— fayr knyghte, me repenteth of thy hurte

yet more Art! I am developing an addiction I fear! This time it is my beloved ttrpg character Voen Helsdottir (left) and her adopted brother Vadim, played by the wonderful @morte-darthur 🩶

Adolf Hiremy-Hirschl (1860-1933) 

— ask to be added to tag list.

title: twin primes

genre: dark academia high fantasy

setting: unsure how to describe. think industrialised lotr

features: fantasy higher academia, the intersection of magic & mental illness, academic rivalry built around a morally dubious authority figure, sibling hauntings, time loops if you squint, unpalatable victims, m/f central pairing but in a problematic and codependent way (that is the dog she kicks), a magic system best described as if dnd warlocks met annihilation, nd & lgbt characters, tw sa

influences: this is functionally my attempt at rewriting katabasis (rf kuang). other inspirations include annihilation (jeff vandermeer), harrow the ninth (tamsyn muir), howl's moving castle (diana wynne jones), and a combination of dnd 5e/call of cthulhu

draft: fighting through the 1st

summary:

Naira of Rosemont's life is finally in her own hands, and she hasn't hesitated in making something of it.

In a world where magic comes from outside it, requiring you to bend your mind in its shape in order to be accessed, Naira is the first of her family to step into its legacy– and from there, all should be smooth sailing. She's graduated with flying colours from her studies at an arcane academy, and is currently in the final stretch of her apprenticeship with prolific, similarly first generation archmage Art Rosemont. She should have a long and brilliant career spanning ahead of her as an archmage herself.

However, just as much as Naira pours herself into her future, so too is she struggling to hide the true state of her present– in attempting to bend her mind into managing magic, how can she face up to having accidentally broken it instead?

Having found something to care about for possibly the first time ever, Naira is loathe to let it go– and the stakes are higher than ever now that Art has taken on a second, naturally magically attuned apprentice under his wing, one waiting on her every stumble; let alone partnered him with her to investigate an advent of inexplicable magical phenomena.

Naira is willing to do more than anything to keep this life. Still, the more she pulls from magic the more it slowly but surely pulls back in turn, blurring her days, haunting her nights, and lending the terrifying question: by the end of her apprenticeship, how much of her will still even be her to appreciate it?

excerpt: