Broken Toys (Fyr)

 A/N: Working on the storytelling collectives 2024 April writing challenge very very slowly and queuing them for later as I go as I'm about to be buried in finals work. Feral child Ayron is my second favorite Ayron only slightly behind chaotic adult Ayron so have little Ayron fighting some spoiled rich kid.

Prompt: My boy only breaks his favorite toys

Since taking on Ayron as an apprentice I have found myself in a number of scenarios I never would have expected to be in, even considering all the places I have traveled over the years and the many people I have met, some more curious than others. Ayron and I had taken a rare trip to the mainland as I had some business to take care of and he is still too young to be left at the tower without direct supervision. While I am sure Uupse and Delte would let no harm come to him I am less certain about Alfe, who at times does not realize that some people have a much more functional sensitivity to pain than she does, and Beyte who has begun to exhibit strange and rather concerning almost jealous behavior. It was in the best interest of everyone that I simply bring the boy with me, he seems to learn best by watching and copying anyways. Since the Telvanni are not on the best of terms with the Mages Guild, their founder was a bit of an idiot anyways, and the local inns were all full Ayron and I find ourselves staying with a wealthy nobleman who is more or less related to the reason we are here in the first place. There is a bit of a language barrier for Ayron who is used to speaking a very different dialect that has little to no mutual intelligibility but he manages and thankfully has been able to pick up the common tongue very quickly which serves as a good alternative. The nobleman is courteous enough, not particularly interesting, and rather pompous, but I suppose I’ve met worse nobles. His wife and son greet us as well upon our arrival and seem to be similar, boring and full of themselves. The boy is a few years older than Ayron and stands easily a head taller if not more and there is something slightly off about him, though I cannot place what it is. Something in his eyes warns me to keep a close eye on Ayron while we are here. After tea the noble's son asks Ayron if he would like to go play with him, Ayron initially politely declines but the brat does not take no for an answer and complains to his father, who then strongly urges me to have Ayron go. After whispering to Ayron to place a mark and recall spell should something go wrong I send him off. With the children gone the conversation quickly turns to business and more serious topics beyond the weather and the state of the current harvest. Around an hour later the conversation is suddenly interrupted by a rather frazzled Ayron who had in fact utilized the mark and recall spell and landed in the dining room, luckily he managed to avoid hitting the table on impact. The nobleman and I quickly get up and rush over to him, it looks almost as if he had been running through some hedges the way he’s bruised and scraped up. Reminds me of the time Naomi did such a thing, those scratches didn’t heal for weeks. Moments later the older boy comes running in the door and into the dining room shouting in between breathless pants. He doesn’t look in great shape either, in fact he looks worse. The nobleman and I both demand to know what happened and get differing accounts. The older boy tells of how he just wanted to play with Ayron and Ayron kept refusing to play. Ayron however interrupts his retelling, which I can sense is not telling the whole truth, and says the boy tried to break his arm and repeatedly kept trying to poke him with a stick. That was not a good idea, and explains the poor state of both boys. While not all that tall and not even the strongest or most athletically inclined Ayron still spent much of his earlier childhood on a rural farm. He is not particularly tall but he can handle himself. Years of helping with manual labor in a sometimes hostile environment will do that to you, the boy knows how to defend himself. The nobleman seems unphased even at Ayrons accusations. I turn to the father now given his unsettlingly casual demeanor and ask how he can remain that way in the face of such a situation. He replies just as casually that his boy only breaks his favorite toys, those words alone make me all the more outraged. At the explanation Ayron curses the man, though he does so with words the noble cannot understand and the confused man looks to me for clarification. I translate without a second thought, before helping Ayron off the ground, dusting him off quickly and announcing that it seems we have overstayed our welcome and will be going now. The moronic nobleman and his son stand dumbfounded in their dining room, and the wife is thoroughly confused as we make our quick exit. I tell her to keep a better eye on her son, and to perhaps teach him some social skills before we leave. There are other places we can stay in Mournhold, and if needed it will be quite easy to arrange the disposal of a certain nobleman thanks to the Morag Tong and their very useful services. Ayron tells me as we walk through the city how the boy tried to break his arm, though he wasn’t doing it right, and if anything it’s the other kid who now has a broken arm, as Ayron has been learning his anatomy…and seemingly putting it to use.