The back of Kalia’s knife scraped along the firestarting rod, showering the bed of kindling she had just made with orange sparks. As it started to smoke, she gathered the bed into a pile and gently blew on its base. Soon, flames sprouted from the pile like the growth of seedlings in springtime.

She fed the flames with larger and larger pieces of dry wood that she had gathered from around the old campsite, slowly building it big enough for the whole group to gather around.

 

For merchants and the mercenaries who guarded them, camping in ungoverned and elf-inhabited lands was a careful process. For each route there were dozens, if not hundreds of potential campgrounds dotted along their length, and each individual site had to be kept as inconspicuous as possible. The sites that were used most often would be checked by elves most often and therefore were the least safe to stay at.

 

The elfin races that inhabited this stretch of wild land were not particularly dangerous compared to certain others, so full blown attacks on guarded convoys were quite rare. It was far more likely that any group of elves in the area would use their innate gifts or knowledge of the land to slowly whittle away at them with traps, hit-and-run tactics, and small nighttime raids.

To counteract this, Kalia had to wait until dusk to light their campfire so as to mask the rising pillar of smoke it created under the cover of darkness. 

 

Since everything they did was in the name of avoiding confrontation, it had been months since Kalia had last genuinely fought to the death with another being. The vast majority of the fighting she did amounted to firing warning shots from her shortbow and chasing away the few elves brave enough to try to sneak into their camp. But while being a guild mercenary was indeed rather boring, anything livelier would either hamper her freedom or bring too much unwanted attention.

 

Kalia stepped away from the now-vigorous fire and flopped back onto her bedroll, gazing up at the fading orange sky. How much longer could she keep doing this?

 

She enjoyed guild contracted merc work. She enjoyed having a new city to explore every few weeks. She found the rumbling of wagons peaceful as she endlessly watched all kinds of different landscapes go by. She liked her party, and how she knew about each one of them as much as a family member.

And that was what made this all so difficult.

 

In a couple years, what would she be like? Would her vision fade? Would her back start to ache? Would she need help to stand up from a seat? Would her bones break like rotten wood when she got hurt?

Would she even remember her friends' names?

 

Kalia looked around the camp for something else to occupy her restless mind.

Angela and Codrin were out hunting.

Davy was chopping firewood just on the edge of camp, the crack of his axe reverberating across the clearing.

The two merchants; the middle aged one who hired them and the grumpy one who had yelled at her, were seated in one of the carriage driver's benches. They had some parchment laid out between them that they were pointing at as they discussed something boring.

Lastly, there was a final person seated in the rear of one of the carriages. He was a little taller than Kalia and looked to be much younger than her, which of course, meant that the two of them were about the same age. 

Kalia had been aware that they were to take on a passenger, but had yet to actually speak with them.

 

She approached his wagon quietly to see that his face was pointed downwards, buried in a large leatherbound book. With care not to disturb him, Kalia circled around to his behind and carefully perched herself on the spokes of one of the wagon's wheels. 

 

“Hey.” She spoke after a few moments of waiting to see if he would respond.

 

The young man let out a rather unflattering shriek and scrambled to the opposite side of the wagon, clutching both his book and the carriage’s walls like a cornered animal.

 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” He asked in an inquisitive tone that suggested he was actually looking for an answer.

 

Kalia shrugged.

“I should be asking the same question. Why’s someone as unobservant as you taking a trip through the wilds? The goblins will eat you alive if you’re not careful.”

The young man gulped.

“D- Don’t goblins cook their food?” He stammered out.

 

“They prefer too, but they ain’t picky. The ones at the bottom of the pecking order will gulp you down on the spot if it means they don’t have to give up their food to the top dogs.”

 

“Right…” He said, taking a few moments to compose and straighten himself out. “Well, what do you need?

 

Kalia recognized the man’s type: bookish and scatterbrained. Approaching him as directly as she was used to might leave him flustered and clueless on how to respond; so she had to go about him in a different way entirely.

 

With one hand, Kalia vaulted over the side of the carriage, coming to rest where the young man had been seated only moments prior. She pointed to the large book that he was now hugging defensively.

“I wanted to know what you were reading about.” She answered.

 

A few moments of silence passed between the two seated figures before the young man spoke once more.

“Um…Why?” He asked, clearly very suspicious of the woman who had just snuck up on him.

 

“Because I’m bored!” Kalia exclaimed. “And you’re the only one here who I know nothing about. We’re gonna be stuck together for a week, so we may as well get to know each other a bit.”

 

Kalia smiled as his eyes briefly fell lower on her body just like she knew they would. Given his type, the bulk of what little social life he had was with old scholars and other students just as reserved as he was. The closest I would regularly get to female companionship was glancing at girls awkwardly as they passed by the library window.

It was true that he was a low hanging fruit, but it wasn’t a fruit that Kalia got to eat very often.

 

“I m-mean, I don’t know how relevant it would be to you, but I guess I could show you a couple things from it since you’re so-“ 

 

“Good looking?” Kalia interrupted with what the young man was obviously thinking.

 

“INTERESTED!” The young man finished sharply, rather flustered.

 

Kalia chuckled, quite amused at what just a little bit of teasing could do to someone with such a low tolerance to it.

She then thrust a hand forward.

“Kalia Osmyl; traveler and small-time merc.” She introduced herself with a firm, reassuring voice.

 

A moment of consideration passed by the young man’s eyes before he too put his hand out and grasped her own, albeit not quite as firmly as Kalia did back.

“Thomas Dupoint, I’m a thaumaturgist working under Syer Dona Baluviche.”

 

“Oh!” Kalia exclaimed. “Isn’t that the old pretentious chick who bought a whole town a few years back? I think I’ve seen her name on a couple of our lengthier contracts.”

 

Thomas suddenly tensed up.

“Hey! That’s hardly a way to talk about a person, let alone someone like a Syer!” He scolded, an edge of assertiveness coming to his voice that was previously absent.

 

“Ok, ok. Sorry! I didn’t mean to step on your toes or anything. Just trying to get on your good side by bashing your boss a bit.” Kalia said, trying to dodge as much potential judgement from Thomas as possible.

 

After a few moments, the young man sighed and relaxed his shoulders a bit.

“Well to tell the truth, I’m actually a little relieved that you don’t like her. Sometimes the people I introduce myself to immediately start trying to butter me up in an attempt to join me under her employ.”

 

“Oh, I didn’t realize that working for a Syer was so special. I’m pretty sure I’ve picked up a couple of contracts from them in the past and they didn't really stand out from the others.” Kalia proclaimed.

 

Thomas shook his head.

“Nah, that’s different. Those were just requests placed through your agency for odd jobs. Syer Dona actually came to the apocrathy I used to work at and offered me a king's salary to enter her service right then and there. When I turned her down, she doubled her offer without giving it even a moment of thought. When I refused that one as well, my old boss fired me on the spot from that job so that I would be forced to accept her offer or face unemployment.” Thomas Explained.

 

“Wow… Sounds like she wanted you pretty badly then.” Kalia teased, to little effect.

“So what’s so crucial about you specifically then? No offense of course.”

 

“Yeah I know!” Thomas exclaimed suddenly. “Not only is my gift not even all that rare, but she doesn’t even have me doing anything with it! Half the time she just sends me on these lengthy fetch requests; and the other half I’m just left to my own devices!” He ranted loudly.

 

“Fuckin’ Syers, huh? Don’t suppose you know exactly how her gift works then?” Asked Kalia, leaning over the side of the wagon dangerously.

 

“Not really. She tells me that a Syer should never tell anyone about the specifics of their gifts. Says that most have blind spots or conditions that could easily be exploited to avoid their notice.” Thomas said.

He then flipped his book a couple dozen pages and pulled out a loose sheet of paper, unfolding it to reveal a charcoal sketch of a strange knife. He handed it to Kalia.

“All I really know is that she gets visions of things, draws them, and then gives the drawing to me on wild goose chases searching for. I’m just on my way back right now with a load of stuff I picked up from an auction, some of which she apparently wants quickly enough to send right through these damned mountains.”

Next, Thomas grabbed an item stashed in a bundle of cloth, unwrapping it to reveal a dagger identical to the one in the drawing. He also handed this one to her.

 

“Wow. Betraying your boss’s privacy right after you tell me how much she values it.”

Kalia scolded, looking over both of the objects she was given.

“It’s only been a few minutes and I’ve already got you leaking secrets like a basket full of water. Wonder what else I can squeeze outta you?” Kalia teased, to which the boy grew a little red.

 

Both dagger and drawing resembled each other uncannily.

About a foot long including grip, with two very thin and nasty looking blades running closely parallel to one another with a narrow gap between that briefly widened before the blades met.

 

“Hmm. Looks kinda like an oversized fountain pen.” Kalia commented, flipping the blade around in the air and catching it several times.

 

“Oh yeah, it does!” Thomas realized, watching Kalia expertly juggle the knife.

“Guess that I was a little too hung up on trying to translate the carvings on it to sit back and take a look at it as a whole.” Thomas said, returning to consult his book about probably what he was just talking about.

 

Kalia strained her eyes in the dusk as she scoured both the parchment and blade to look for the mentioned runes, but quickly grew tired of the effort she had to put into the task.

As quickly as she had grabbed the drawing, Kalia bolted upright and bent over, offering a hand towards the cross-legged Thomas.

 

“C’mon, you’ll ruin your eyesight if you read in this dark. Let’s go sit by the fire for a little light and warmth.” Kalia proposed, beckoning the young man upwards a few waves of her fingers. “We can sit together on my bedroll and read by the firelight if you’d like.”

 

Samuel hesitated for a moment, blinking the slight amount of disbelief from his eyes as he looked at the woman now standing before him.

Social activity of any sort, let alone this… type, was not something he would readily indulge in. He never really seemed to have the time for it. Even when he wasn’t on an excursion for Syer Dona, there was always work he could be doing, formulas he could be refining. His areas of expertise were already so numerous that taking even a single step into a new field would have been near impossible without abandoning an old project. He was already married to his job, his studies, and his hobbies.

 

His eyes fell over the woman as he was pondering. 

She was… strange, to say the least. Her personality didn’t fit her job, neither patient nor careful in a profession that probably placed a high value on both traits.

 

Her roughened but well-made leather armor hung loosely around her form, unstrapped and unbuckled in places presumably for a bit of added comfort. 

Thomas found that she bore a striking resemblance to the armor; rough around the edges with parts of herself left strangely open to potential exploitation. A blade could slip past her undone armor just as easily as a verbal jab could take advantage of her open demeanor.

 

She carried herself with a certain unworried attitude though, despite each open buckle and loose strap. Despite each suggestive comment she made and every movement that got almost too close.

She leaned slightly to the side, supporting herself with one hand on her waist as the other was held out teasingly.

He gulped. Just like the armor, she too was… well built.

In fact, the only difference between the two was her very obvious lack of damage. Her skin almost looked too pristine. Almost too good for even a noblewoman, and definitely far better than any mercenary he had met.

 

Kalia could practically see Thomas’s train of thought squirm like an eel in the desert; so unfathomably out of his depth in a situation that he couldn't have even begun to prepare for. It was absolutely, positively, and without a doubt one of the most entertaining things that she had ever seen. 

She watched as a number of potential comments rose from his throat without leaving his mouth, trapped by the troubled lips of a conflicted mind.

 

“Sorry, I’m not really a good judge of this type of thing, but are you coming on to me?” Thomas said both bluntly and suddenly, surprised her immensely.

 

A moment of stunned silence passed before Kalia broke out laughing.

“BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH-snort-hahaha…“

It took a few seconds before her laughter had wound down enough for Kalia to start talking, which Thomas passed looking rather perplexed.

 

“I-uhh... ha… I wasn’t expecting you to just ask that directly…” she explained. “But, sort of, I guess? Sorry, I’m not exactly used to teasing bookworms.”

 

“Riiight...” Thomas said dismissively. “Well, I’d be glad to show you my studies, but I’d at least like you to slow it down a bit with your whole- well, everything, I guess. Can you do that for me please?”

 

Kalia was surprised by the young man’s level-headedness. She was used to hearing requests to stop her teasing in the form of curses and insults. A nice, polite “please stop” was nearly unheard of coming from her usual targets.

 

“Ah, right, sorry. I guess I’m a bit too used to being around people who hit back when I take jabs at ‘em.” Conceded Kalia before she vaulted over the side of the carriage once more.

 

“Yea, uhh… I don’t think that’s very healthy.” Thomas commented, moving to the side of the wagon to see what Kalia was doing as she knelt and reached underneath it, pulling out a hefty looking iron kettle.

 

“Go ahead and make yourself comfortable while I go fetch some water for tea.” She told him, turning to leave the camp for a nearby brook she had spotted on the way in.

 

Kalia came back a few minutes later to find Thomas struggling on his knees to roll a log from the edge of camp where Davy was chopping wood, which she presumed was for one of them to sit on.

“Did you want a hand with that?” She asked, suppressing a small chuckle.

 

“Oh you’re back! I take it you know Asymic then?” The young man asked her gleefully without looking back at her.

 

Kalia blinked a couple times, doing a mental double take over what she had just heard.

“Do I know what now?” She said, walking closer to the point where she could properly see what Thomas was doing.

“Sorry, what exactly are you doing?” She asked, not understanding what she saw.

 

Thomas peered over his shoulder at her, ceasing his activity which Kalia now could clearly see consisted of scribbling with a small stick of grey chalk all over the log. Periodically, he flipped a page in his book; which was open on the ground nearby, before returning to the log.

 

“So you don’t know Asymic then?” He asked back, gesturing towards the log in a way that seemed disappointed.

 

“Um- No.” Kalia responded flat faced, looking at the disorderly mess of lines and shapes drawn on the log. “Care to enlighten me?”

 

“It’s a language. Sort of. Well… not really. Asymic is about as much of a language as salt is a spice.” Thomas explained poorly.

 

Kalia thought for a moment, but was unable to draw any conclusions from his statement.

“Yea, I’m gonna need you to keep going with that explanation please.”

 

“Well! Asymic is often grouped together with language due to the two being used in a similar way, but like salt is a rock and spices are dried plants, they’re actually unrelated to each other and only get groped together as a convenience.” Thomas said, a look of satisfaction coming to his face as he obviously parroted something that he had been told earlier.

 

“…Right… So are you gonna tell me what it is or are you just gonna continue referencing food?” Kalia blurted, getting a little fed up at this point.

 

Thomas cleared his throat with a small 'Ahem' and took a deep breath, smiling like a sailor who found a cure for syphilis.

“Asymic is a series of shapes and curves that can cause wildly unnatural phenomenon to occur in mundane objects when assembled into specific forms and given the proper catalyst. Unlike language, it was not made by people and has no proper spoken form." He recited as if reading from a script.

 

“So it’s another damn magic alphabet then. This one musta been made by mute gods I guess?” Kalia huffed, tracing the scribbled letters on the log with the 2-bladed dagger she was still holding.

 

“I… guess that’s a theory…? But we've yet to find a major religion who makes any reference to Asymic as being anything but evil in nature. Its practice is always either heavily frowned upon or otherwise entirely unmentioned” Thomas recited as if he was reading straight from a book. “And it’s not magic. No special reagent or Innate ability are required to perform Asymic transmutation. I could even teach you how to do a few of the simpler ones if you wanted.”

 

Kalia let out a bit of an awkward smile at what could have been taken as a slight insult by someone more petty than her.

“Thanks for the offer, but I don't think I have the patience for a thing like that. Or the time…” She trailed off. 

“You seem to really be into it though.”

 

“Heh… Is it really that obvious?” Thomas chuckled nervously, adding a few small hexagons to the log.

 

“Fuckin- Yeah it is! You talk about it like you're trying to convert me to your cult!” Kalia exclaimed in surprise of the young man’s lack of self awareness, nicking her thumb on the dagger as she jolted upright.

 

“Ah…” Thomas expressed nervously. “I guess I can get a little carried away when I talk about my interests.”

Seeing that the young Thaumaturgist hadn’t yet noticed her cut, Kalia quickly hid her injury so as not to alarm him. It would heal in a few minutes anyway.

“No no, I don’t mind at all!” She told him, holding up her other, unhurt hand defensively. “I’ve always floured listening to people talk about their passions, even if I might not understand them. Just keep going and pretend I didn’t say anything.”

 

Thomas paused his scribbling for a while, flicking his eyes back and forth a few times between the log and the weird lady who was showing interest in him for some reason. He wasn’t really used to attention. Usually when a curious mind was watching he would simply point them in the direction of someone more experienced and be on his way.

This was different though. Kalia seemed to be just as interested in him as she was in his work. 

 

“Right, well… I guess I just like finding things, the harder the better. It’s why I’m still working for Ms. Dona.

She goes: ‘Here's a drawing of this thing that Might be in his location maybe. Find it for me please.” And then she sends me out into the world without any further leads expecting me to be back with what she wants.”

Thomas placed the chalk into a pouch on his belt and spun the log around, looking over all his previous scribbles to see if he had missed anything.

“I suppose it’s to be expected from working for an oracle, since no matter how little information she gives me, I always find what she was looking for.”

 

“Anyways, leading back to Asymic; all we really know about it is that it functions entirely differently from every other magic script. It’s an oddity, requiring no inkstone and depleting no mana. We don’t know where it came from, we don’t know why it works, we don’t know if there’s even a purpose to its existence. It’s just; there. Y’know? A mysterious loose thread that does weird stuff when you tug on it. Doesn’t help that the churches burn every book they can find about it.”

 

Seemingly satisfied with his work, Thomas withdrew a needle from his belt pouch and used it to prick his finger. Next, he welt around the log once more to place bloody fingerprints inside several rings of chalk he had just made.

 

“I know that it’s kinda dumb, but I’ve been hoping that some of Ms. Dona’s gift will rub off on me. Information on Asymic is getting harder and harder to find, and I’m starting to run into dead ends in my search.” He continued, finishing the fingerprints and motioning Kalia to stand back a bit.

 

Thomas stood up, withdrawing a small vial from his pouch and dripping a single drop of its blood-red contents right in the middle of the log’s rings.

The drop burned without flame, boiling and vanishing within moments and leaving a charred spot where it had landed. The fingerprints and chalk followed, searing black bands, swirls and shapes into the wood.

 

Then the weird stuff started.

 

Starting from the spots of charcoal, the wood began to heal; forming fresh bark over the burns and the wounds created by its cutting. Next, a fresh twig sprouted upwards from the centre where the rings used to converge. The odd leaf sprouted from its side as it slowly grew upwards, periodically releasing branches in strange directions. From this point onwards, any further changes were hidden behind a wall of foliage.

 

After a few minutes the bush stopped moving and Thomas pulled out a set of shears, clipping away leaves and twigs to reveal a shape made by the main branches underneath.

It was a chair. Made of a single piece of wood without glue or nails. On one of its legs, the rotted remains of the log crumbled under Thomas’s touch as he clipped away all excess foliage.

 

Wordlessly, Kalia pulled out a skin of wine from a loop at her waist and downed half of it in one go. Thomas stared at her with a self-pleased grin like a dog who was proud to show off the pair of shoes he had just torn up.

 

“Aw crud, it’s taken root.” Thomas complained without acknowledging Kalia’s comment, pawing around at the chair. “I guess I’m sorta used to doing this one indoors.”

 

“I think you might be the strangest carpenter I’ve ever met.” Kalia said, wiping off a drip of wine from her lip with her arm with a chuckle.

 

A holler from the edge of camp caused both of their heads to turn, worried at what it could mean. Fortunately, it was only the 2-man hunting party of Angela and Codrin carrying what looked to be an enormous straw-coloured rodent skewered with an arrow right through the braincase.

 

“Euhhg… don't tell me we’re eating that…” Thomas muttered, looking up from his mutilated shrub.

 

“Don’t worry about it, city boy, Tentrats aren’t like the rats you’re used to. There isn’t any garbage out here for them to eat.” Kalia told him before passing him the skin of wine. “Here, want some?”

 

“I- uhhh…” Thomas stuttered.

“Ah whatever. Screw it. Sure.” He ultimately said, swiping the skin from Kalia and taking a large swig.

 

“Goddamn! Watch your fucking language man!” She teased, patting the man on the back before walking over to the fire where the others had already begun to gather.

 

Over the course of the evening, the party skinned and roasted the Tentrat and talked merely, exchanging the odd blow both verbally and physically.

Thomas told her more stuff about magic that she knew she wouldn’t remember even if she was sober. 

Davy shared the story of the time where he walked right into an Umber’s smoke den and woke up the next week on a ship halfway to Snodd.

Slowly, Kalia faded into a pleasant haze of drunkenness as the night grew older, happily watching her companions eat and make merry as she had seen a hundred times before.

 

I wish we could stay like this forever. Kalia thought.

Damn.