"House magic?" Dar-La said with a confused expression.
I chuckled and shook my head "A creative use of earth magic is all. I could just as easily use the spell to skewer someone from below if I wished." I explained honestly.
"This one does not understand. Do spells not come in the same shapes?" Ko-Ra asked with a frown that looked like a snarl on her face.
"You are not to blame for that misunderstanding. That idea was popularized because of book mages. The ones who learn spells exclusively from spell books. Still a mage of course but limited to only what is within those pages. I use free magic. I create my own spells and have very different limits. What I understand and can control namely." I explained calmly.
"This one believes they understand. This spell is one you made then?" Dar-La asked and I nodded. "Why not record it into a book and sell it then? Such a useful spell would be very well received especially by the empire." she suggested.
I shrugged "Maybe one day, but not today." I said before ducking into my hut and using magic to close it up minus the air holes.
My caution proved well founded as well into the night there was a commotion outside my hut when some thieves decided to target me. Dro-Qa tore them apart when he heard them chipping at my hut softly with a knife. On one of their bodies I found a journal that explained why they were here.
"The healer kid is leaving town. Marius and Omar want to rob that juicy chunk of gold we know he's got stashed. We'll use it to lay up pretty for the rest of our lives once we've got the scratch. We move at night."
I could only shake my head after reading that but wasn't terribly surprised. These three weren't long for the world even if Dro-Qa hadn't gotten to them first. Anyone who was anyone in the guild knew that my size and muscles weren't just for show even if I hadn't been practicing with my sword openly these last couple years. It was also an openly known fact that I was a mage. It was practically thievery 1-0-1 not to pick a target that could render you little more than paste if you got caught, this went doubly so when that person was WELL acquainted with how thieves worked.-
Honestly even if they got my bag without me or Dro-Qa murdering the hell out of them they'd die the moment they opened it with the rune traps I had all over the latches. Unlike in the game were rune traps were these massive glowing circles that only an idiot or someone without any choice would walk into the real ones could be VERY small if the mage casting them was good enough. Mine were about the size of my thumbnail and were all keyed to go off if anyone who wasn't me tried to open the latches. -
Imagine several hand grenades going off simultaneously and turn it all into electricity and you understand what the consequences of the wrong person fucking around were. The best part was I had them set up in such a way that the bag itself would be untouched by the magic. Additionally because I was paranoid from growing up in Riften I had small hidden tracking runes carved into literally everything that I actually cared about. Anything short of leaving this world entirely would fail to keep me from coming to get my shit back.-
The rest of the night went by quietly and the bodies had been dragged off while we slept. I made us a quick smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel breakfast before Dro-Qa got hooked up to the wagon and we set off in the morning as the sun was rising. I got some funny looks from the caravan for my choice of mount but they didn't say anything about it. One particular bit of conjuration magic I went out of my way to learn was the [Summon mount] spell that took me a ridiculous amount of effort to figure out from historical texts from the second era when it was originally created and promptly lost.-
The way the spell worked was much the same as most summoning spells in that it used a specific configuration to summon a magically bonded sort of pseudo-familiar that could serve as a mount. The downside was the creature you summoned the first time was what you were stuck with even if you'd really prefer something else. I did, I SO wanted something else. Instead I was stuck with a mount that turned heads whenever I had it summoned.-
A big ass toad.
To be fair it was some sort of daedric species with dark blue skin that had glowing green light coming from under it's belly. It also wasn't technically a toad since it didn't move by hopping but had four lizard-like limbs it walked with. The body and face of the thing just screamed TOAD though. It even croaked! Despite not being the biggest fan of it's looks I had to at least admit it was very comfortable to ride. It even had combat abilities since it could spit acid. Steering it was also pretty easy as I just had to grab the curled ram-like horns at the back of it's head and push for go faster and pull for slow down, left and right were the same.-
We didn't talk while we traveled as we were keeping our eyes and ears on a swivel for threats. Just like in the game the wilds between settlements were a dangerous place even when on the road as bandits, monsters and particularly unfriendly animals could show up at any moment. As if to prove this point we ended up getting ambushed towards the end of the day by bandits.-
A single dirty rough shaven nord man stood in the center of the road with his right hand resting on the sword at his hip and fur armor adorning his body.
"This can go easy or hard. Your choice. Hand over your gold and jewelry and you can go. Fight back and my boys will fill you with arrows and we'll take it off your corpses." the bandit said loudly as we approached.
I looked around carefully and scoffed "three." I said loudly.
"What?" the bandit asked with an impatient look as he shifted in place.
"You only have three people. You and the two to our right and left in the shade of those trees. You aren't even a warm up." I said calmly as I clenched my right fist in front of me and a orb of ominous purple light shot up when I opened it.
The orb turned into three purple bolts of lightning that flashed before vanishing, right into the heads of all three bandits.
"FWOOMP!"
The eerie clap of the magic in the air was the only sound we heard before all three bandits dropped to the dirt missing their heads. There was no bleeding from the neck, no struggling, just cauterized shut stumps on three pairs of shoulders.