Not So Epic- Chapter 1

Meet Dren

Chapter One

            Dren awoke to the metallic rattle of the tiny hammer on his alarm clock smacking two little bells in a back-and-forth swing loud enough to hurt. He flung one hand on it, flipping the switch that would deactivate the device, groaning as he sat up in his narrow bed. Of all of the technological advances the dwarves held credit for, he felt this was perhaps their most sinister, in its own way. The narrow human rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands, swung off his bed, and stumbled to the privy in order to make his morning water.

            After flushing, he hopped in the shower to clean up for the day. He hadn’t had the opportunity the night before, dragging himself up to the apartment above the forge so late that he’d simply guided himself straight to his bed, managing only to take off his soot-stained leather apron and gloves before collapsing toward sleep. Apprenticing to Norto had always been rewarding work, but the old master smithy had no bones about working the young man to the brink of exhaustion and beyond. In addition to being tired, Dren had known that running the shower late at night would have woken the older human in his room at the opposite end of the hall, making him grumpy and intolerable in the morning.

            As it was, Norto’s basset hound face didn’t look particularly cheerful when Dren ambled into the kitchen freshly scrubbed and dressed for another day’s labors. Wearing a simple gray tunic with black buttons and breeches of a similar color, with faded brown moccasins on his feet, the master smithy sat with his coffee untouched before him, the Desanadron Times open in his hands. He turned his head to look at Dren as the young man poured himself a cup and joined him at the table, small eyes squinting hard.

            “What time did you get done with lieutenant Saffor’s armor,” Norto asked, his voice a round, robust tone one might expect to hear from a sailor calling down from the crow’s nest. There was an energy that seemed in opposition to his visual affect, which was plain, straight-spoken and gruff. Yet his voice made him seem almost, well, approachable.

            “I’m not sure,” said Dren. The young man considered how strange a pair the two must look to most newcomers. Where Norto was squat and built almost like a dwarf, Dren was tall, lanky, and positively angular. Norto was sure-footed, though slow to move, where Dren could take to heel like a leaf in the breeze, with similar movement patterns thanks to his tendency toward clumsiness. He could trip over his own feet just going down the road to the heart of the massive city’s market. Not that walking was much necessary in mighty Desanadron in the Fourth Age; professional autocart drivers could be hired to take one all over the sprawling metropolis at all hours of the day. As the capital of the entire city-state named after it, Desanadron hosted nearly one million Tamalarian denizens at all times. Dren loved the buzz of life in the city, where Norto could do without the crowds and noise and seeming self-absorption of natives who’d never lived anywhere but the city.

            “Must’ve been late, I imagine,” said Norto. He took a token sip of his coffee. “But it’s done, I trust? Entirely?”

            “Entirely, even the gorget,” said Dren. He stretched his arms and legs to either side, slumping in his seat before taking a long pull of his own drink. “I already hung the order up on the display hooks for when he comes in today. Have I got any other assignments to tend to today, or just the usual walk-ins?”

            “Walk-ins today, lad,” said Norto. “You can probably knock off early today, too, but you’re going to have the forge to yourself today. I’ve got a meeting with the Fraternity of Master Smiths in a couple of hours, and I need to get my head straight for it, then go and talk to them about giving you their official blessing.” Dren nearly sprayed coffee, gasping it down hard and looking at his master with eyes wide as a child’s when they see snow for the first time falling from the sky. Well, most children; dwarves tend not to show such amazement about much of anything.

            “You mean,” he stammered. Norto, rarely given to smiling, managed a half-grin that took a few years off of his countenance.

            “Yes, Dren. By day’s end, you will on your way to being recognized as a master smithy by Tamalaria’s most respected collection of craftsmen,” said Norto. “However, that does not mean you can dally about today,” he added, waggling one thick finger at the slender young man. “Stay diligent, no matter how small the task may seem. Every great hero who ever rode a horse had the animal shoed by someone, and every legendary blade was shaped by someone’s forge. Keep that in mind.” Dren nodded, trying not to show too much enthusiasm lest the old man go out of his way to quash it. He kept quiet until Norto heaved himself down to the forge to prepare, then fetched himself a quick breakfast of soft rye bread and a wedge of sharp cheddar cheese. As he ate, he took some thick bacon strips from the ice box next to the stove and set them in a pan, sliding them into the oven to bake up nice and crisp. Norto wouldn’t be able to smell anything down in the forge, so he wouldn’t be snatching any from Dren’s supply.

            After eating his bacon, Dren put on his work boots and headed down the stairs to the forge. Norto had left several lamps lit, the shutters still drawn closed so nobody wandering the early morning market would mistake them for being open and try to wander in to try and get ahead of any potential crowds. The older man had already begun warming the work forge itself and laid out the standard set of tools Dren would use throughout the day; four hammers of various sizes, three sets of tongs, a trough filled with ice, and three pairs of pliers used to produce various angles or curves in the equipment he might work on.

            Being in the workshop always put him at ease, but until he got his specialized equipment set up, it wouldn’t be complete. Dren had never been a physically strong youth, and that lack of muscle had continued to his current early adulthood.  As such, in a normal forge, he wouldn’t be able to get much work done in a timely fashion, having to struggle thrice as hard to get the same amount of work done as the average smith. However, Dren possessed something the average smith didn’t- a bucket load of brains.

            Dren walked around behind the primary tool bench and pulled out a pair of brass wheels and several yards of neatly coiled hempen rope. There were three iron hooks that could be tied onto the ropes and attached to the various ingots he would work with, moving them with the pulley system he would arrange before getting to work. If he couldn’t use his pulleys, Dren would rely on the travel forge and equipment, taking the extra time to make sure his work was of the utmost quality.

            As he put on the final hook, a knock came at the rear door of the workshop.  Dren headed to the rear door, sliding a peeping slot aside so he could look out to see who was there. At first he saw nothing but the rear wall of the tavern the forge sat opposite of on the block, but he heard someone say in a gruff voice, “Down ‘ere, lad.” Dren slid the upper view slot shut, crouched down, and opened another one at the level of his own belly. Looking out, he found himself observing the frowning countenance of a dwarven man whose beard covered everything on his face except his eyes and nose. If the little man had a mouth or chin, or neck for that matter, it was hidden behind a tumbleweed of coarse, curly brown hair. But his eyes told Dren everything he needed to know, despite all of that, filled with warmth and good humor. “Good to see you’re up, Dren. Old man about?”

            “No, sir,” Dren replied.

            “Excellent. Let me in and have a look at me axe,” said the dwarf. Dren slid the lower viewer shut, unlocked the door, and cracked it open just wide enough to accommodate the burly dwarven warrior. The dwarf wore simple heavy leather armor over simple cotton tunics, a pair of horsehide boots on his wide, flat feet. He wore no weapons one could easily see at a glance; a black half-cloak covered the two throwing hammers he kept at the small of his back, always ready in case he needed them for work or combat. He smiled at Dren, an expression conveyed only by a mild upward shift in his facial hair. “Where is it then, lad?”

            “I’ve got it over here,” Dren said, leading the dwarf over to the rack where running projects were kept. He plucked off of one hook a long-handled war axe, a double-edged monster that Dren could barely get hefted down from its place on the rack. He turned slowly and set it on a wheeled cart behind him, letting the dwarf give it a look. “As you asked, I’ve drilled alternating holes in the handle shaft for better swinging, shaved the body of the head for better balance, and fixed a stabbing spike on the top. What I have not been able to do is temper the attachment coupling for a permanent hold. I don’t have enough mythril right now to work it in.”

            “When d’you figure the old man’ll get his next shipment in,” asked the dwarf.

            “Friday morning. It’s in the logs already,” Dren said. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Stonefinch, I can try to strip out a couple of the plates from your brigandine and melt them down to finish it before then.” The dwarf replied by removing his rucksack and shrugging out of his cloak, handing it up to Dren. Lined with mythril plates on the interior, each covered by a square of black cloth, the cloak easily weighed fifty to sixty pounds on its own. That Stonefinch could not only move normally, but easily and agilely, with the heavy leather armor, weaponry, and weighted cloak, spoke volumes of his raw physical prowess. Dren hung the cloak over the side of the wheeled cart beside the axe and nodded. “I’ll get right to work on this, sir. But you’ll have to come back later. If master Norto comes back and sees I’ve let you inside early, well,” Dren said, shrugging his shoulders.

            “I know, I know, he’ll have yer hide,” said the dwarf, flapping one hand in dismissal. “Frankly, lad, I think you’re wasting your gods-given talents ‘prenticing to that old blowhard. You should have yer own shop by now.” He offered one thick, callused hand to Dren, shook with the young man, and saw himself out the back door. Dren pushed the cart over to the forge, and with a small, thin knife, began cutting open several of the pouches in the cloak’s lining, drawing out the squares of mythril lining each.  These plates he immediately set inside the forge, grabbing the bellows and working them until the silvery-looking plates began to soften and melt down.

            He waited until the material was entirely fluid, gathered it into a mold, then clamped it around the coupling between the axe head and the shaft. As soon as he had that set, he walked over to the tool shelves where he’d kept his ropes and pulleys, and there he pulled out a small blue cloth sack. He carried it over to the weapon, pulling it open and taking out a pinch of a faint blue powder. He held it up to his mouth and blew the powder toward the axe, the particles swirling in the air before his mouth for a  moment before flashing to life with a brilliant magical flare. Sheets of ice, flapping like small pieces of parchment, fluttered onto the weapon and wrapped around the coupling. They disappeared in seconds, but the effect was apparent; designed to automatically open when the material within cooled to a given range, the clamp popped open and fell to the floor.

            What would have taken a normal smith hours of waiting patiently had taken him less than five minutes to accomplish.

            Dren Laggit didn’t need a title given to him by some collection of old hands. He was already a master smithy. Soon enough there would be another factor that set him apart from just about every other smith in Tamalaria; soon, he would be embarking on a life-changing journey.

**

            Brother Renkit stood with his arms folded over his chest, looking with utter contempt at the cell’s bars. The snoring brute sprawled on a straw pallet in the corner of the cell did not have his hatred or disgust, no; after all, the man was clearly little more than a besotted minotaur, one likely born to the north-central mountain tribes from the markings on his neck and left wrist. The lizardman elder brother didn’t quite know what to make of the man, beyond his unnatural strength. The elder chamber’s doors had once been bludgeoned by an enraged ice giant, and even then had only splintered a little along its outer surface. That this man could strike one hard enough to knock it off of its hinges and send it several dozen feet through the air spoke to powers at work that could only belong to the realm of magic or the gods.

            The minotaur had been carrying a rucksack and waist pack with him when the brothers carried him to the prison cell, an imposing chamber for anyone who couldn’t destroy ancient, rune-protected doors. A quick peek through his waist pouch revealed documentation providing his identity, some of the strange paper currency being circulated around the larger city-states, and several trinkets of little note. He had an identification card from the city of Ja-Wen, capital seat of the city-state of the same name, which proclaimed him to be Andre Dolstov. The identification authorized him to operate an autocart within the city-state, and also designated him as an auxiliary trooper in the event the nation found itself at war. Another card and accompanying papers designated him a member of the Alliance of Shields, a for-hire group of bodyguards who operated mostly out of the fiefdom of Lemago in the south-central plains of Tamalaria.

            A burly ursas, or werebear, wearing the white robes of one of the Brotherhood’s healers, came trundling in from the stairwell leading up from the holding cells. A huge brown-furred fellow with wide, dark eyes, he approached Renkit with his shoulders slouched and his head down. Whatever news he brought, it likely wasn’t good.

            “Elder brother Renkit,” he began in a deep, rolling timber.  The lizardman monk nodded to him and unfolded his arms, instead tucking them into his sleeves.

            “Brother Farbus,” he replied.  “What news of the Chosen One?”

            “If he is truly the one anointed by the prophecy, then the prophecy is one of those that can’t be wholly taken at face value,” said the ursas. He sighed, shook his shaggy head, and took a heavy seat on a bench across from Dolstov’s cell. “His legs were absolutely pulverized. There is no magic strong enough to heal them. The muscle tissue was shredded when the bones splintered and burst apart under the door. The only fortune here is that he will live, and he was able to clear his groin from the door. He is in an indescribable amount of pain right now, and we’ll have to sedate him in order to remove the damaged material.”

            “Remove it,” Renkit asked in a near-shriek, planting his hands on his hips.  He shook his head and grunted. “This is madness.” He flapped his hands finally, produced a set of keys from one of his robe’s pockets, and unlocked the cell.  “Go in there and give him a once-over with your power, see if he’s damaged himself and how.” Farbus nodded, the bench groaning in relieved delight as he removed his massive frame from it to trundle into the cell with the sleeping Andre. The minotaur didn’t even flinch as the ursas waved his hands over his body, soft white light threaded with strings of blue power between his palms and the warrior’s slumbering form. Farbus paused, drew back his power, and exited the cell. The lizardman monk cocked his head to one side and said, “Well?”

            “This man is very complicated, elder,” said the ursas.

            “How so?”

            “Well, there’s some mild damage to his liver from chronic alcoholism, which I was able to heal with my power somewhat. Aside from that, there’s also a potent collection of spirits housed inside of his body.”

            “Spirits inside of his body? What are you talking about, brother?”

            “I can’t say for sure,” said Farbus. “It’s likely he’d have to tell us what precisely happened to him, because the spirits have been within him for a long time.  They are likely the cause of his tremendous strength. Speaking of that, I managed to heal the few abrasions to his right hand from punching the door. He’ll awaken within the hour, but I doubt he’ll be able to tell us anything of value right away. My form of magic can’t cure a hangover.”

            “I know something that can, though,” said Renkit. “Go down to brother Gasheel and ask him for a draught of visela juice. I’ll give it to Mr. Dolstov here when he wakens, and get to asking him some very pointed questions. Can you also fetch elder brothers Melga and Shcute for the questioning as well?”

            “I believe they’re already on their way down here, elder.”

            “I see. My thanks.” The huge werebear departed, returning several minutes later with a thin vial of neon green liquid in hand and elders Melga and Shcute in tow. Melga, a human woman who had never personally identified as a woman, wore his hair short-cropped and spiky, and had donned the cloth-of-gold robes signifying his station within the Brotherhood as an offensive magic wielder. His eyes shimmered a bright purple, a side-effect he claimed had come from years of devotion to the combative arts of magic. Shcute literally waddled into the chamber, a sidalis (mutant) man whose outward appearance was that of a civilized, human-acting penguin standing four-foot-two and glaring with a dour frown through the monocle worn over his left eye at a world he did not generally approve of. His own robes were jet black with a silver circle sewn over the belly, an effective doubling of his own natural bodily appearance underneath. “Elder Melga, elder Shcute,” Renkit said with a nod of his scaled head.

            “Elder Renkit,” said Melga, his voice betraying only a hint of his feminine birth. “Are you going to awaken the prisoner?”

            “I am. Come with me,” he replied, unlocking the cell once again and leading his fellow elders inside. He turned Dolstov’s head so his mouth aimed up at the ceiling, pried his lips open, and poured in the draught. The minotaur reflexively swallowed and grunted, licking his lips and slipping right back into slumber. Shcute reached down with one of his fingered flippers and slapped the minotaur hard, causing the big bull-headed man to gasp and flutter his eyes open, sliding backward and up into a seated position against the wall his pallet was pushed back to. He blinked rapidly, winced, and pressed one hand to his temple just beside his left horn. He groaned, eyes pinched shut, then shook his head and looked blearily at the trio gathered beside his pallet.

            “Um, hey there,” Andre said. “Who are you fellahs? Where am I?” Elder Renkit cleared his throat and replied.

            “We are three of the elder brothers of the Brotherhood of the Enlightened Fist, and you are within a holding cell of our monastery,” the lizardman monk said. “You arrived here yestereve seeking shelter during your travels, drunk as a lord from the smell and behavior coming from you. You knocked down one of our high council chamber doors in your urgency to have lodging arranged, and that door fell on one of our younger brothers, a man who was prophesied to be a warrior of salvation to our realm very soon. It crushed his legs.”

            “Oh.” Andre rubbed the back of his head and looked up at the lizardman with a curious look on his face. “Um, how could a door crush someone?”

            “The chamber door is fifty feet tall and four feet thick, made of solid ironwood,” Shcute snapped. Andre looked at the penguin-looking monk and did a visible double-take at him. “Such a door would crush just about anyone.”

            “Yeah, I can see how that’d be,” Andre said blithely. “Um, I got one question, though, about one of those big words the fork-tongue here used,” he said, eliciting a triple set of glowers from the brothers. ‘Fork-tongue’ was a derogatory term for lizardmen, often used by minotaurs and jafts, races who had a historical distrust and enmity toward the reptilian folk.

            “Ask, and receive wisdom, knave,” said Melga.

            “What the fuck does ‘prophesied’ mean,” asked Andre. The three monks looked to one another, baffled by this minotaur’s low comprehension. The monastery rarely attracted the attention of uneducated brutes such as this. Melga finally answered him.

            “It means foretold, or destined according to legend,” he said. “By crippling him, you have disrupted a very important prophecy, setting it on an unknown course.”

            “That isn’t the important part of the prophecy, brothers,” said Shcute dismissively. “The weapon, now, that’s what we need to focus upon. Without that, the demon from the prophecy shall wreak havoc across our realms unchecked.” He folded his arms over his chest and stared down at the minotaur. “I have conferred with the other elders, and we have come to a consensus about how this sot will make amends for what he did to our Chosen One.”

            “Oh? And what is that,” asked elder Renkit.

            “He is to be dispatched to Desanadron, south and west of us, to retain on our behalf the most skilled blacksmith in the realms of Tamalaria still working a forge today,” said Shcute. “He will be given horses and a cart, bearing payment for the man to complete the task set before him. Brothers, this minotaur will bring the great smithy Norto to the mountain ranges of his own likely origin, where he will locate the white dragon bones written of in the prophecy to make the weapon required to vanquish the coming evil.” Andre chuckled, shaking his head and rising to his feet laboriously. He planted his hands on his hips, towering over all three monks at seven-foot-three.

            “And if I should refuse to do this for you,” Andre asked belligerently.

            “We are not like other monastic orders,” Melga said, drawing forth mana to bear. Andre instinctively flinched; minotaurs were a highly superstitious lot, and distrusted any magic that was not practiced by their tribal shamans. “We are not pacifists here. Refuse us, and you will not leave this cell alive. Besides, you will be suitably compensated for the task.” Andre gave the three monks his most charming smile, an ugly expression that showed far too many chipped and missing teeth.

            “Hey, no need to be hostile,” he said in a placating tone. “As long as there’s decent pay, I’m your man. I will have one extra request in terms of payment, though, before you hitch me to your wagon and ship me off.”

            “And what is that,” asked elder Renkit.

            “You got any whiskey?”

**

            It was the following day when Dren discovered the true meaning of impotent rage. He and his master Norto had been preparing to close up the shop for lunch when Sir Reginald Verishtan, a knight in service to the Elven Kingdom, arrived to retrieve a special ordered suit of titanite he’d ordered constructed through them. Norto’s forge had a reputation for producing the finest materials in the realms, and even an elven knight owing no allegiance to the city-state of Desanadron proved willing to travel north from his forest nation to purchase gear from them.

            When the handsome young knight had arrived, his armor had been arranged on a rolling armor stand for inspection, Dren had practically beamed from the corner of the shop where he stood. He had his newly named title as a master smith now, and the scores of hours he’d spent over the last four months carefully crafting the armor for Verishtan seemed now like nothing of consequence compared to the awed scrutiny of the elven knight. Verishtan detached and lifted the left gauntlet, hefting it up and down in disbelief.

            “Titanite is the heaviest ore in all the world,” the elf remarked. “How is it that this is so light, yet clearly still titanite?” Dren had been about to step forward and explain how he had painstakingly tempered the material with an infusion of mythril, the lightest material in the realm, and some enchantments placed upon it by one of his few friends in the city, a cuyotai (werecoyote) woman named Holly Redtail. Holly was an acolyte with the Winged Wand Company, a subsidiary of the Adventurers’ Guild and an organization that offered the services of freelance magic wielders of all sorts. She and Dren had lived next door to one another for several years in his early adolescence, and become fast friends as young people whose skills were clearly unappreciated.  She had agreed to help him lighten the armor with a set of enchanted runes chiseled to the interior plates, and without her help, the suit standing before Verishtan would have been impossible to make, even with mythril mixed in.

            But as he took a half-step forward to share this knowledge with the elven knight, Norto bulled ahead and stole his thunder and his credit in one fell swoop. “I don’t share my trade secrets out with just anyone, Sir Verishtan, no offense,” the older human smithy said bluntly. It was a simple sentence, one that nobody else would ever assume was filled with the kind of damaging power akin to a king declaring a death sentence upon a traitor. Yet Dren felt the air come whooshing out of him, as though someone had kicked him in the stomach. The elf just nodded and grinned at the older human.

            “Fair enough, my good man.” Verishtan removed a bag of green cloth from his back and handed it over to Norto, the coins within jangling loudly. “As agreed, two-thousand gold coin, sir. Your mastery of the forge shall be spoken of highly upon my return to Whitewood.” And without any further discussion, the elf rolled the wheeled armor stand out of the shop, leaving Norto to whistle contentedly to himself as he took the sack of money through a doorway into the back room of the forge and Dren to stand in stunned silence in the corner.

            But he didn’t do anything to that armor, he thought. That lie just stole four months of my life! That’s my mastery that should be spoken of in Whitewood, not his! Dren felt a sudden flare of pain in his hands, and looked down at them, realizing that his nails were digging into his palms, so tightly had he clenched his fists. He had never been a confrontational young man, but he could not just stand aside and let this happen.

            Dren stomped through the open floor space to the door at the back of the forge, coming up right behind Norto as the master was lowering the bag of money into a hidden floor safe. Dren stood beside him, hands still clenched into fists. He could practically smell the sharp tang of ozone in the air as his temper flared up. “How dare you,” he growled down at Norto. The master smithy shut the safe door, spun the dial on it, and then shut the wood panel that looked like flooring over it without a word, grunting as he stood up. He turned slowly and looked up at Dren, who, while narrow, had Norto in height by a good three inches. “That was my work you just passed off as your own, you blaggart,” Dren blurted before he could think better of it.

            Norto’s reaction came from a place so foreign that Dren could not have ever predicted he was even capable of it- he let out a single barking laugh, then punched Dren square in the mouth, knocking him flailing backward, blood spilling over his lower lip as he fell in a heap against a wall, a lone tooth knocked free onto his tongue. The blow had been powerful enough to leave him sitting stunned against the wall, unable to focus his vision. Three swirling Nortos stalked slowly up to him, kneeling before him with a surly grin stretching his scruffy right cheek.

            “Now, lad, I’m the master here in this shop, and you work for me. Anything you do, vicariously, is my work to claim if and when I so choose. As happens, I so chose that there suit to claim as my own, because that man’s going to spread word of my great work by simply wearing it. Besides, it’s not like you did anything I couldn’t have. You melded the titanite with mythril, right?”

            “There, there was more to it than that,” Dren managed to get out, still tasting the coppery wash of his own blood in his mouth.

            “Whatever it was, I don’t give a pig’s shit, lad. You want to keep drawing wages and living in that apartment upstairs, you’re going to go along with what I say, savvy?” Dren nodded mutely, fear sprinting in to take the place of shock in the relay race of his emotions. Norto was known for having a temper, but he’d never raised a hand to Dren before. This was a new and terrifying aspect of his master that the young smithy had never before known was present. “Now get up, wash out your mouth, and go get some lunch. Matter of fact, take the rest of the day off. We’ve made more than enough, we’ll even make it a three-day weekend and stay closed tomorrow, what d’you think?” Dren just nodded again, wanting nothing more than to get away from the older smithy. “Good. Now go on,” Norto said, moving away from Dren back to the forge’s main chamber.

            Dren got to his feet shakily and made a swift exit through the building’s back door, afraid to cross paths with his employer again. He needed to talk to someone, and just right then, Holly Redtail seemed the only choice he had.

**

            Holly stood at the sink, scrubbing down the sides of food debris and grunge as she finished up the dishes that had been her assigned task. No sooner had she used the sprayer head to rinse off the last bits of soap in the tin sink than one of her seniors, a half-elf aquamancer named Bortles, came into the kitchen and deposited a fresh load of dirtied dishes on the left sideboard beside the sink with a cocky smile. “Good timing, fresh water will be good for these,” he commented, patting her on the shoulder. The cuyotai woman wore a cherry red leather doublet with an image of a schooner embroidered in yellow thread on the left breast over tan breeches, her feet left bare in the fashion preferred by members of her race. Despite the thickness of the doublet, she felt the urge to recoil from Bortles’s touch. The half-elf was always pulling crap like this with her, looking for any and every way to discourage or humiliate her.

            She sighed and shook her head at him. “Let me ask you something, Bortles,” she asked, dropping the scrub brush in the sink and turning to face him, hands planted firmly on her hips. She was a small woman, even for a cuyotai, but her force of personality often made her seem much larger than she was. Unfortunately for her, men like Bortles never seemed phased by this effect. “How long have you been holding those dishes out in the mess hall for me?”

            “About ten, twelve minutes,” he replied, voice full of mocking laughter. “Does it matter? You’re on dish duty for another half an hour, acolyte. Get to scrubbing, now.” Bortles turned and sauntered away snickering, and Holly reached down for the wood-handled scrub brush. She had it cocked all the way back to throwing position before a powerful hand clamped down on her wrist and turned her toward its owner, a dark-skinned human named Herman. Herman was only a little under six feet tall, but he was broadly muscled and lithe, one of the most athletic senior members of the company. The grip relaxed slowly as she tried to lower her arm, until finally he let go entirely.

            “Not a good idea,” said Herman, his words serious but his tone light. “Bortles is a sonofabitch, but he has rank. You don’t want to be washing dishes or scrubbing floors the whole time you’re employed here, right?” Holly flipped the scrub brush into the sink and folded her arms over her chest with a sigh.

            “No, I suppose not. I might like to make one of the commons lunches, though, put a little something special in his soup. You know, help him have a few massive, painful bowel movements,” she said with a bright smile. “They might help get the stick and bug out from up his-“

            “I get it,” Herman said, holding his hands up to her. “Look, do you want me to talk to headmaster Torreque? He’ll straighten him out if he needs to.”

            “No, don’t do that. I hardly need that kind of attention,” she said. “But do you know what you can do for me?” She took one step to the side and waved her hands at the fresh pile of dirty dishes like she was showing off some sort of game show prize. “You can have the utter privilege of finishing these up for me! Isn’t that just fantastic?” Herman chuckled and took her place at the sink with a grin.

            “Don’t say I never did anything for you,” he said. Holly left the kitchen and strode into the mess hall, where only a handful of members of the company still sat around finishing their drinks and conversations with one another. Only about half of their membership was even in the city at the moment, the rest having been hired out on several contracts. As an acolyte, the odds of her getting to go out on a hire job were slim, but it had happened a few times. The work was never exactly glorious, but the bonus commission members earned on assignment always helped. As in-house work, her payday totals were barely covering her expenses.

            Holly passed through the mess into the headquarters’ main first floor hallway, passing by several of her seniors on her way to the practice chamber. As a mage, she hadn’t yet chosen a specialization. She wasn’t an aquamancer, though she knew some water magic, nor a pyromancer despite having access to fire spells, or a gaiamancer or aeromancer or any of the other specific titles that went with specialists of magical power. With a few more support spells she might qualify for the title of q mage, but she still hadn’t mastered the list of initial spells in that school of focus. While this would bother most magic wielders, she found she didn’t mind being an unclassified mage. Besides, she always thought, if I specialize and focus on any of the elemental schools, I run the risk of losing entirely one or two of the others. Magic users who focused on one school of magic naturally found other schools difficult to access, and in some cases, impossible. Pyromancers, for instance, could not use aquamancy after a short while, gaiamancers could not use pyromancy, aquamancers couldn’t use aeromancy, and aeromancers lost out on gaiamancy. The more powerful spells one learned in a given school, the less use they had of others.

            As she passed through the enchanted doorway into the practice chamber, Holly felt fingers of magical power run over her body and through her spirit. The company had spent a pretty penny arranging for the practice chamber’s special protections, ancient runes and glyphs carved into the stone around the large circular space, glowing with a dull purple power. No sentient creature could come to permanent harm within the room so long as those symbols retained their power. All spells used dissipated quickly as well, the expended mana instantly returned to the wielder, so they could practice their spellcraft without worrying about being drained in the event of an emergency.

            Holly found nobody else in the largely empty chamber, and she closed the door behind her, drawing up her mana.  A wave of her hand from left to right sent a skirling ribbon of flames wavering out ahead of her, which she followed quickly with a gust of wind focused on the central point of the ribbon, transforming it into a high-speed spearhead of flame. The combined spell struck the far wall and evaporated, the mana flowing back into Holly moments later. She followed this with a trio of illusory tigers romping about the room, batting at one another playfully. When they vanished, she took a marble from one of her trouser pockets and tossed it forward, sending a dart of tan power after it. When the dart hit the marble in mid-air, the sphere expanded to the size of a boulder and rolled with crushing force against the back wall, shaking the whole of the building. The giant marble flashed a bright white, then returned to a normal sphere, dropping with a quiet ‘thud’ on the brick floor.

            The Engorgement spell was, in most cases, among the most basic spells a mage could learn in the realms of Tamalaria. Like most of the early repertoire of the average magic wielder in the realms, it was quickly discarded by anyone with a respectable level of skill. Well, almost anyone. Holly had been practicing the spell ever since she learned it, and spent at least an hour or two each week adjusting and modifying it until she could do what she’d just done with little effort.

            It had never been her intent to stay on with the company for as long as she had. It was supposed to be a temporary gig, but when she’d moved out on her own and found she couldn’t get work at Desanadron University as an instruction assistant, she ended up needing to keep the job. She really wouldn’t have minded much, if she could just get a promotion from acolyte to junior member. The pay bump would be just what she needed, and besides that, she could do with a little respect from her peers. They largely sneered at her decision to remain unclassified as a mage, and they had little respect for her skill with short sword. She had been dead set against learning melee combat techniques, but Dren had talked her into taking lessons from one of the freelance master-at-arms based out of the downtown area. He was a fine young man, and had always been a good listener and friend to her. She felt she owed him at least one lesson with a trainer, and the crotchety old goat she’d learned from had been the perfect instructor for her, convincing her to keep coming back.

            Holly performed a few more practice spells, then headed outside of the building to cool off in the shade of the wide front porch. She had only been sitting in one of the fine oak rockers for a few minutes when Dren came wandering up the steps, looking for all the world like a man with a concussion, his movements exaggerated and dogged. His eyes seemed unfocused, but when he looked at her directly, she saw that it wasn’t head trauma that made him move like that; what she had mistaken for a lack of focus in his eyes was actually something bordering on blind rage. She rose from her seat and went over to the top of the steps leading up onto the company’s porch.

            “Dren,” she said softly, reaching one hand out to him. “Come with me and take a seat, I’ll fetch us some tea.” She led him by the hand to where she’d been sitting, easing him down into the seat gently. Then, she dashed inside to the kitchen, grabbed a couple of cups, and quickly poured some water into them with a single tea bag in each, using a flicker of magic to warm the water as she made her way back out to Dren. When she sat down beside him, she could see that his hands were clenched in subdued rage, yet he relaxed them long enough to take the cup she offered him.

            “Thank you,” he murmured.

            “So, tell me what happened,” she prompted. For almost two minutes he just sat there, staring down off the porch to the street. When he finally spoke, it was preceded by a long-suffering sigh.

            “It’s Norto,” he said, to which her internal response was of course it is. “Do you remember that suit of titanite plate you helped me with?”

            “Yeah,” she said with a nod. She sipped her tea and waited for more.

            “Sir Verishtan came in today for it, and when he did, he was quite complimentary. And before I could tell him about the enchantments you helped me with, Norto claimed that all of the work was his. I tried to speak up, but I just froze in place, as if my entire body had just locked up. I couldn’t bring myself to stop him from taking the credit.” He sipped his tea, staring down into his cup, slumping slightly forward as the tension lightened, not so much from the beverage but more as a reaction to the release of what was stressing him. Holly rubbed his back with one strong, furry hand.

            “I’m sorry, bud,” she offered. “If you want, I can go have a few words with some of the N Street crew, have their strongarms put the word to the wind.” Strongarm thugs, one of the specialized types of thieves in Tamalaria, all shared in an ability unique to their type; this ability was commonly referred to as ‘putting word to the wind’. The strongarms themselves called it ‘throwing whispers’, and its basic effect was to carry their words on the wind whenever they so chose.

            “No, don’t do that,” Dren said with a sigh. “I appreciate the gesture, but doing something like that might be seen as a service, and most of the thugs in this city aren’t exactly what I’d call the charitable type. They’d likely try to come shake me down for payment for services rendered.” He looked over at Holly for a moment, who looked nonplussed. “Hey, I know a lot of those folks are old friends of yours, but let’s be realistic.”

            “I’ll give you that,” she replied. “Well, I’m done with my duties here for now. Did you want to go do something, maybe catch a puppet show? Or one of those moving pictures?” Dren sat up a little, seeming to brighten some.

            “There’s a puppet show down on Olver, guy just arrived a few days ago from Arcade in the northeast,” he said.

            “From Arcade, and he isn’t just here cutting purses?”

            “Not everybody from Arcade is a thief,” Dren replied. “Don’t forget, that’s where my uncle Wallace has lived for ten years now. You know he’s no criminal.” Holly shrugged, nodded.

            “I know. It just seems suspicious. The puppeteer bring any assistants to town with him,” Holly asked, ever the one for due diligence. Dren sipped his tea and sighed, looking deflated.

            “Yeah, he did. And no, I don’t know anything about them,” Dren said. “Safest to avoid that, then. Well, there’s an archery tourney later on, over at The Wandering Swords’ guild hall.” Holly grinned and nodded.

            “Okay, a tourney it is. What time does that start?”

            “It’s about four hours out from now. I’ll finish this, head back to the shop to finish up a few things. Hopefully the old man has either turned in for the day, or he’s going to be busy with his own work.” He handed Holly the cup back. “Failing that, I’ll take a walk for a while, maybe look at the autocarts on Davison’s lot. Where’ll you be when it’s time to pick you up?” Holly stood up and stepped toward the guild’s front door.

            “I’ll be here, doing some studying. I may spend a little time working on some of the full members, maybe convince a senior or two to back my promotion to full member. This acolyte gig is getting old in a hurry.” Dren watched her head inside, then meandered back up the road towards the forge. He took his time about it, eyeballing everyone and everything going on along the street. Mason Avenue was rarely quiet, even in the dead of night. Desanadron as a whole was a metro that only had one or two districts that went entirely dark when the deep of night came. With technology advancing as quickly as it was throughout the realms in the Fourth Age, there would soon be no place that was ever truly quiet.

            Dren had never gotten much into all of the new scientific gadgets and gizmos being developed, except for indoor plumbing. He supposed that didn’t count, of course, since it was an innovation pioneered and developed in the middle of the Third Age. One of the only modern inventions he had any interest in owning was an autocart, but even the cheapest model was far beyond what he could afford. Norto paid him a pittance compared to what most partners would get, even below most apprentices’ level. The free room and board kept him on for the most part, along with the opportunity to work with the tools and materials that Norto had access to. The old man’s skills may have faded a little over the years, but he still had the sort of respect among his peers throughout the realms that he could get access to the best raw metals to work with. Dren enjoyed this advantage, but it still didn’t make up for the low wages he earned, or having to live with a man who had, apparently, reached a point where he was willing to physically assault him.

            When Dren got back to the forge, slipping inside through the back door, he discovered that it was empty. He breathed a sigh of relief, but only for a moment; he heard the creak of the boards overhead, and knew that Norto was in the attached apartment upstairs. The old man wouldn’t likely come downstairs to bother him at this juncture, particularly since he’d flipped the sign on the front door from ‘Open’ to ‘Closed’. When Norto shut the forge for the day, regardless of the time, he was done taking customers. That, of course, meant that Dren was done as well.

            Or did it? Dren still had a little over three hours to kill before going to pick up Holly, and why not fill that time with some work if he could?  Dren walked to the front door, unlocked it, and flipped the sign back to ‘Open’. He grabbed out his tools, and prepared to do some work, using a bellows to get the primary coal pit warmed up again. The smell of the smoldering coals always cheered him, sending a flood of warmth through his chest.

            He had been having something of a bad day, and this was going to make him feel much better. At least, that was the hope.

            Too bad hope sometimes gets squashed.