Godspire Chpt 1

     Victoria. Capital city of the Victoriam, home of the Infinite University, seat of the Academy of Syence. One of the only large cities to survive the False Apocalypse, and the place where Arron Freeblood, now Arron Lightbringer, declared the start of a new age for humanity.

     "What a shithole." Corbis murmured, swiping at a pigeon that had settled along side him on the roof of his family's small shop. He spent a lot of up here, and was generally ambivalent toward the flying plague-rats. Not today.

     The building the shop was in was two stories tall. First floor was the shop itself, the second was where his family lived. It was an above average height for the Row, Victoria's middle class mercantile district. All around him stood squat, single floor shops, clustered side by side on cramped streets, a symptom of the changing times. The city had exploded in population, meaning less room for everybody. Below Corbis, the streets were like the arteries of a fat man. Strained and cramped little blood vessel people dodging obstacles and each other as they made their way back home from the important organs of the city.

"Corb?" Meryn asked, her head popping up from the roof's edge.|

"Yeah, I'm up here," He responded sullenly. He stepped over and grabbed his sister's hand, helping her up onto the roof.

"Thanks. Mom and Dad are looking for you."

"I know."

"Rough night in the workshop?"

Corbis sighed, walking over to the far side of the roof. Heights were never his thing, but he really liked this view. There was a space between the bakery and the currency exchange, and he could see for miles. The New Mongery bustling with ships coming in from all over the Settled Coast. Past that, the island that held the Invisible University. The semester had ended, but he could see the occasional flash of constructs. First years showing off, no doubt.

"He still thinks I'm going to drop out, take up the knife."

She referred to the family profession. Arron’s father, also named Corbis, was a runic fletcher. He created arrows with runes so small they were difficult to read, let alone carve. Runic incantations could do anything from make them impossibly light, to making them penetrate even the hardest steel. Corbis Sr was the premier runic fletcher in Victoria, and before longer campaigns the line at his door snaked its way along half the length of the Row. But his vision was failing, and it wouldn’t be long before he couldn’t carve the tiny ancient language anymore.

Meryn plopped down on the edge, legs swinging back and forth with carefree ease.

"If you don't take it, the shop goes to me!" she shouted, then dropped into a pretty good impression of Corbis' whining tone, "Spending ten hours a day making identical arrows for dumbass sellswords and jerkass royals? Not exactly my ideal career in life."

"Figured out what you do want to do?" He asked, genuinely curious.

She shrugged. "It's a tossup between illustrious mountain climber and globe-trekking ruin diver. I could get a cool hat and some friends, try to climb the Tempest Mountains, or search the seas for the Colossi of Tlaxicopi. I might even need a mage on occasion. Do the heavy lifting, fight off savages, some light filing. Could be nice."

He smirked. Even when he felt like shit, his sister always had ways of making him feel less like a sack of sad. "I'll think about it."

“Good. Now come on down. Nobody is pissed or anything. They just need help reaching something, and Mom has been paranoid of standing on chairs ever since the Incident.”

Corbis smirked. His freakish height had made him the titan of the household, even if he still couldn’t match his father in strength.

“Alright. Be right down.”

Meryn  jumped up and made her way down off the roof. Corbis stared for a moment at the city around him. The tops of several Godspires peeked up above the clutter of buildings. Soaring above them all was the tallest Godspire in the world, the Monument Godspire. There, almost a thousand feet in the air, Arron Lightbringer managed the Victoriam.

Arron Lightbringer.

If they printed posters of famous politicians/magic users/saviours of civilization, Corbis’ room would have been decorated with that man’s face like a fangirl of some awful modern band. What he did have were dozens of books about him, page upon page of his legend. When he was young, Corbis loved the Heroic Age tales the most. His adventures to the farthest corners of the globe, defeating monsters and malcontents in his shining golden armour, wielding sorcery and steel alike.

As he got older, his interest turned to Arron’s life after the False Apocalypse. Taking special space on his bookshelf was To Hell and Back, Arron’s own published account of how he opened the last portal to the Underworld, and tricked the Lord of the Hells himself into creating a new form of magic. Phosphomancy. With it, he fought off the pretender kings and the bandit thieves, and established the Victoriam. Regardless of time period though, Corbis’ idolized Arron. It was part of the reason he was even a mage to begin with.

Corbis moved to the back of the store, where he could lower himself back onto the street. Tomorrow was his Proving, the test all mages had to take to prove what they had learned. To prove if he could be in the same order as the Lightbringer. If he was worthy.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he wasn’t.