Chapter 14

Chapter 14

“Have you ever ventured into Ar’Kendrithyst to deliver information on Spur’s Incani population to the neighboring town of Frontier, or any other human settlement?”

Hera’s questions had gotten progressively more esoteric as the interview turned from ‘some questions’ into an hour-long interrogation, with more than a few of her inquiries asked in subtly different ways than she had before. When it looked like the interview would take more than two minutes, Erick suggested they move to the couch nearby. Hera agreed. Now it seemed like he was stuck to the couch, forever forced to answer the same damn questions over and over. Erick hoped that his torture would be over soon.

“No. I have never been in Ar’Kendrithyst or delivered information to any humans, anywhere.”

The stone in Hera’s hand glowed pink, meaning that Erick had lied somewhere along the way.

Hera eyed him.

“Uh. I have never been in Ar’Kendrithyst.”

Green stone.

“I have never delivered information to any humans in Frontier.”

Green stone.

“I have never delivered information to any humans anywhere.”

Pink stone—

“OH! Right. I probably delivered a lot of non-Veird information to many humans back on Earth through the years.” He went back to answering Hera’s question, “I have never delivered any information on any incani anywhere to any humans on Veird, except for to my daughter Jane. You know... Because they’re out to kill us.”

Green stone, throughout.

Hera wrote down notes onto a pad of paper she used for the interview. She wrote for a full minute. She straightened her back. “Final question—”

Oh thank god.

“Do you know last night’s Sewerhouse intruders, what they wanted, or anything about them, at all?”

“They attacked fast, but Savral and Bacci responded fast, too. They saved our lives. That’s all I know about what happened last night, except that the attackers used some green fireballs that caused Decay, which I already described to you. And I almost died.” He added, “The intruders might have come for the rads? I honestly don’t know.”

Green stone.

Hera put away her interview equipment, saying, “Thank you for your time, Mister Flatt. If only all my victims were this easy to talk to.”

“Victims?” Erick chuckled. He felt annoyed and angry after an hour of questions, but he wouldn’t call himself a victim. It wasn’t that bad. “You make yourself sound sinister.” But maybe she meant what she said?

“Ah. That’s not what... You’re right.” Hera moved to the back of the room, heading toward the other three interviews she had to give. “I hope Spur treats you better than it has.”

Erick laid down on the couch while Hera walked downstairs. The interview was over!

... Now he had to wait for all the others to finish.

Damn.

He almost fell asleep on the couch, right there and then, but someone cleared their throat across the room. Oh. Right. Bluescale was still there. Wasn’t he in a trance, staring at the ceiling? When did that stop?

Felair said, “[Witness] revealed you’re all innocent of any wrongdoing, and that’s what I’m telling Merit. The Mage Guild is going to bitch, claim you should have defended the Sewerhouse, but they’re idiots. They weren’t here.” He moved toward the back of the room, muttering, “And that fool child needs to [Scry] already but she can’t help gnawing on a secret.”

Erick barely watched as Felair descended the stairs. His eyes were already closed.

Naps are wonderful.

- - - -

Jane poked him awake, saying, “They’re gone and we’re done, Dad. Let’s go get lunch. Al’s buying.”

“I most certainly am!” Al said. “You all did great last night and deserve a reward.”

Erick stomach rumbled. Lunch was a great idea.

Al treated them to a restaurant meal in the Orcol District. The prices were huge. The meal was massive. The people all around him were so beautiful, and so tall, that Erick had to keep his eyes down at the food the whole time. They ate a lot, and it was quite good, but if asked to describe his meal, Erick would have flubbed something about ‘good meat’ and ‘nice atmosphere’.

Al introduced Jane and Erick to several remarkably pretty people. Jane might later recognize whoever they talked to, but Erick could only hope that he hadn’t embarrassed himself by openly staring. The debut release of this chapter happened at Ñøv€l-B1n.

Every single orcol was a physical masterpiece. Beautiful shades of cream-green, to ebony-green, to forest green, with luxurious hair, piercing eyes of every color from red to blue to black, tiny and cute fangs or big and menacing fangs, sharp jaws and firm asses, and muscles and breasts and—

When lunch was over, Erick was thankful that he hadn’t made an ass of himself. Or, if he had, that no one had mentioned his wandering gaze.

It wasn’t till they were one street away from the Sewerhouse that Erick noticed something slightly different in his Status.

Erick Flatt

Human, age 48

Level 9, Class: None

Exp: 247/5500

Class: -/-

Points: 8

HP

90/90

150 per day

MP

532/532

532 per day

Strength

9

+0

[9]

Vitality

15

+0

[15]

Willpower

20

+0

[20]

Focus

20

+0

[20]

He checked his notices and— Yup! There it was.

Congratulations!

You have grown Stronger

+1 Strength!

“I got plus 1 Strength from that meal.”

Al laughed loud, patting him on the back, almost sending him sprawling to the ground.

Savral laughed too, saying, “Only took a hundred gold of monster meat.”

Erick paled.

Al just laughed again, saying, “You all survived! Be happy!”

- - - -

“Hey, Jane? Have you seen our cellphones?”

“Me!”

“Come on then. I’m Tamarim.” They walked through the lobby, then under an archway that separated the front rooms of the guildhouse from a two story hallway with rooms on each side, and a tall picture window at the end. Tamarim opened the second door on the right, on the first floor. Erick couldn’t see how anyone could access the second floor. “In here.”

Tamarim went in first. Erick followed.

The room was basic stone, twenty by twenty feet, maybe ten feet tall, with a window opposite the entrance. Several simple chairs were stacked in the corner by a short, mobile desk. Tamarim moved the table away from the wall then set down two chairs, one on each side of the table, before pulling out a sheet of paper and a pencil.

Tamarim sat down, ready to write. “Name?”

“Erick Flatt.”

“What certifications are you trying for?”

“Uh. [Mend], [Cleanse], and lightward work, but I’m not very good with lightwards yet, so I’m not sure what sort of qualifications I’m going to need. Or... Where to go from here.”

Tamarim nodded, checking off boxes on his paper, then scribbling something else down.

“What—”

Tamarim said, “The first two I don’t need to certify. If it turns out you’re a liar, then you’re in for a bad time. Though for lightwork, I need to see something. Give me a few of your best and one of your worst.”

“... okay.”

Erick moved toward the center of the room then began casting, exactly how he had a few hours ago, trying to recreate that faux-cut-crystal orb. He burst 20 mana into [Ward] and started Mana Shaping for 30 at the same time, creating the basic structure of his lightward. He poured mana in to the spell in 1 point increments, flowing around a blob of white light, like grains of sand rushing around a glittering sphere cotton candy, pulling stray threads of light into a better form.

A surface formed, hard-looking as glass but soft as an illusion. Still, he poured mana into the [Ward], shaping a dozen cuts in the surface all at the same time, twisting the carving around the whole, leaving behind a pattern of perfect geometry. The color shifted from white, then kept shifting. He thought to hold the color to white, but he knew as soon as he thought to do that, the whole thing would mess up.

Which it did.

65 mana spent, this [Ward] was a failure.

Tamarim asked, “Were you trying for a lumpy pink and orange shadowolf?”

Erick tilted his head at the lightward. “Shadowolves look like that?”

“PFFFT.” Tamarim snorted. “In an unrealistic cute sort of way.”

“No... I was not going for that.”

“Keep going.”

The next orb was a 75 mana perfect glass sphere with cut lines and radiant white light.

But the sphere itself was invisible.

Shit.

“Invisible light source is an interesting choice,” Tamarim said. “Continue?”

The next lightorb was an attempt at a 35 mana [Ward 3], with no Mana Shaping. It was an orb of green sludge that actively dripped onto the ground. The drips vanished after a second. The main sludgeball did not.

“Are you trying for an artistic wardlight license?” Tamarim said, “Because that’s not a thing you can get certified for. You get noticed by patrons and they give you work. That’s how that works.”

Erick grumbled, then tried again.

52 mana, a half-baked idea, and a quarter time spent shaping the mana, produced a fractured crystal of daylight that was like looking at the sun through a splintered mirror.

Tamarim leaned back in his chair. The incani from the front desk was leaning against the doorframe. She sniffed, then walked away. Tamarim, though, he looked interested.

“I like it.” He said, “I like it a lot.” He quickly added, “But nothing I’ve seen qualifies you for lightorb work. Would you like to keep trying?”

“I got more in me than that.”

“I’m sure you do, but if I can’t see you produce three perfect sunlight orbs in a row I’m not qualifying you for lightwork.”

“... Fair. I still got levels to go on [Ward] anyway, so this isn’t a waste of time. Not for me, anyway.”

“Your [Ward] isn’t capped?”

“Only level 6 right now. Why? Does that do anything for me?”

“Probably not.” Tamarim waved toward the empty space in the room. “Keep going?”

“Yes.”

45 mana, most of an end-goal thought, and half crafting time, made a perfect sunlight orb.

“Huh.”

“Very good then,” Tamarim said. “Two more to go.”

45 mana, most of an end-goal thought, and half crafting time, made a blacklight. The sclera of Erick’s eyes shone purple, the white of his shirt glowed purple, even his jeans took on a purple tint.

“Of course,” Erick said. “The exact opposite of what I was going for.”

“Well that’s an odd one. Don’t do another. Just— One minute.” Tamarim left the room.

Erick waited.

Tamarim returned with Anhelia in tow. She glanced at a few of Erick’s lightorbs, but stopped on the fractured sun and the blacklight. She moved from one to the other, not sure which interested her more.

But what interested Erick was that the blacklight turned Anhelia into a glowing purple person.

“Hmm,” she said.

Anhelia walked around, half of her iron body soaking in the sun, the other half fluorescing purple.

“Dismiss the rest, except for these two.”

Erick went and did as she asked. As each competing light source vanished, the effect of the fractured sun and the blacklight increased. Before, she was grey-black with yellow highlights and a purple side. Now she was black with gold highlights and a radiant purple shadow. She looked amazing.

“Okay. These are beautiful.” Anhelia turned to Erick, looking the part of a demonic goddess. “You don’t qualify for lightorb work, but this is good anyway. If you can duplicate any of these lights you’ve just made, you will have people asking for your light orbs across the world. But I don’t think you can, because almost no one can actually make these things. Over the next twenty four hours we will be dissecting these orbs to figure out how you made them. If we can, you will be well compensated.” She frowned. “Don’t get your hopes up. They look like random chance masterpieces. These things happen.”

She turned toward the blacklight orb, her horns shining purple in the light. She sighed.

Tamarim said, “If you wish to continue the examination we will do so in another room.”

“Uh! Yeah. Let’s do that. I still got mana.”

40 mana produced a sunlight orb.

42 mana produced a sunlight orb.

41 mana produced a misty grey orb that screamed. Erick didn’t know how it was screaming. Neither did Tamarim. Light orbs were not supposed to make noise! Erick dismissed that orb as soon as Tamarim pronounced it a failure, which was exactly 10 second too late to stop other people from investigating the room.

Anhelia said, “I don’t know how you did that, but wardlights should not scream.”

“I’m not even capped at the skill. I have no idea how that happened!”

“Okay. So. It’s cute how you think that that is supposed to be an answer to how you caused an impossible thing. But it’s not.” She left the room as quickly as she arrived, saying, “I don’t think that was a [Ward 3] at all!”

Tamarim turned on Erick. “Was that something other than a [Ward 3]?”

“It was a [Ward 3]! I wasn’t even using Mana Shaping for the last lot.” Erick deflated. He wasn’t low on mana, but he was already tired. “I’ve gone through five mana pools today. I’m done.”

Tamarim nodded. “Okay.” He scribbled on the paper he had been writing on, then handed it to Erick. “This is your filled out form. Hand this into one of the receptionists up front and pay your fee, and we can come back to this lightorb certification some other day.” He pointed at the two floating sunlight orbs Erick had managed to make. “You’re very close. You were almost at 3 in a row. You can dismiss them now.”

Erick waved his hand and his certification failures vanished.

- - - -

Erick turned in the paperwork and waited half an hour to be called over to the receptionist. The bronzescale girl behind the counter handed him a silverish metal token that looked like a dogtag, with his name on one side and his guild number on the back. ‘SPR-179b105-1317’ was the only understandable part of the number, the rest of it was a swirling design that flowed around the entirety of the badge.

“The badge costs an extra 3 silver, for a total of 8 silver today,” she said. “Would you like to purchase a chain to turn the token into a necklace? This is an extra 2 silver.”

They always get you with the upcharges, don’t they?

“Sure”, he said, annoyed, but trying not to show it.

He slid the receptionist a gold; she slid him the badge on a thin silver chain.

“The Mend-Cleanse-Light job board is that one over there. You’re only certified for the first two portions of that board.” Bronzescale pointed to a large wooden panel on the side of the lobby, lined roughly into thirds. It was absolutely covered in tiny pieces of paper, affixed to the panel with tiny tacks. Three people were currently reading from the board. Next to that was another wooden panel of roughly the same size. “The one beside the MCL Board is the Esoteric Board. Skills the requester thinks you’re going to need are listed with the most prominent skill first. The whole thing is alphabetical, but most listings this time of year are for [Grow]. Preservation [Ward]s are always popular, too, but not quite popular enough for the MCL Board to become the MCLP Board.” Bronzescale smiled. “Good luck! Welcome to the guild, Erick.”

After perusing the MCL board for a bit, and picking out a job, it was time to open a bank account.

- - - -

Opening a bank account was a non-event, thanks to his Mage Guild membership. Still cost him 1 silver to open the account, though. The Mage Guild liked their silver.

- - - -