The Screaming Harpy was Brotz's favorite tavern in Tinian. Close to the West gate, a little further in than the expensive front road ones, the three story building was a retreat for adventurers, active and retired. Magicians, thieves, every kind of fighter, Brotz knew the locals (he was a local) and had a name in the place as the one who lived in the Haunted Forest and the best fighter.
Several of his acquaintances in the tavern were magical. Of them, Brotz knew six by name and four more on sight. The ones he regarded as more than names and faces were Hector, Lolli, and Wally, who had a different name that Brotz couldn't say. Hector, an orc, was a former cohort of a fighter Brotz punched into Hector one day; Lolli was a blond human woman who was friendly with everyone in the tavern; and Wally was a halfling bowman that happened to be a natural magician and a skilled brawler.
For lack of better ideas, he started with Wally.
"Hey," Brotz called, carrying drinks over to the brunette halfling's table. Brotz had no idea how this conversation was going to go, and he guessed it showed, because Wally's cheerful greeting smile fell when Brotz put the drinks down.
"Someone dead?" The brown man picked up the drink and sat back to listen.
Brotz wondered how long the answer could stay "no" and didn't laugh enough to settle Wally's nerves.
"Nah. My kid's magic started showing a few days ago and I don't even know where to start asking," he explained.
To Brotz's relief, Wally immediately understood– his mouth opened wide and he gave a huge revelatory nod, then grinned. "I remember the eye, reckon it was inevitable. What happened?"
"When?" Brotz asked. He meant it as a joke, as he assumed Wally meant the first one, but Wally paused and his brow furrowed, and then he opened his mouth and closed it again. "It's only been a few days, you said, right? Do we have different ideas of 'a few'?"
Brotz was confused, now. "Is she not supposed to be doing the magic stuff every day?"
Wally's face continued to scrunch and it took him several seconds to start talking after his mouth opened. "No," he finally managed, and the small man rocked back to stare disbelievingly at Brotz. "No, every day outbursts are not– you're messing with me, right? Joking?"
Brotz wondered if Wally was joking, too, now that he said it. "You trying to scare me?"
"What– Hector! Jo! C'mere!"
Brotz was mildly embarrassed when the two magicians made their ways over. "Brotz said his kid's outbursts started a few days ago and have been every day!"
Hector and Jo (a tall human with short red hair and draconic yellow eyes) both glanced at one another and frowned at Brotz. "You know the thing where we smell it or feel it isn't an outburst, right?" Hector asked.
"She sees it, but the outbursts are the real magic uses, right? Light bubbles, teleporting–"
"Teleporting?" all three of them cried incredulously.
"You guys are trying to scare me, right?" Brotz asked again, trying to ignore that sinking feeling in his guts.
"You're kidding, right?" Jo asked. "You can't be serious."
"None of you did magic every day when you first started?" Brotz asked. "Teleporting isn't normal outburst stuff?"
"Ooh, outbursts?" Lolli chirped as she skipped over. "Did your daughter break through?" she asked Brotz. He nodded and she cheered and lifted her drink. "Congratulations! Good luck!"
"He said she's bursting every day," interjected Wally.
"And one of them was a teleport," added Jo.
Lolli reeled as though slapped, then laughed. "Good one!" She leaned on Brotz's arm as she cackled. "Can you imagine? Do you actually know how hard that is, or did you pick that one out by chance?"
Brotz's only basis of comparison was Ro, who had an impressive leap, he knew, but he didn't know where typical started. "Is teleporting hard? Ro does it all the time."
The magicians looked between each other again, and Wally nodded quickly, bouncing in his seat. "Actually, yeah, Brotz, exactly– your super magical faerie mistress of the forest is the single most powerful teleport any of us have ever seen, right?"
"You're gonna have to find a better starting point," Brotz said, irritated with how this was going. Ro was a horrible example of anything as far as difficulty was concerned, she never did anything that wasn't naturally easy. And everything came naturally to her.
"What did your friend say about it?" asked Lolli. "The teleport, I mean. How familiar is she with natural mages?"
"Ro doesn't know how hard teleporting is, she's got help," Brotz explained. "She didn't tell me anything about the magic, she just told me to smile or she would rip my lungs out."
The few remaining smiles faded and everyone around the table exchanged concerned frowns. Brotz was uncomfortably sure that they weren't messing with him.
"What else happened?" asked Lolli gently. "She was right, you do need to be real careful in how you react, but what else is going on? Did she really teleport?"
Brotz was just going to assume that yes, teleporting was hard and they weren't messing with him, but that didn't help him much. "She was running away from Eupa," he said. This inspired a wide nod from Hector and Wally, so he took that to mean it made sense. "Ten steps or so? Just in front of me and just behind me, we were playing hide and seek."
The magicians exchanged solemn gazes and Brotz frowned. "You guys are messing with me, right?" he hoped aloud.
"Well, after you said your friend said that, we figured she's not telling you because she doesn't want to scare you," Jo observed all at once. "And she doesn't want you to scare your little girl. 'cos that really is important, you can't scare her. You can't tell her to be scared of her magic, and you gotta try and keep from being scared of it, too."
Brotz nodded. "Yeah, Ro said that. She didn't really explain why."
"She probably doesn't know, either, if she's not a natural mage," said Hector. "It's pretty standard knowledge if you're familiar with mage circles, but understanding it for real is kind of a, you'll only know when you experience it for real, thing. Fear's a stirring point, kinda makes it…" He struggled with his words and looked to the others for help.
"Jumpy?" suggested Lolli.
"Mean," muttered Wally. "There's a reason I don't deal with mine."
No one said anything, and instead bowed their heads.
Jo drummed his hands on the table and put on a kind smile. "So, yeah, don't scare her. But. Uh. The outbursts–"
"Look, just tell me about yours?" he asked.
All five of them started with the word, "Oh," before their voices were lost in the noise of each other. Brotz laughed as they all looked around at each other with awkward chuckles. "Okay, who's first?"
"Me, me, me!" Lolli cheered. "Mine was frost! I saw my breath one day in the middle of summer."
"Ha," Hector interjected. "Mine was fire, but same thing– saw the ripples from the heat, started breathing smoke. Lasted a good five minutes, scared the hells out of me after the first one. Got used to it and then it went away."
Brotz looked to Jo, who frowned. "Mine's not so great, but my magic isn't elemental like theirs, it's fundamental, which– like I can turn stuff into stuff, or change the way it is– like I can melt things? Right? Put holes in stuff, we call it corrosion, some people regard it as acid kind of thing, but that's – anyway." Brotz didn't mind the stammering, it gave him time to take it in. "Yeah, but, so, I uh. Blew my nose into my handkerchief and my snot ate my hanky and parts of my pocket."
"Oh, no!" laughed Lolli, covering her mouth with her hands.
Jo smiled sheepishly and drank from his tankard. "Yeah, was a fun way to find out."
"Do you still have the corrosion stuff?" Brotz asked. "Does it change?"
"Outbursts almost never tell you what kind of magic you'll end up with," Hector explained. "Your first one might, and I mean half a chance, but after that, you'll only know your source. Give you a sense of scale, but for a lot of us, they're just hiccups that build into what we eventually learn to use."
Brotz nodded, not quite understanding but guessing it would make more sense later. "How long between you starting to show it and learning to use it on purpose?"
Hector shrugged. "Perhaps two years?"
From the look of it, that wasn't an unusual answer– the other mages glanced between each other for reactions and exchanged nods. "About a year and a half," agreed Jo.
"Same," agreed Lolli. "Didn't have my second outburst for another month and a half," she added. "Got shorter by a few days at a time, until I was doing it every day. I got to study it– it's actually fundamental, I just usually use ice 'cos it's most natural to me. I can use fire, too, but it's really just making things hot or cold."
"Including the air," agreed Hector. "Mine is elemental," he added. "A lot of uses and manifestations overlap, despite not having the same source."
"Source?" Brotz asked.
Hector held up a hand and started counting fingers. "Elemental, fundamental, draconic, the stories about demigods can be divine sorcerers sometimes, the moon and sun and stars, but those are sometimes argued as elemental, there's some with faerie, there's arguing about psychics and empaths, but I count 'em."
"Why?" asked Lolli under her breath.
"We talkin' magic?" asked Yurich, a human-dwarf hybrid with long brown hair in a braid down their back. They saw Brotz and lifted their drink as they walked over. "Congratulations!"
"Shh!" hissed Jo, and Yurich frowned and glanced around. Brotz sighed.
"We're gonna have to have a real serious talk," Hector said to Yurich. "Either Brotz is lying to us or…." He stopped and frowned at Brotz. "We'll talk about it later."
"We'll have the talk, later. I'm enjoying breakthrough stories," Brotz mumbled, sitting back and sipping his beer.
"Ooh, ooh!" Yurich cheered. "Mine was a good one! I jumped twenty feet in the air and hurt myself when I landed!"
Everyone at the table laughed, though Brotz flinched. "Straight up or did you miss something you were aiming at?" asked Hector.
"Oh, I was trying to catch a ball my sister threw," they laughed. "I didn't really hurt myself, just skin, but scared the shit out of me for a minute. Didn't know what happened!"
"I did, but my brother broke through the year before," Jo laughed. "We were kinda waiting for mine to show."
"I used to make these little light motes," hummed a new face wistfully. A feminine looking human with white hair that Brotz didn't recognize. "Just a couple around my hands. They were the only things I ever manifested during outbursts. Taught myself with them, changed their colors and made them bigger or smaller. Once I got to holding them for a good ten minutes or so, anyway, that took forever."
Brotz felt his guts sink further. Brina did the light motes, too, just yesterday. The blinking white-yellow cloud surrounded her for most of the daylight hours.
Yurich held a hand palm-up at the center of the table, above which a small bubble of opaque purple light appeared, giving off tendrils of white smoke. "Hey," they cheered. Apparently there was a thing they all knew to do here, because half of them leaned in and the other half sat back and closed their eyes.
"Minty!" Lolli said at the same time Jo said, "Steely."
"Smells," Yurich explained to Brotz. "How we sense it is individual, we share them when we're discussing power. Manners, protocol kinda thing. I feel it in my chest, kind of like wearing tight clothes. It's hard to explain."
"Whistling," said Wally with a shrug.
"I can hear all three types he'd using to make that as a chord, with a wind instrument from home," explained the new face.
"We'll be here all day if we let them do this," Hector grumbled to Brotz. "Come on, this is serious."
Brotz let Hector pull him away from the table. Wally and Yurich tagged along, but the others seemed reluctant to so much as watch him go. Lolli waved and called, "Good luck!" but Brotz could hear the genuine concern.
Hector led their small parade to the courtyard behind the tavern. A few others loitered about, a table of adventurers whispering plots over a map, a pair of lovebirds in the corner, and a bouncer at the gate.
Hector led Brotz to a corner created by architecture and a massive stack of empty barrels. Yurich pulled up a table and put their back to the door, blocking Brotz from sight without obscuring his view entirely. "I don't want to scare you, but I can't let you stay unprepared. Are you really serious about everything you've told us about her casting? Started a few days ago with an outburst every day?"
Brotz wished the concerned frown would go away, but settled for knowing he was just in trouble. "Yeah. She did the light motes the other person was talking about, but she did it all day."
Hector flinched. "That would make me start foaming at the mouth," he explained. "Exactly how long is all day here?"
"From breakfast until bath time?" Brotz said. "A little after sunrise, a little before dark?"
Yurich and Hector exchanged the same concerned frown, and Wally climbed to a chair and pushed Brotz's arm.
"Most people never teleport. At all. All the ways to do it are dangerous and require a lot of power. It's not something you do on accident until you're almost grown and you're upset or angry and want to be somewhere else that bad. And that's still extremely unusual, I've only heard second hand stories."
"Anything else?" Yurich asked slowly. "How long has this been happening?"
"Three days?" Brotz guessed. "Maybe four? We've had the motes, she teleported, and she was breathing fire. I think that was it." He should have remembered better, but really, it had all been happening so fast, he could hardly keep up. "I mean, I say breathing fire, it was more that just when she tried to speak, it would burst into flames. She could breathe just fine."
Yurich flinched. "How long did it last?"
"Maybe an hour? Half an hour? We started drawing pictures to make her feel better."
The mages exchanged that nervous glance.
"You guys are strong, aren't you," Brotz asked. "I know you were an adventurer," he said, pointing to Hector.
"I'm probably in the top ten percent in town, easy," Hector agreed. "Some of the high wizard drakin can't match me in power, but they'll have me in skill."
"I just broke through strong," Yurich explained.
"Me, too," Wally agreed.
"You lost yours, didn't you," Yurich said to Wally. They sounded sympathetic but Wally still glared and chewed on his own mouth for several long moments before he could answer.
"Yes. Hurt myself, my brothers, my sister, and my dad," Wally explained, frowning sourly to one side and crossing his arms. "Not bad, no one was permanently injured, but I couldn't overcome the fear." He sighed heavily and slouched as though pushed down. "Still can't. Still try sometimes, when I get too drunk to know better. I keep thinking that because I'm drunk, I won't be scared, but either my guts know to be scared without me thinking about it, or my magic's just fuckin' scary and I get scared anyway. Either way." He drank deeply and leveled Brotz with a heavy stare. "I'm telling you all this so you understand what's at stake. You can't scare her."
"So, what should I do?" Brotz asked. "I know there's teachers and stuff."
Hector nodded, but the frown was uncertain.
"Loads in town, but it's already sounding too extreme for them," Yurich explained. "Are you sure she didn't do something small a long time ago or something?" Yurich asked. "A teleport is huge, you gotta understand, she's either ripping holes in reality and jumping through them or she's taking herself apart and putting herself back together, or– teleports are huge."
Brotz felt the blood drain from his face. "Oh," he managed to say. That was probably the best clue he got so far.
"You know the light motes things?" Wally chimed in. "She's supposed to be making one or two of those for maybe three minutes or something. Not. Was it just one all day, following her?"
Brotz shook his head, but he didn't want to say anything else.
"I know you believe me. You keep looking scared," Brotz grumbled. "I'm still pretty sure you guys are just messing with me, off and on, but that's just hoping. I knew we were in for something, figured it would be big, but if this is– just plain power, she's…."
"She's probably got more magical power in her little finger than everyone in this entire city combined," Hector said. "And I don't mean that hyperbolically, I mean that the high wizards in the tower over there couldn't do light motes all day without fainting. Casting isn't supposed to be a long activity, even for the strongest of us. Casting that takes more than an hour requires more people and tools."
Brotz nodded and looked up and sighed. "Is it really that big?"
"If you asked me to hold," Hector held up a tiny flame, "this for as long as you said she did, I'd be sweating and it would be flickering."
"She went to sleep kind of early last night," Brotz mumbled. "So how did you guys manage yours?"
"Mine was an easy breakthrough," Hector reminded him.
Yurich shrugged and frowned. "Trial and error. I had to leave, though. Parents built me a hut out in the woods, we learned a bunch of warding sigils to keep the hut safe. Made me sick to stay in it, but I got older and learned to meditate, found out that keeping the magic suppressed helped control it."
Brotz shook his head. "I'm not gonna do that. We're strong enough, house already puts up with me slamming Eupa around."
Wally snorted and looked away and Brotz swatted at him. "She's a wretch, I hate her."
"Sure you do, buddy," he teased, and he drank deeply from his mug to ignore Brotz. Yurich snickered, but Hector was still scowling.
"Are you afraid of her out here?" Brotz asked. "We're in the forest, it's guarded magically."
Hector took a deep breath, held it, then sighed heavily and fixed Brotz with a stern stare. The amber eyes met, and Brotz felt him staring into his soul.
"I still hope you're lying," he said. "But I believe you. And you need to know. Your little girl, sweet as she is, curls and freckles and all, is a living bomb."
Brotz nodded sincerely, understanding better than he'd like.
"What kind of explosion, how far it goes, what it does, will not matter. It will hurt. Everyone. It may kill people. You have to practice utmost caution."
Brotz nodded again. "What's that mean?"
"If you know any wards, find them. Magic protection on supporting structures in your house, and make sure the doors are easier to knock off their hinges than they are to break."
Brotz sighed with relief. "Thank you."
Hector's frown only deepened. "This is horrible."
"That was the best advice I've gotten yet," he said. "Gives me an idea what we'll need to do, too. Eupa's been no help, she's normally the one that handles this kind of stuff."
Hector continued scowling. "Exhaust every tutor in town, tell them what you're dealing with, and see if they'll help at all, but I don't think anyone will. You may be able to ask some for a higher-up or more skilled trainer. I got an older adventurer to take me under his wing when I was young, he retired about ten years before I did, but we parted troupes maybe twenty years back."
Brotz could hear him, but he was distracted. He wasn't sure how to find the tutors in town. Ask around, he supposed. He could learn what the words looked like, even if he couldn't read.
"You should probably pull her out of school," Hector continued.
"Can you teach her anything?" Brotz asked hopefully.
The blue orc's eyes shot wide and he rocked back. "Oh, no. She's already stronger than me by far. I couldn't teach her anything useful, I had to teach myself the first control, and I don't think I could coach anyone through it."
Brotz grunted unhappily and looked skyward again. "Well. Shit."
"Can't believe you're not fuckin' with us," Wally muttered. "You've gotta be."
"I feel the same way," Brotz agreed. "Like you guys did have outbursts every day, just really small ones. Light motes are real easy to do and you're exaggerating about how hard they are."
"Light is some of the hardest stuff to work with," Hector said. "But that actually doesn't mean anything here– doing it by accident is just happenstance, and pretty common. Doing it on purpose is far more difficult."
Brotz chuckled. "That. Actually sounds like magic."
"Think of it like swimming," Yurich supplied. "Flopping in the water and lying flat will keep you up way better than swimming will, but swimming moves you around on purpose and gets you where you're going. It's also a shitload harder."
Brotz nodded again. "I get it. Kinda."
The three mages exchanged that damn frown again.
"We don't want to scare you, but you kinda should be scared," Wally muttered. "Actually you? You should be fine," he said, and he drank deeply again. "Yeah, actually, I dunno what the fuck I'm worried about. This is Brotz the Living Legend, right here." Wally leapt at Brotz with his arm raised and Brotz caught him by the fist and let him down.
Yurich tackled him, trying to knock him sideways and getting stopped with a skidding boot. "Alright, fine, we can fight, then," Brotz laughed, grabbing Yurich by the collar and throwing him bodily across the courtyard.
~
Brotz started with tutors the following morning. Wally knew five on the south side of town, and he marked out a map for Brotz to follow. Hector gave him a list of four on the west side of town, the first of whom specialized in powerful outburst management. Hector made it pretty clear that Brina was going to take far more than a specialist, and to ask for a higher-up. He also said that he wanted Brotz to try and memorize the face he made when Brotz told him about the light motes, he wanted as close an imitation as possible.
As Brotz most often traveled through West Gate, he tried Hector's first.
The building was a standard tall, narrow one of many in a row along a side-street off the main street, with a nice door with a big window on the front, with stars and sparkles on it, and words that Brotz couldn't read. It matched the stuff Hector told him and wrote down, so he headed inside.
"Hello!" gushed a bald man. He leapt from a sitting chair in the back corner of the room where he was apparently reading by the window light. He wore a simple green robe over comfortable pants and had scales tattooed on his wrists and up his arms into his three-quarter belled sleeves. He made a show of looking Brotz up and down, then smiled knowingly and put his finger to his chin. "Did your child break through, recently?"
"Do I smell like it or is it something she burned," he mumbled, looking to see if she really did burn something. (This morning it was frost breath, similar to what Lolli described, only Brina was putting layers of ice on everything.)
"No, sir, in fact, you look completely lost," he laughed merrily, and he guided Brotz to a seat apparently intended for visitors. "Powerful breakthroughs are often quite the event, and I completely understand if it's overwhelming."
"A little," Brotz admitted.
He continued to circle the room busily but Brotz didn't bother keeping up with the flurried motion. "Well, you'll be happy to know that I've worked with no less than one hundred children and young adults in coaching them through the basics of shutting down an outburst, as well as learning to ride them out and eventually control them, and turn that into real magic use." He stopped moving around and settled into a spot near his previous seat, standing and holding a mug of something steaming.
"You can shut down outbursts?" Brotz asked. Everyone else made them sound inevitable.
"Oh, yes. Most can, though powerful or wild exceptions exist. Most will never need to know, but it's very important. A sorcerer who isn't in control of their magic can be quite dangerous to themselves and others."
Brotz nodded again and looked out the window for the sake of turning his head away. He didn't like the way the guy was staring at him.
He seemed to notice the discomfort. "In any case! I specialize in outburst control, but I do aim to offer all my pupils the tools they will need to continue development of their magical powers."
Brotz nodded, not sure what else to do or say at this point.
"What kind of outbursts are we having? What's manifesting? Smells? Visuals? Sounds?"
Brotz wagged his head, but he was distracted trying to guess what he was supposed to say. The fire smelled like match sulfur, he guessed? "Mostly visual," he said truthfully. "Actually, frost breath this morning, I don't know what you call that."
"Oh? The term is evocation. To what magnitude? Say, how long did the smoke last?"
Brotz was going to ruin this man's day, he was already sure of it.
"When she noticed, she started playing with it and had a layer of ice on her window about…" he held his fingers a very small distance apart, but it was still too much ice. "That thick? Over the whole thing."
As he spoke, the golden skin of the human in front of him paled to a sickly green. He managed to keep up the smile, but it left his eyes entirely. "When did this begin?" he asked.
Brotz didn't know what a comforting answer would have been, but he knew it wasn't going to be the truth. "She cast the first time four days ago."
The tutor swayed on his heels, but he kept his smile up. "I see!" he said. He swayed again.
"Is that bad or–"
He was trying to hide it. Poor guy. "Ah, so soon again, it's unusual. To date, the smallest gap between first and second outbursts is ten days," he explained. The chipper salesman face held up, but his voice began to crack and show the concerned magician.
"You're probably not gonna like if I keep going, and Hector said I was gonna have to ask for your teacher," Brotz said all at once.
He didn't look any less sick, but the fake smile became true, if wry. "Ah, Hector. He and I have a cordial relationship, I'm glad he recommended me, but I think he may have done it as a joke."
Brotz chuckled. "Actually, he said you were good, and would've been fine if his kid wasn't strong as she was."
The tutor shuffled uncomfortably on his sandal-clad feet. "You are telling the truth about your child, however, I can hear that much, and so I am going to refer you to my master. I can send for him, rather than have you take your child to him." Brotz saw the way he was moving and recognized it as a subtle attempt to escape.
Brotz frowned and imagined trying to travel with Brina. She'd enjoy it, he was sure.
The tutor went to a writing desk on the wall and started scribbling in neat loops of uneven sizes. "Are there any other indications of magnitude? How long have her outbursts lasted?"
"You're not gonna like this one, either," Brotz warned him. "Hector told me he wanted to see your face when I told you, though."
The tutor's wry smile became a cynical, annoyed smirk. "I see. Let's hear it."
"Eight hours of blinking light motes that flashed around a dozen at a time."
Brotz wished Hector hadn't been right. The human's mouth dropped open and he swayed to his heels so hard he staggered into the wall behind him. "She's gonna blind someone!" he hissed. "You can't be serious, he told you to tell me that for show– no, no I already hear the truth. My master may be out of his depth with this one, too. But I can contact him."
Brotz weighed out how much he wanted external ears to hear, with Brina's basket still looming as a reminder that someone somewhere was looking for her, and they were more dangerous than a river to an infant. "If you don't think he can help and don't know anyone he can contact, I'd rather not. Everyone knowing how strong she is around here's okay, but I wanna keep it in the city, you know."
"Security concerns?" he asked. Then he said, "Oh, actually, perhaps that is perfectly reasonable. Military recruiters alone," he chuckled and lifted the paper to tear into pieces. "To say nothing of potential assassins."
"Adventurers are a type," he chuckled. "It was lovely to meet you, I wish you the best of luck."
Brotz started back out and got his hand to the door before the man called back after him. "You will need to leave town to find a proper tutor, but I would love to hear everyone else's stories about the impossible man and his nova." He smiled brightly. "Also, do tell Hector that he's an ass."
"Tell him you said so," Brotz agreed on his way out.
The next door was similar, another simple building with words on the door's window. He tried to open the door and found it locked, so he rang the bell outside and stood back.
"Hang on!" said a voice as though it were standing right next to him.
He should've expected that.
A little later, the door opened and a teen boy stopped short at the sight of Brotz, then slipped past and scrambled away.
Brotz looked to the tutor, a kobold woman in long pants that almost looked like a skirt and a tunic with a wide corset belt. She looked him up and down, then smiled cheerfully. "Oh! Little one breaking through?"
"Is that the only reason people come to you?" Brotz asked, already sure he wasn't wearing anything burnt.
"Actually, at your age, yes," she sang in a medium alto. "Early-mid adulthood by the look in your eye, though your face is young." She gestured him inside, waving an arm. "Come on in, then, let's chat! Little one in school?"
Brotz started to follow her, but dragged his feet. He didn't want to try and get comfortable just to have it happen again. "Not today, she woke up with frost breath and didn't want to go."
"Oooh. Did you take any notes, how long it lasted, how cold it was? Was she actually creating ice or just freezing what's already there?"
Brotz stopped before he got to the door. "I'm gonna warn you now, Brina's kinda special, so–"
"Oh, all of them are," she hummed cheerfully. "All to be discussed!"
Brotz appreciated the attempt. "Bad special."
The woman furrowed her scaly brow and cocked her head to a side. "Oh? What do you mean?"
"I mean, she's really strong," he clarified.
She seemed to be listening, at least, stopping in the doorway and turning to face him. "Not that I don't believe you, but could you give me an example?"
"Eight hours of–"
"Eight hours!?" she echoed. "Of what?!"
"Light bubbles, maybe a dozen of 'em, blinking."
Brotz didn't know kobolds could pale like that. She lost the warm white under her lizardy chin and down her belly, leaving a chilly gray.
"Um. I want to say this is a joke, but I can't think of why anyone would joke like that," she said, staring at Brotz with wide eyes. "Goodness me, you do have your hands full, even big as they are."
Brotz glanced down the street to spot the tutor with the tattoos leaning out his door to watch. He was grinning, Brotz could see it from here even with his eyes.
"It's been made pretty clear that I'm not likely to find real help in town," he told the woman, who was following his gaze down the street.
"You know it's because it's dangerous, right?" she said sharply. "You can't just live like that."
Brotz swallowed the rage and breathed it out, then turned on his toes. "I can," he grumped, and he stumped on.
Brotz hardly got around the corner before he heard her call, "Eight hours!?"
The first one answered, apparently running down the street as soon as Brotz left. "Did he tell you about the frost breath?"
~
Brotz lumbered back home that night, defeated. He felt the weight on his shoulders. While he knew Brina could never hurt him in a way he couldn't get better from (or at least forgive), he wasn't sure she'd forgive herself if she hurt anyone, even him, even a little. She was getting worse and more frequent, and she really was going to blind someone if the lights got any bigger.
The sight of the glowing cottage was welcome as he lumbered through the forest, warming his heart when he smelled the fire warming the bathwater and whatever meat that was permeating the woods.
Eupa greeted him from her cushion as he came in, but she saw his posture and immediately braced herself. "What's wrong?"
"I'll tell you later," he promised, hearing Brina in her bedroom and not wanting to discuss it where she could hear. "What's for dinner?"
"Something four-armed with a great cut of rump," Eupa replied dryly, annoyed at having to wait for the information. The kitchen corner hosted a slab of roast on a cutting board alongside a variety of baked root vegetables he recognized but couldn't name. The white and yellow speckled with green and black smelled good from across the room, and Brotz realized that he forgot to eat, today.
Eupa got up as he passed and she headed to the door with a call of, "Bath time!"
Brina sprinted from her bedroom and leapt onto Brotz's back. "I love you, Daddy!" she cheered, and she kissed his cheek (or at least rammed her face into the side of his head with a smacking noise) before she flung herself toward the door.
Brotz helped himself to dinner, not bothering with the plates he insisted they get and instead using a cutting board the twins introduced him to.
He liked their bath time. It took him a few months, but once he got over Eupa's change, he looked forward to listening to the echoing voices, background music for dinner or cleaning or relaxing.
Sitting in his living chair and getting the weight off his feet was nice. The food smelled fantastic, and whatever Eupa did with the vegetables gave them a strong savory flavor–
The muffled words didn't hide the swear in Eupa's voice, but the real trouble was the following silence. He got to his feet, already sure something bad happened, and he heard Brina cry, "Daddy!"
He got out the door in two steps and scooped Brina into his arms as she sprinted around the house. She was okay, he noticed with relief as he lumbered to the bath house. "Eupa?"
"She's still in the bath, I froze her in!" Brina yelped.
Brotz wasn't sure what that could mean, and was stricken with an image of a solid ice block with his friend blinking at him from inside.
"I'm stuck!" Eupa called through the windows. "I'm fine, just. Stuck. And cold."
Opening the door, Brotz saw the water cauldron in the middle of the floor and Eupa in her tub with her back to him.
The tub's water had frozen solid. A seam had popped and the metal was still creaking at them, and Eupa's body from the shoulders down was inside. She had gotten one of her arms free, but the other was in with her, so only her head, the top of one knee, one shoulder and its arm remained free.
He circled to see her shivering violently and glaring death at the walls. Her teeth wouldn't stop chattering long enough for her to say, "Knnnnock m-me over."
Brotz obediently tipped the tub on its side and helped the ice slide out, but he stopped there and turned to Brina. "Hey, I know you want to be with us, but Aunt Eupa is going to be very mean, because she hates being cold. She says all kinds of mean things that I don't want you to hear, okay? Whole new swears you don't need to know. So I want you to go get dressed and go sing songs to Baby until I can get her out, okay?"
Eupa was silently scrabbling for whatever she could reach. He expected more of her back to be clear, but apparently it was just the backs of her shoulders against the tub. Her butt was sticking out of the bottom and one leg was plainly visible under a couple of inches of ice. He could see the bottom of one foot near the other knee where she had it crooked. Without that bent leg, this would have been a lot simpler.
"Take her in, Brotz," Eupa growled. "She won't listen, and I really am about to get a lot meaner than I've been since we settled." The adventurer didn't argue and carried his daughter into the house.
When Brotz got back, the dark werekin was closer to freezing than free. She was making progress, but her lips were white-blue and her movements were sluggish. At the moment, she had her back partially loose and the straight leg was free, but the stuck arm and leg were still stuck, and Eupa still couldn't do as much wriggling as she needed to finish. She was twisted so that her free leg and back were to the fire. Trying to get warm, he guessed. He knew she'd make fun of him if he tried to give her a towel, but he wished she minded being naked a little more. Even he wasn't sure why he cared, her fur and the low light hid any features he could be worried about, but it still made him blush.
"I'm not mad at her," Eupa insisted in a small voice. "She didn't mean to. But I hate! Being! Cold!"
Brotz circled the ice block and his friend. Water dripped off the top and from the gaps, slowly trickling to the drain. "How violent do you think I need to get? It's the bent leg that's the real trouble, and I don't wanna break it."
The calm she was holding vanished and she gnashed her teeth with a vicious growl. She might have called on her beast. "Oh my fucking fuck, have you gotten how to break shit, too?"
He forgave her, but she was still being an asshole. "I suppose I'll tell you while you can't kill me for it– But, Brina's even stronger than we thought."
Eupa leveled him with a narrow glare. "Okay," she said slowly. "How much stronger?"
"Hearing about the light bubbles have been making people faint," he said.
Eupa's face went blank, rather than angry, and she stared at him impatiently. "This doesn't help."
"The other mage talking about their light motes said they could only do two or three for a minute at a time."
Eupa understood, and she sighed heavily. "So this kind of thing wouldn't have happened to a normal magician. Normally it'd have made a chilly spot, I take it? 'cos I know exactly what happened, she stuck her hand in my water and thought, "Too hot", is what she did."
Brotz could believe it. "Alright," he agreed.
"If I die like this, I'm gonna be so fucking mad," she continued. She drag/crawled herself around on the floor, an act made difficult by the melting ice catching the uneven stones.
"If you die like this, the only person you have to be mad at is yourself. You've had way worse," he laughed. "How do I get you out?"
Apparently, she was riled up, now, so he was on his own. "I always said love was gonna get me killed, and now look at me! Frozen in a block of ice! Cos of your fucking kid!"
"If you talk about Brina in any way that doesn't shine and glitter like all her little light motes, I'm gonna knock you out while I do this," he warned. He was trying to keep the banter light, but he wouldn't let her talk about Brina like she was anything besides a blessing none of them deserved.
Nothing in the room lent itself to breaking or melting ice aside from the fire itself and the water in the cauldron, so he picked up a bucket and scooped up some of that and poured it over the cube. It melted in a dip where he poured the water, but cooled too quickly to do more than smooth it out.
"Fire pokers," Eupa gasped. She was trying to spin, or maybe to twist out, but she got the end of the ice stuck in the firepit and collapsed back with an irritated groan. "I'm not saying the kid ain't sunshine and rainbows, but magic is just plain power and she needs to learn to control it! This really would have killed someone! It hurts me now and I know what I can live through!"
Brotz knew that Eupa frequently underestimated how tough she was, but she also overestimated how tough the average person was–she was right.
"As it is, it could've killed me! The only reason it didn't was–shit."
Brotz saw Eupa's eyes were fixed behind him, and he turned. Brina stood next to the wall, clutching Baby between her hands, tears pouring down her face and chest tight from fighting down a sob.
"Brina, shit, I. Uh. Uh–" Eupa stammered uselessly.
"I'm sorry," Brina whimpered.
Eupa looked at Brotz and back at Brina, then dropped to the floor with a sigh. "Come here, Brinarini." She flapped a hand to call her over. "It's not your fault, kid, I know you didn't mean to. You stuck your hand in my water and thought 'too hot' and your magic figured it would help. It's not your fault."
Brina sobbed in her aunt's arm, wailing an incoherent apology into Eupa's collar. Brotz busied himself with another bucket of water and examining the block to find a good angle to get at this leg.
Eupa kissed Brina's head and squeezed her one last time. "Alright, kiddo, we can't sit here like this. I don't want sorry, I want out. You need to get out of the way. I love you."
Brina backed off and Eupa looked back to Brotz. "I just need enough space to get my leg unbent," she complained. "The top– the side– Fuck it, here," she said, pointing at what would have been the top when she was upright. Brotz picked up one of the pokers and stabbed the ice. It cracked several inches in and a chunk fell off the end.
The former fighter lifted a fresh poker, planted it into the same spot and hammered it with his fist. Brina watched her family struggle without a word, tears still sparkling in the mismatched eyes.
Eupa got her other arm free, presumably after it melted enough for her to contort her way out, and was down to the bent leg trapped in the center of the block. She kept going between trying to help, trying to get her other leg away so she'd warm up, and trying to keep her mouth shut.
Keeping her mouth shut was not a thing Eupa could do unless she was hiding. "Brina, look, you gotta–it's still not your fault. You've got more power than a lot of people ever get, and you're still a baby, it's not your fault."
"It's why we're your family," Brotz said aggressively to Eupa. He flipped the ice block back "upright" and put the spike of the poker near her knee. He distantly appreciated her faith in him– not even a frown as he worked it in and twisted to pop off more chunks. "If there was anyone on the planet meant to be your family, it was us." He stopped stabbing his companion's frozen prison and bent down to glare at her where she lay sprawled. "Your Aunt Eupa is right, this would have been bad in any other house. But it didn't happen in any other house, it happened in ours."
Eupa glared at him, only sort of getting his point but only sort of needing to. "That was the stupidest I-told-you-so I've ever heard," she growled at him, but she twisted to look at Brina. "I know it was an accident and if you had your way, this wouldn't be like this. You're gonna have to get this idea about how things can happen because of you but not really be your fault. Okay? It's complicated, but it's a huge thing. I'm still mean as fuck and I really hate being cold, and neither of those things are your fault either and I swear I am trying my best, I'm sorry."
Brina silently left the bath house and Brotz slapped Eupa's arm. "You hurt her feelings!"
Eupa cringed away but couldn't run. "I –she wasn't supposed to be in here! I didn't mean to! I love her, whole living star of power or not! But fuck! This hurts!"
Brina was loud enough when she closed the house's door that the adults could stop arguing before she got in. She silently padded into the bathhouse with one of Eupa's cups in tow, filled it with hot water from the cauldron, and presented it to Eupa.
Eupa's brow furrowed curiously and her lips pursed. "I c-can't reach anything."
"To drink, to get warm," Brina barely mumbled. Eupa took it and gave the weakest nod. She then drank it and let herself collapse to the floor. Brina brought her a towel and a dress and did her best to help her aunt put them on, round eyes wide and pouting mouth pursed.
"That was a good idea, thank you, Brinarini. You didn't do anything wrong," she repeated. "Did I cuss you when it happened?"
Brina nodded silently.
Eupa obviously felt kicked by the response, curling into herself and frowning at the floor. Which was good, 'cos otherwise Brotz would be why she felt kicked. "Kay, well, I'm an asshole."
Brina nodded silently and they smiled at one another.
Brina checked Brotz's face, but he nodded. She smiled weakly and murmured in the tiniest voice, "Aunt Eupa, you're an asshole."
"Verrry good," she cheered breathlessly. "Now, g-g-go sit down."
Brotz wanted to send Brina back in but between letting her out of sight and not trusting her to stay, he figured it wouldn't help, so he let her perch on her bathing stool against the wall. Despite Eupa's attempts at cheering her up, she was small and gray in the night dress like a little ghost in the corner. He wished he could help her but he had guilt problems of his own.
So he focused instead on what to do if Eupa actually died. Obviously that would be bad, and Brina would be torn up, but most importantly, it would mean she killed Eupa. At that kind of power, there would be other people out to kill Brina just for having it. Eupa was tough, had taken beatings from faeries, fought off mages, slaughtered an army, and Brotz tried at least a few times and couldn't get the job done before she got away. (Freezing her into a giant ice block seemed to work. He never would have thought of that.) If Brina managed it on accident…
"Aunt Eupa?"
The former adventurer was as curled on her side as she could get, leg and arms pulled in under the towel, no longer shivering. Brotz tried to block Brina's view but the little girl wove between his legs and dropped onto her aunt. "Aunt Eupa!"
Too late for anything but what they were already doing. The cracks weren't deep enough, and he'd chiseled some from her knee, but the hot water wasn't doing enough. He was afraid to get too close with the poker, but it didn't matter– it was still a long way to go.
Eupa slowly got an arm over Brina and hugged her close and kissed her head, then pushed her back. "I'm okay." Her voice was barely a whisper. "Get outta your daddy's way."
Brotz got a handhold on a cracked chunk and ripped it away, leaving her leg just a couple of inches down along most of its length with the ice now sloping along her shin. He hesitated and she snickered at him. "I can't feel anything. Just pull, it'll come out of socket."
He knew, but he was afraid it would go a little more than out of socket before it actually came out. "You are not helping."
"Fuck yourself."
He tried to jam the fire poker in at the "top", near her foot, but he narrowly missed the gray extremity and decided that wasn't the best idea.
Hot water made him a groove to work with, and he hooked a finger into the gap at her knee and pulled until a chunk of ice snapped off. He got two fingers in and kept going, forcing his way through three inches of ice down the length of the block. The sharp shards sprayed into his face as he ripped up the remaining layer and finally, her leg was dislodged.
Eupa slid back and kicked the light gray limb floppily, and Brina rushed forward with a towel to throw over her shoulders, and threw herself into Eupa's lap, hugging her chest and weeping.
Brotz glared death at his companion while she awkwardly pet Brina's back and straightened her hair. She needed the warmth, and if she pushed Brina away right now, he was going to put her back into the ice. She didn't resist at all, instead wrapping Brina into her arms and the towel with her, shivering silently as the color slowly returned to her lips.
Brina eased off Eupa's chest and sat close under her dark caretaker's right arm, fiddling with the terry cloth and trying to hide the pout. He pet her back again and kissed her hand. "You didn't do anything wrong," he promised.
"I almost killed Aunt Eupa," Brina whimpered, barely able to look her father in the face.
"I'mmm nnnot evennn ssssort of d-d-dead," Eupa argued through chattering teeth. Without the ice freezing a leg and a half, the healthy dark was returning to the gray skin, and her lips were already back to normal. "Just c-c-cold. F-f-fu–cold. Your D-d-add-d-dy is right, we're your f-f-fam'ly. T-t-tough family jus' f-for B-Brina."
