The Runic Artist

Nate listened as Deverell explained the information they had and what that meant for Nate.

“So, after carefully reviewing our own Class records as well as obtaining some information from the Enchanter’s Guild, we have determined that there isn’t a record of a Battle Enchanter Class or similar. That is not to say it doesn’t exist, but we’ve got no records of it. Showing up with an unheard of Class is worse than going with a rarer albeit known Class. As such, we want you to pretend to be a Runecaster,” Deverell explained, pausing as he waited for Nate’s reaction.

“That’s fine,” Nate responded. “What tier is it?”

“Epic,” Aisling supplied. “Your second Class should be Space Mage. It’s a Rare Class and not unheard of as well, even if it’s likely to cause some rumblings at the University. You’re likely to be approached by merchants and the nobility inquiring after your services once word gets around.”

As the Stormspear finished, she glanced at Deverell which seemed to be the sign for him to continue.

“Which it will. Word is going to get around. At the Royal University information is a commodity and everyone trades in it. Everyone. The students, the instructors, the staff, everyone. Assume anything you reveal is going to become, if not ‘common’ knowledge, at least information that will be sold or traded to anyone willing to pay for it. You both need to be careful in what you reveal,” Deverell explained, before turning back to Kiri. “For your Classes, we want you to masquerade as a Dagger Dancer for your Epic Class and a Spiritwalker for your Rare Class. The latter can explain your unusual abilities, including Soul Shift, as long as you don’t use it too much. Remember, even with some improvements, it should be no better than an Epic Skill so you might need to make it seem more costly or difficult to use.”

“Now, back to the subjects on offer. There is Combat, Skill Development, Spellforms, Enchanting, Crafting – which covers a number of disciplines, Tactics, Dungeon Knowledge, Monster Studies, Mana and Affinities, Concepts and Embodiment, Strategy, Economics… the list goes on. There are a number of more knowledge based subjects like History of Etrua, Politics and unsurprisingly, Art,” supplied Deverell, glancing at Nate at the end.

Nate just grinned back in response. Finding out that a bunch of rich nobles wanted to learn about creating and producing art wasn’t a surprise to him. It would be interesting to see who was taking the subject with him.

Aisling smiled at the reaction and glanced between them, “So, any ideas what subjects interest you both?”

Nate motioned for Kiri to go first and his best friend leaned forward excitedly, “Combat and Skill Development for sure. Concepts and Embodiment sounds good as well. Dungeon Knowledge, Monster Studies, and maybe Tactics? And also, I think, maybe Economics?”

“You should take Mana and Affinities as well,” suggested Deverell. “I never took it myself, but the higher grades of the subject start to delve into other energy types, which might be useful for you.”

Kiri nodded her agreement before all three turned to look at him.

“Same as Kiri, but I will probably drop Economics for Art and maybe Tactics for Enchanting. Eight subjects seems like a lot,” he replied.

“It is, but remember, once you’ve graded out of a subject, or have gone as high as you think you can in it, you can move onto something else. You’ve got four years to study there. Make the most of it,” Deverell explained.

When the two of them nodded, Deverell glanced at Aisling who stood.

“Well, I am glad that’s sorted out. I just wanted to say, I approve of your subject selections and think it shows that you’re taking this seriously, and also what incredible assets you will one day be for the Adventurer’s Guild. I’m proud of you. Both of you. Let me know if you need anything,” Aisling stated sternly, but he could almost feel the pride in them radiating off of her.

“Just a question,” Nate said softly, drawing three sets of eyes.

When Aisling nodded, he voiced the thought that he had been wondering about for a while now.

“Why aren’t you a Prefect?” he asked, continuing with his thoughts before anyone could answer. “After seeing what Allais and Raoult are like, I can’t help but think you’d make a better Prefect than they would. You always seem to put the Guild first, while they were willing to put their own interests first. And you seemed like a good Guildmaster out in Helmfirth, even if it was a bit below your umm, paygrade?” He wasn’t sure how well the last word had translated and he tried to be careful not to use terms from Earth that might not exist in whatever the language of Etrua was. He was getting better at the language without Divine Translation’s assistance, but he still used the spell most of the time.

Aisling sat back down for a moment, staring at Nate before she broke out into a smile, “It’s my own fault, really. I never put my name forward before. I believed my combat ability was more important to the Guild than my skills in management. Or talent development.” Her eyes flicked over all three of them, including Deverell in her final statement.

“But, having seen how the Guild has been run of late, I agree with you. Perhaps I would serve the Guild and its interests better by taking up a management role. By becoming a Prefect. It’s something I will take under consideration,” Aisling continued, before her eyes roamed back to Nate. “And Nate, thank you for your vote of confidence, and driving home Deverell’s own words on the matter.”

Nate just grinned. Aisling would make an excellent Prefect as far as he was concerned. She was a stickler for the Guild’s rules, but didn’t seem to care a whit about anyone else's. That might’ve been a bad thing, if the Guild was a terrible organisation, but so far he hadn’t seen any rules that he would consider evil or unfair.

The conversation wrapped up a couple of minutes later, as he gave them permission to spread the name of his ‘fake’ Class in any meetings with the Guild. With that handled he headed over to his room on his own. Kiri had instead left with Deverell to get in some combat practice before her date this evening with Coralie. Nate grinned as he had his own date, with some runes and sigils. Maybe if he got bored he’d go with Luc to the Den of Desire later. Some art might take his mind off the Fourth Hell and his recent misadventure anyway.

“Told ya, Boss,” whispered Frick in his mind. “Nothing like a brothel to ‘perk’ you up.”

He laughed, just shaking his head at his cheeky Familiar and headed up to his room. The small blue goblin was diligently working on using Conceptual Material to add the mana affinity and improve the tier of the new mana-gems they had created. Nate narrowed his eyes at his Familiar. He’d been well-behaved lately. Too well-behaved. The little shit was definitely up to something, he just didn’t know what. He suspected he’d find out soon though.

*************

Kiri grinned from ear to ear as she walked hand-in-hand with Coralie through the Merchant’s District towards the restaurant where they were going to have dinner. At first, their meeting in the Guild courtyard had been awkward, Coralie blushing a little and unable to meet her eyes even as she stood there looking stunning in a light blue dress that went down past her knees, white leather boots peeking out from beneath. But after she’d taken the lead in the conversation Coralie had quickly become more comfortable and the date had really taken off.

Despite her dainty appearance, it turned out Coralie was almost as much of a battle maniac as Kiri was and they talked through their best fights.

“So, you really think you could take Null?” Coralie asked, as she gazed up at Kiri. Kiri really liked that, enjoying the blonde girl's blue-eyed stare.

“Look, I am not saying it’s an easy win or anything like that, but his whole mana suppression or nullification or whatever it is, doesn’t seem to do much to internal mana and Skills. That’s most of my skillset,” Kiri explained. “And I didn’t see any regeneration skills from him. He’d wound me. Maybe even wound me a lot. But it’s a battle of attrition and I reckon I would have him beat in the end.”

She left out the part where she was confident her soul energy based skills were likely unaffected by his nullification aura.

“Okay then, I can see how maybe you could win… maybe!” Coralie agreed. “But I think maybe you’re underselling Null’s boosting skills. I don’t know if you saw his second one, but it might even rival Flash’s.”

“You sure you wouldn’t rather be on a date with Null?” Kiri teased, raising an eyebrow to take the sting out of the remark.

Coralie clearly understood and blushed a little, shaking her head slightly to the negative, “No, no. This is nice.”

A moment later the blonde ice mage continued, “What about Nate then? I admit I am a little sad I didn’t get to face him. The only Mage on Mage duel I got was against Karim and while he was competent, he wasn’t amazing. I really would have loved to challenge your teammate.”

“Are you asking me if I think you could beat Nate, or if I could beat him?” asked Kiri, a restaurant attendant guiding them up into the third story of the building. Tables were set up in such a way that each group was given relative privacy and a good view. Sitting down, Kiri shifted the chair around so they were seated side by side, facing out towards the harbour and a view of the sea beyond.

“Both, I think,” Coralie replied, finally answering the question as the waiter took their drink order and promptly vanished.

“I think the answer to both is…depends,” Kiri replied thoughtfully, taking Coralie’s hand and holding it in her lap.

“What would it depend on?” Coralie asked curiously.

“If he knew you were going to fight,” Kiri replied with a laugh.

She could see Coralie staring out at the sea thoughtfully, “Because of his enchanting, right? If he knew we would fight he would prepare something accordingly.”

With the new directions from Deverell and Aisling, and Nate’s own words before she went on her date, Kiri knew it wasn’t an issue explaining that Nate wasn’t enchanting things. She’d find out anyway at the University, since it sounded like their induction details, which included revealing their Classes, or at least, their ‘fake’ Classes, would basically be up for sale.

“It’s Runecasting, actually. Not Enchanting,” she said.

Coralie glanced up at her again and Kiri restrained the urge to kiss her. Not yet, take it slow, she thought.

“Should you be telling me that?” asked the ice mage.

“I was told it’ll likely become common knowledge after we start at the University. I checked with Nate anyway, after Dev explained what would happen after our induction, so it’s all good,” replied Kiri, her eyes moving away from Coralie as she looked around with her brow furrowed.

Something was off and she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

“Oh. Thank you for confiding in me. I suppose you said it depends for both of us, because if you can bring out something he doesn’t expect, like you did against me, you could win. But otherwise you’d lose as well?” Coralie asked.

“Pretty much,” Kiri responded, annoyed at getting distracted but unable to get past her sense of unease.

Thankfully, the waiter returned with drinks and took their order which was enough to get the conversation talking about food, their likes and dislikes and with the conversation flowing it was easy to forget about her unease.

Two drinks later and their food still hadn’t arrived but Kiri found she didn’t care as Coralie talked about growing up in the Capital while asking what it was like to grow up so far removed from civilization living out in Helmfirth. She seemed impressed that her Father had been a Royal Ranger and admitted that she was envious of the relationship that Kiri had with her parents. Coralie admitted she didn’t know who her own father was and that while her Mother had given her many advantages, she rarely had time for her daughter outside of teaching and training.

Kiri pulled their chairs a little closer, putting her arm around Coralie as they continued to talk, just enjoying each other’s company. Finally, after what felt like no time at all, mostly due to the enjoyable conversation, their food finally arrived. In the end they had decided to share a plate of fish and other seafood that the waiter had highly recommended. It was to be a new experience for Kiri, who had only ever eaten freshwater fish and had no idea what to expect from the sea creatures. The platter was laid down in front of them and Coralie smirked in amusement as Kiri goggled at the side of the fish, which she was confident was longer than her forearm and thicker than her toned biceps. Worse, the sense of unease had returned and she finally found the source as a notification went off in the corner of her vision even as the fish exploded and a blue goblin stepped out!

With arms raised high in triumph, Frick shouted to the world, “Let’s get Fricky!!” as he somehow created small fireworks from soul energy, exploding in a rainbow behind himself.

“You little shit!” Kiri yelled, slipping her arm off of her date and coating her hands in soul energy as she grabbed the little bastard of a spirit and started choking him. Coralie’s part-tinkling, part-mortified laugh floated into the night air from behind her as the other restaurant attendees looked on in horror.

*************

Nate stood up straight, looking off into the distance as he felt Frick getting attacked.

The man lying on the bed sat up looking concerned and simultaneously ruining his positioning, as the courtesan asked, “Is everything alright?”

Nate stared at the wall, judging the distance of his Familiar. When he realised roughly where the little bugger was he snorted and turned back to his painting.

“It’s nothing. Just thought I heard something. Could you try and lie back in the same position? I want to get the pose right,” Nate asked.

The courtesan did as asked, lying back down and assuming an almost identical position. After finding out Luc intended to return to the Den of Desire, he’d decided to accompany his mentor, if only for a bit of company. What he’d found was that Florence had used his painting to help attract some new customers, and her fellow courtesans had clamoured for him to do one for them. So far, he’d mostly done paintings of the female body. So, treating it as a learning experience, and since he was actually getting paid for it, he’d decided to branch out and further develop his skills by attempting the male form. Art was art, after all.

As he got back to painting he sent a mental message to his Familiar, “Serves you right, you little shit.”

The only response was cackling laughter interspersed with the sound of choking.