The Arcanist's Chronicle

"Bang. Bang. Bang."  

Fists hammered against the thick wooden door.  

Bryan jolted awake in his straw-filled cot, the frigid numbness in his feet stealing his breath. He scrambled up, shouting, "Coming!" Ignoring the stinging cold, he threw on his threadbare tunic, snatched the leather coat that served as a second blanket, and yanked the door open.  

A gust of wind, sharp with ice shards, slapped his face. Outside, Old Charlie hunched on a rickety wagon, a whip in one hand and a pipe clenched in his teeth. Twin tracks scarred the snow-churned road behind the nag.  

"Move your bones, boy," Charlie rasped around the pipe stem. "Road's foul today. Late means trouble."  

Bryan nodded, pulling the door shut. He clambered onto the wagon, its splintered wood biting through his clothes. "Same as every dawn," he thought. Ever since Charlie took him in for this thankless job, the old man's warnings had been as reliable as the winter chill.  

Charlie took a final drag, then cracked the whip. The horse grunted, dragging them forward through the frozen ruts. Bryan leaned against the wagon rail, eyeing the starless sky before closing his eyes. On snowy days like this, the trip to the Viscount's manor took half an hourglass at least. Dawn would break by arrival.  

The familiar scent of cheap tobacco filled Bryan's nostrils. Gratitude warmed him, pushing back the cold. His earliest memory was of snow—endless, blinding snow. Before that, darkness. No past, no kin. Just an urchin scrabbling for scraps in Bitterwell City until Charlie found him. ""Clever lad,"" the old man had muttered, his childless eyes softening. ""When I'm gone, the hut and nag are yours.""  

The shack and swaybacked horse were worthless, yet to Bryan, they meant salvation.  

Their survival hinged on this grim routine: reach the Viscount's manor before dawn, haul away the nobles' night-long revelry—wine-stained rugs, shattered glass, worse—then cart the filth beyond the city walls. Afternoon meant restocking the manor's cellars for the next debauchery. A full day's grind for coppers.  

Half an hourglass later, the wagon's rattle smoothed as cobblestones replaced dirt. Bryan woke instantly. Bitterwell City. He brushed snow from his sleeves—a pointless ritual. The hungover nobles never glanced at servants, but the steward...  

The steward was a vulture in velvet.  

Two hulking guards flanked the manor gates, eyes glazed from night watch. They waved Charlie through without a glance. Bryan slipped inside, head bowed, heading straight for the banquet hall reeking of stale wine and excess.  

Today, tension hung thick as frost. The steward stood at the hall's entrance, beady eyes narrowed to venomous slits. He scurried over, hissing, "Stay here. Eyes down. Ears shut."  

"Yes, sir," they chorused.  

Muffled shouts bled from the hall—a girl's voice, raw with fury. Bryan and Charlie exchanged a glance. "Trouble. Big trouble."  

They waited. One hourglass. Dawn bled across the sky. Their feet stamped uselessly against the deepening cold.  

The steward reappeared, lips curled. "Can't take the chill? Don't bother tomorrow."  

Charlie flinched. With trembling fingers, he fished a silver coin from his rags and pressed it into the steward's palm. "We can, sir. We can."  

A grunt. The coin vanished into velvet folds.  

Suddenly, the hall doors burst open. A girl stormed out, tears streaking her porcelain face. Fine silk whispered around her as she halted near the servants, whirling back to scream into the hall:  

"I won't go to the Lyceum of Witchery! And I'll "never" be a witch!"  

For emphasis, she hurled a book into the snow. It skidded near Bryan's feet before she fled through the gates.  

"Outrageous!" A crimson-faced nobleman waddled out, jowls quivering. Two armored knights flanked him. The Viscount trailed behind, whispering placations like a scolded dog.  

"That foolish girl!" the fat noble spat. "Throwing away a sorcerer's favor for some lovesick fool? In six months, the—"  

Still ranting, the nobles swept past, blind to the servants. The steward scurried after, guards in tow.  

Silence swallowed the courtyard.  

Bryan eyed the abandoned book. As he reached, Charlie's pipe struck his knuckles. "Want to die, boy?"  

"What harm could it do?" Bryan whispered. "We'll say we trashed it. Noble rubbish."  

Charlie scanned the empty yard, then gave a curt nod.  

Bryan tucked the book under his tunic. They worked fast, heaping the night's refuse—shattered goblets, food sludge, sodden tapestries—onto the wagon. No one asked about the book.  

"Just another discarded trinket," Bryan thought. "Like us."  

The overloaded wagon creaked out of Bitterwell. Wide awake now, Bryan pulled out his prize. The cover bore strange, curling script. He frowned. Charlie had taught him letters years ago, after his own shop failed, but these words...  

He sounded them out slowly.  

"Nasus Transformation and the Olfactory Atlas"? What in blazes?"  

He'd hoped for a bard's tale—the kind nobles adored. Instead... "this".  

A jolt shot through him.  

"Could this be... sorcery?"  

Wizards. Beings whispered about by nobles, glimpsed by none. Creatures of dread and dark power, said to slaughter villages, feast on children's eyes, twist men into monsters in hidden labs. Feared. Revered.  

"How?" Bryan had wondered a thousand times. "What secret lets them bend the world? If I had that power..."  

"...no one would call me vermin again."  

Hands trembling, he opened the book. Words blurred, then focused. A new world unfolded:  

"Smell is the art of discerning volatile molecules in the air. Foul stenches dominate half a creature's olfactory range. Humans discern 30 to 400 scents. Rare mutants, 600."  

"Pathetic."  

"The wailhen—a bird whose cry mimics a human infant—detects 6,500 scents. The stinkwing butterfly, which feeds only on decay, knows 8,200..."  

"The apex? Cerberus. Few sorcerers dare hunt the Three-Headed Hound. It discerns 17,852 scents—every odor sorcery has cataloged. Its nose borders on the divine."  

"Nasus Transformation details how sorcerers reshape their own flesh, borrowing the keen senses of beasts. The rituals demand rare reagents... and mastery of the fundamental unit of life: the cell."  

Cell? Bryan mouthed the alien word.  

"Bryan! "Bryan!""  

Charlie's shout startled him. He fumbled the book away, helping tip the reeking load into the frozen dump. The rest of the day blurred—haggling for the Viscount's wine and sweets, hauling crates back to the manor.  

On the return trip, moonlight glinted off the book in Bryan's lap.  

"You're bewitched, lad," Charlie sighed, glancing back. "What's in that damned book?"  

Bryan just grinned, his mind adrift. "Mountains that walk? Rivers flowing from the sky? Other worlds?" The questions burned. "How does magic truly work?"  

"You're seventeen now," Charlie murmured. "Next year, we'll fix up the hut. Find you a wife. Let me see a grandchild before this old bones turn to dust."  

"Stop that," Bryan mumbled, eyes glued to the page. "You'll outlive us all. Rule the world, even."  

Charlie chuckled, steering the nag home. The road ahead was dark, but Bryan's mind blazed with impossible light.  

Old Charlie never lived to see the day Bryan took a wife and bore children; he returned to the earth before then.

It was the beginning of spring. The biting winter winds had begun to soften. After finishing a day’s work, Old Charlie and Bryan had bought a small cask of ale and several pounds of meat from the town, preparing to start the house renovation plan the next day. Finding a wife for Bryan was also officially on the agenda.

Unfortunately, the very next morning, Old Charlie was unable to rouse Bryan for work.

Old Charlie had departed with a smile on his face. Whether it was due to the good ale and meat the night before, or because all his wishes had come true in his dreams, even as Bryan hired a few farmhands to bury him, his face still wore that familiar, easygoing smile.

The pipe Old Charlie treasured most, Bryan buried with him.

Old Charlie’s sudden departure left Bryan feeling adrift for a long while, but life went on. Bryan became the owner o