This whole time, I’d been thinking of the barrier as something of a myth. The village obviously functioned fine without a barrier and had been for years. Based on Father’s story, I’d made some assumptions about local history that it seemed were incorrect.
It didn’t take more than a glance to confirm that this wa...
2023-12-07 12:42:50 +0000 UTC View PostI started by doing a quick lap around the manor. There were six alarm wards and two more trapped doors, both of which I marked for further investigation. I’d come back and see what was behind them as soon as I finished my initial circuit.
The manor was, for the most part, a big, long rectangle made up of connected roo...
2023-12-06 12:45:27 +0000 UTC View PostIt was the moment of truth. I’d snuck down the hallway, made sure my mana core was topped off, checked every single doorway for wards and traps, removed yet another paralysis trap on the handle, and now was standing on my toes with a finger hooked around the handle, ready to turn it. If I was right, Noctra was sleeping not ...
2023-12-06 02:13:14 +0000 UTC View PostI did not have the luxury to explore all night. If nothing else, it was significantly darker inside the manor than it had been outside, requiring me to expend a steady stream of mana to maintain sharpened senses just so I could see. I had a decent idea of where I needed to go already, thanks to my scrying efforts, but it was ...
2023-12-05 12:38:44 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: Keiran is currently number 1 on Rising Stars! I don't know how long I'll hold it, but we're celebrating while we can. Bonus chapter!
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I had never been near Noctra’s manor, and my first impression was that it was far ...
2023-12-04 17:29:38 +0000 UTC View PostWe were about a mile from the village when Mother abruptly stopped in place. Father, who’d been walking next to her, glanced over and halted as well. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Dusk was upon us and our shadows stretched out before us, courtesy of the setting sun at our backs. My own shadow was engulfed by Nermet...
2023-12-04 12:32:14 +0000 UTC View PostMy first impression of a dust jackal was that it looked like a dog with stork legs that were far too long for its body. It had dark brown earthy-colored fur on its back, and lighter dusty brown, almost yellow patterns on its legs and face. Everything about it was squished, like it had been pressed flat. Its muzzle was long an...
2023-12-04 03:05:14 +0000 UTC View Post“I don’t want to do this,” Father said.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Mother told him.
“You can do it, Dad. You practiced a lot,” Senica added.
He turned to look at me. I shrugged and gestured for him to get going. We were going to need at least three hours to travel, probably more considering...
2023-12-03 13:12:01 +0000 UTC View Post“Raro aevinta temin,” Father said in time with the mana swirling through him.
“No. Not temin. Temun,” I corrected.
“Does it matter? You said the words were just for the tempo?”
“Not just for the tempo, and while you can get away with saying the wrong runes now, being ...
2023-12-02 15:57:01 +0000 UTC View PostIt took me a second to get back into the rhythm of things, and even though I’d given this speech many, many times in my past life, it suddenly felt awkward to be doing it again now. But I’d given magical lectures under worse conditions, and I could do it again now.
“Inscription is similar to enchanting, except tha...
2023-12-02 12:53:51 +0000 UTC View PostI waited for Father to finish congratulating Senica on her new bracelet before I stood up. None of us were exactly getting any privacy here, but then again, it wasn’t like we’d had a lot back home either. It was a miracle I’d managed to be born at all, once I thought about it. Then again, considering that most huts held...
2023-12-02 00:22:05 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: This is a bonus chapter for hitting the 250 new patrons milestone! This one seriously couldn't have happened without all of you guys directly. Thank you so much for your support.
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The first thing I wanted to study was the wand I’d taken from Iskara. It wasn...
2023-12-01 13:37:38 +0000 UTC View PostIskara stared at my father, waiting for an answer. I could practically see the gears turning in her head, measuring, cataloguing, and assessing him. She took a step forward, then another.
“That’s far enough,” Father said, snapping her out of her funk.
“Hmm? Oh. Where was I?”
“A big mess,” Mothe...
2023-12-01 13:37:14 +0000 UTC View PostWhoever the person walking across the dry, dead earth was, they could obviously sense mana from a distance. It was impressive, in a way. Almost no one I’d met since awakening had that kind of skill at even the most basic level. From what I could piece together, Father had been considered something of a prodigy at working wi...
2023-12-01 13:36:58 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: This is a bonus chapter for hitting the 2500 follower milestone on Royal Road.
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The procedure to transfer control of Nermet to Father went surprisingly smoothly. I kept expecting something to go wrong, some flaw to reveal itself in Father’s mana core or some ...
2023-12-01 13:36:40 +0000 UTC View PostThe mana sniffer slowly picked its way up the face of the cliff. Considering just how bulky and thick-limbed it was, I was a bit surprised by how much agility it had on display. I wasn’t convinced that it was going to make it to the top, but if it made it to the halfway point before giving up, I was going to kill it.
...
2023-12-01 13:36:20 +0000 UTC View PostOnce Father’s mana was spinning as fast as he could get it to go, I started pulling mana through my own core and releasing it into the air. A basic storage crystal would have been better here since I could have shunted the mana directly into a cloud around Father, but it wasn’t worth breaking my mana crystal to replicate ...
2023-12-01 13:35:11 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: This is a bonus chapter for reaching the front page of Rising Stars. Boy, there are some harsh critics up there. Lots of bad ratings in the last day!
* * *
“I don’t understand,” Father said.
“Which part?” I asked.
“The why of it, mostly. Why ...
2023-12-01 13:34:47 +0000 UTC View PostBreaking the sleeping enchantment on my father took about a minute and a half. Noctra had poured far more mana than was necessary into it, and that ended up working against me as it had been used almost like a layer of blubber wrapped round the enchantment’s artificial mana core. What a waste. I could have used the extra ma...
2023-12-01 13:34:14 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's note: This is a bonus milestone chapter for reaching 1000 followers on Royal Road.
* * *
It took a bit more scrying to pinpoint exactly where the cart hauling my Father’s comatose body was at. One of the drawbacks with low-level scrying magic was that it wasn’t good a...
2023-12-01 13:33:56 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: Keiran is doing fantastic right now, but it is starting to stagnate on the Rising Stars list. If you haven't already I would appreciate if you took the time to visit the RR page (https://www.royalroad.co...
2023-12-01 13:33:37 +0000 UTC View PostThe hardest part of cleaning out the storage room was reaching the draw stones on the top shelves. There was a chair, but even standing on that, it was a struggle to get to the top two rows. I ended up climbing the shelf to sit on the top while I was accessing the uppermost row of draw stones. Sometime while I was working, th...
2023-11-30 12:50:30 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: This is a bonus milestone chapter released because 100 people have subscribed to my Patreon since Keiran went live on Friday.
* * *
I had less than twenty minutes to get some more mana into this crystal before the enchantme...
2023-11-29 12:45:54 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: Keiran broke into the top 1000 ranked stories on Royal Road. I'm posting a bonus chapter to celebrate the milestone!
* * *
First things first, I checked for more wards. It wouldn’t do to get caught in here after all. It o...
2023-11-28 12:41:06 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's note: This is a bonus milestone chapter for reaching 1000 followers on Royal Road.
* * *
The village didn’t really have a problem with theft despite the fact that none of the homes even had doors, let alone locks. One part was that people just didn’t have much worth s...
2023-11-27 12:50:10 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: Keiran is doing fantastic right now, but it is starting to stagnate on the Rising Stars list. If you haven't already I would appreciate if you took the time to visit the RR page (https://www.royalroad.co...
2023-11-25 16:16:07 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: Keiran has reached the top 500 ranked stories on Royal Road. I've posted a bonus chapter to celebrate the milestone.
* * *
Of all the things Father could do, I thought that bursting out laughing was probably the last thing ...
2023-11-24 13:04:08 +0000 UTC View PostDivination was a challenging field of magic. It wasn’t just about casting the spell. There was also the result to consider. Good divination spells parsed the information in a way that allowed a mage to experience it the same way we did everything else, with our senses. But sometimes what we saw wasn’t something that could...
2023-11-23 13:07:34 +0000 UTC View PostMages had a lot of tools, which could make it hard to know which one was best used to solve the problem at hand. There were a lot of factors to consider too, things like who and what the target is, whether it mattered if anyone knew they’d used magic, and whether the environment could bear the weight of their spells. Conjur...
2023-11-22 12:31:34 +0000 UTC View PostMy parents gave each other uneasy glances, but neither looked over in my direction. I was sure that was what they were thinking though, that my interference had drawn someone’s attention and it had gotten back to the governor himself. It was possible I’d overestimated how much additional mana we needed to pass our Testing...
2023-11-21 12:38:55 +0000 UTC View Post
