying toward it.

Samazzar breathed out, locking the entirety of his will on the mystery of air.  One by one he phased out variables he didn’t need.  The street below.  The sky above.  What was occurring to his left and right.  All that mattered was the gentle flow of the breeze.

He felt the gust coming seconds before it happened.  Heat from the sun on the grey stone rooftops had warmed the air behind him, causing it to swirl and send a ripple through the city.  The gust wasn’t strong, enough to rustle a human’s hair and tug at their clothes, but nothing more,

It was enough.  Sam bit his lip, breath catching in his throat as he frantically calculated its speed, force and trajectory.  At the last moment, he gently tossed the shimmering mist net straight up.

The wind caught it, dragging it forward a pace at a time as the fine, light webbing fluttered downward.  Then the stones clattered to the rooftop, caging in the songbird that suddenly chirped in alarm as it realized its predicament.  It tried to take off, blue wings flapping twice only to find itself wrapped inextricably in the net.

Samazzar jumped to his feet, skidding down the decline.  His throw hadn’t been perfect.  He was nowhere near as talented as Takkla, but the two pace diameter of the net was more than enough to make up for his shaky skill.

He snatched up the net by its weights.  The bird went wild, flapping its tiny wings ineffectually as it sought to escape.  Sam cooed at the bird, curling the net around his wrist as he slowly drew it closer to him.

Whether the bird ran out of energy, or Samazzar managed to calm it, the cause barely mattered.  After ten or so seconds it quieted, shivering silently in Sam’s grip.  He whispered a couple more nonsense words of encouragement to the small animal before switching the net to his left hand.

Samazzar reached down, digging his right claw into the side of the roof before swinging himself downward.  Sam grunted as his weight pulled at his shoulder, and he dangled for a second before dropping himself the story and a half to the street below.

Vereton’s citizens glanced at him once or twice, but most paid him no mind after his appearance.  Although saurians weren’t common, Samazzar had quickly learned that every level of the city was full of life.  Between chimney sweeps, lookouts for any number of minor gangs, and resource gatherers like Sam, the chimneys were almost as full of activity and enterprise as the sewers or the alleys.  Mostly, he was just glad that Pothas hadn’t found a reason to send him into the sewers.  Yet.

The bird struggled once in his hand, and Samazzar absently reached over with his free hand to stroke the delicate animal behind its neck before breaking into a jog.  He’d only lived in the city for a couple of months, and a significant portion of that time was spent in the field gathering resources, but already it felt like a lifetime.

A couple of the citizens gave him suspicious or dirty looks, but he didn’t let it slow him down.  Barely twenty minutes later, he was back at the gates to the Vereton Academy.  A quick wave to the guards, and Sam was back inside, en route to Pothas tower.

He made his way through the hallways and spiraling staircases, slowing to a stop outside of Rose’s office.  The door was closed, but a small hole barely the size of Samazzar’s pinky was drilled through the thick wood.  After his second lesson with Pothas, his master had explained to him that the holes were used as courtesies for other wind practitioners, letting them sense whether the room’s occupants were busy or not from afar.  Of course, any magic user with a sufficient level of experience could simply block the holes with walls of compressed air to maintain their privacy, but finding such a block was an answer in and of itself.

Samazzar reached out with his mind, following the flow of mysteries into the office.  Inside, he could feel a vortex of intense pressure and wind spinning in a tight circle near the center of the room.  The swirling waves of oxygen and pressure disrupted his senses, Samazzar didn’t have enough sensitivity with wind yet beyond that.

Still, busy was busy.  He lowered himself into a crouch outside the door to wait.  The bird stirred in his grasp once or twice, but more gently cooing from Sam calmed it.  Minutes began to blend together, and almost a half hour after he arrived, the miniature tornado faded away, leaving two figures and an unnaturally tidy room.

The door opened on its own and Percival staggered out, his hair and clothes ripped and disheveled.  Sam nodded at the boy and received an inscrutable look in return before the other apprentice wandered off down the hallway.

“Sam.”  Rose’s voice was calm and unhurried as she acknowledged him from inside her office.

He sprang to his feet, cradling the bird between his hands as he walked into her office.  It was much smaller than Pothas’ but everything was immaculate.  An entire wall was covered in carefully organized wire cages of increasing size.  The smallest held bugs such as beetles and dragonflies, but most contained dozens if not hundreds of birds.

They hopped back and forth, fluttering soundlessly about their enclosures.  Samazzar’s eyes kept flickering from the cages to where Rose sat at her desk, jotting down notes in a small bound book.

He opened his mouth to ask a question, only for Rose to cut him off without looking up.

“I’m maintaining a wind barrier as an exercise in control.  Pothas suggested that I practice by erecting two walls of high pressure air and sapping the area between them of all wind.  Amongst other things, the result eliminates all sound.  I’ve found the exercise fascinating.”

Samazzar reached out with his senses, touching Rose’s barrier.  Her control over the mystery was so precise that it was almost invisible to his magical sight.  Without the magus alerting him, Sam wouldn’t have even realized that the self contained walls of wind existed.

Nothing from the inside touched or interacted with the outside world.  Rose was almost assuredly using her magic to circulate the wind in the rest of the room naturally, creating the illusion that the soundproof magic never existed.

She scrawled one last note with her quill before setting it down and looking up.  Rose’s single eye glanced over him once before she nodded in satisfaction.

“A ruby crested warbler,” she noted.  “A rare and agile bird.  One that Pothas set a fifteen parros bounty on.  More importantly-”

She paused, flipping backward a couple pages in her book as if checking her notes.

“I completed the collection,” Samazzar supplied happily.  “A songbird, a swallow, a raptor, an owl, and a river bird.”

Rose nodded slowly before snapping the notebook shut.  She flashed him a brief smile.

“I suppose you’ll want your wind baptism then,” Rose said, opening up a drawer in her desk and taking out a withered brown sphere, roughly the size of an apple.  “And yes, we will be reusing the wind bladder you provided Pothas when he first encountered you.  It still has plenty of energy left in it, and a second baptism isn’t particularly magic intensive.”

She stood up, gesturing toward the silent aviary.  The door on one of the cages popped open.  Suddenly a cacophony of chirping and shuffling erupted from the wall full of imprisoned animals.

He walked over to the open enclosure, opening it with his right hand before pushing the netting in his left into the cage.  Quickly he untangled the warbler before releasing it and latching the door shut.

By the time he turned back around, Rose had rolled out a large animal skin.  She motioned for Sam to join her, and only a minute or so later he found himself standing alone, bladder in hand against the far wall, pelt at his feet.

“Ready Sam?”  She asked.  When he nodded, Rose continued.

“Good, now hold up the bladder and open your senses.  Pothas says you’re ready, and I’m inclined to agree with him, but whether or not you can capitalize on the baptism is up to you.”

Samazzar licked his lips before replying.

“I’m as ready as I’m going to be.”

Rose nodded back before closing her eye.  Almost immediately, he felt the wind around him beginning to swirl in a circle, tugging at his scales.

Sam abandoned his senses, focusing on his perception of the mystery of wind.  Pressure built around him, spinning faster and faster under Rose’s masterful control until it sounded like a waterfall, a constant swell of uncontrollable audio static.

A tendril of wind, almost as solid as the floor beneath his feet, snaked out from the tornado.  It slipped between his hands, punching into the air bladder and shattering the dry, leathery covering of the organ.

The wind pulsed once, and then the world exploded around Samazzar as the bladder shattered.  His hands were blown wide, and Sam was thrown backward, impacting on the wall of the cyclone behind him.

It rebuffed him, forcing Sam back into the maelstrom of raw energy.  He didn’t even manage to hit the ground, instead finding himself suspended in a sphere of rampaging wind.  Above and below him, the miniature tornado curled into a ball around him.

The last of the air bladder dissolved into dust with a banshee’s scream.  Samazzar could feel streaks of ice cold spreading from his eyes and ears.  He wasn’t sure whether he was crying or bleeding, and he didn’t have any time to investigate the question.

Pressure spiked and plummeted, buffeting and spinning him.  Nausea threatened him, but the thought of throwing up in the enclosed space allowed Sam to force the bile down.

Then everything snapped into focus.

Time slowed and the wind ground to treacle crawl.  Samazzar felt like he could reach out with a hand and touch it, but he didn’t need to.

Information flowed into him.  Each breath seemed to fill Sam with knowledge, and each exhale solidified his understanding.

The wind calmed around him, but Samazzar didn’t notice.  Instead he sat perfectly still, his magical sight turned inward as he monitored the shallow rise and fall of his own chest.  Tracing flow and circulation of oxygen into and through his body.

Finally, he opened his eyes.

It was dark, and for some reason he couldn’t sense anything through the mystery of wind.  He began to panic, only to reach out with heat and find Rose glowing a dull orange, a bare five paces from him.

Slowly, he stood up, head tapping into a hard, leathery substance.  It moved to the side, letting light pour down on him.

The animal pelt he had been standing on peeled away from Samazzar, flopping back to the ground and returning him to Rose’s office.  The grey haired woman squinted at him, a slight sheen of sweat on her forehead and her chest moving visibly as she struggled for breath.

She nodded with approval.

“Good Sam,” Rose said, satisfaction obvious in her voice.  “I will let Master Pothas know and prepare another list of birds for you to capture.  So far you have exceeded his lofty expectations.  I hope you can keep up the pace.”