As he turned off of the main tuhhfare and into the smaller ohat made up his street, Bernt was struck by just how different the Uy felt pared to the surface. There were goblin children here, pying ireet while their parents sat out in front of their doors and gossiped.
Dowreet a bit, a gray-haired goblin directed traffic away from a hole in the road, where two more had opened one of the septiks that made up the Uy’s more bor-intensive waste-ma system. They weren’t Underkeepers. No, a tank like that wouldn’t really o be serviced for a long time yet. But, they had permission from Ed – not that anyone would have stopped them if they’d just gone and do without asking. Why turn down the help?
The muck that they scraped out of the tank would go into buckets, which were loaded into a nearby hand cart that would then be hauled over to a brand new agricultural chamber back behind the goblin quarter – the goblins had dug it out themselves. There, two goblin druids, both of whom Bernt knew were part of the Underkeepers, worked with nearly thirty goblin borers to produce edible fungi, which they sold at the Uy Market. They weren’t very good, but that's icy peppers were for. Nobody turned down a cheap food source during a siege.
Opening the door, Bernt stepped io find that he had pany. Nirlig sat on the broad stone “couch” that Bernt had made a week before. It would have been passably fortable if he’d had proper cushions for it – but he wasn't pnning to spend silver on that sort of thing anytime soon.
Jori sat o him, drinking out of a small cup she held with both hands. She was wearing a new robe – more of a long, sleeveless tunic, really, in gray. It fit remarkably well, sidering that Grixit hadn’t taken any measurements. If he’d dohe job properly, it should be extremely fire resistant and quite a bit more durable than the robe he’d bought her before. Hopefully, it wouldn’t get shredded quite so quickly.
On a low table in front of the two of them stood four different-sized cy bottles.
“Nah,” Jori said, putting the cup down. “This one is b! Give me some more of the mushroom fire gin. That’s the good stuff!”
“Really?” Nirlig grimaced, “Ugh. That stuff is terrible. The only one who drinks it is my aunt Striga. You just like it because it has fire in the name.”
Jori scoffed. “Aunt Striga has good taste! Gimme!”
Bernt cleared his throat. Both of them turo look and Nirlig gave him a friendly wave. “Bernt! I heard your team took out a unit of diggers today! Torvald was super jealous. We just stood guard in front of a side tunnel all day. Literally nothing happened.”
“Uh. Yea, it wasn’t really a fight. They never even broke through. Not really Torvald’s kind of fight, if I’m being ho. He probably wouldn’t think it was fair or something.” Berated, trying tanize his feelings into a coherent thought. “Have you heard what they’re doing up there on the surface? The duergar, I mean..”
Nirlig shrugged. “Uh, yes? They bottled us up and are keeping us pinned down. I heard they’re doing it iin’s Harbor, too, but that’s just a rumor, I think. No official news from anywhere.”
“Right – not what I meant. I mean the way they’re doing it.” Bernt crified. “They just cut off the roads and now they just sit there, sending these small groups at us. It doesn’t make sense. None of the groups could do very much damage, even if they got in.
“It’s not that strange.” Nirlig said with a mirthless smile. “They’re just sending adventurer parties.”
Bernt stared at the goblin. “You mean, like in a dungeon?”
“Sure. I mean, I don't really know how they do things, but there's no practical difference from their perspective, right? They’ve put it under tai and now they’ve got teams of people trying their luck to get in and take whatever they . The only thing missing is a real front-line party. Humans always send in a strong party first to soften the pce up. I guess they must not be very serious about killing us. That, or maybe their high-ranking adventurers aren't dumb enough to take a job like this. There are a lot of scary people in this city.
Bernt sat down slowly on a misshapen lump across from them – his first attempt at a chair. What did that mean? What could that mean?
“Ahh.” Jori sighed tentedly, putting her cup down. “That’s the stuff. So, how did it go up there? Did you sell the spell?”
“Uh, yes,” Bernt nodded, looking down at his hand. “I got guild membership for it, and they’re going to help me figure out what to do about my arm.”
Nirlig looked curiously at his arm, but he didn’t ask about it. “So, how does that work? Isn’t it a flict of io work for the Underkeepers and also be in the Mage’s Guild?”
“Eh,” Bernt shook his head, taking a seat across from the other two. “Not really. I mean, they both have their is, but Ed and Iria are friends, so it’s not really an issue. It just means I could theoretically pursue other kinds of work now without getting into trouble with the guild. And I get access to their institutional knowledge and resources, which is a lot more important right now. It’s not a bad deal, really, just kind of expensive. Most mages join sooner or ter – except most war mages and people like Kustov, because he’s a fner.”
“Huh.” Nirlig grunted. “Why didn’t you do it sooner?”
Bernt sighed tiredly. “Because guild membership es with strings. Guild members are required to respond to emergencies, follow all the guild procedures for various professions, protect guild secrets, and work directly with the gover when called upon to ‘secure dungeons and tain threats as described in the guild’s charter’.”
“Oh!” Nirlig chuckled, taking a sip of whatever he had in his own cup. “That makes sense. We already have to do half of that as Underkeepers.”
“Yeah.” Bernt smiled. “Might as well have the bes to go with it.”
--------
After work the day, Bernt made his way back up to the Mages’ Guild. Ign the receptionist entirely, he simply walked right in and headed up toollock’s office. The man still busily copying papers behind the desk didn’t even appear to notice him. Now that he thought about it, he probably could have just gone up to Iria’s office all along.
Oh well.
Letting himself in through the Wizards’ Society’s door, Bernt wandered down the hall, trying to remember exactly where Pollock’s office was. Unlike what he would have expected from the local guild’s research ter, the pce had an oddly abandoned feel to it. More than one door stood open, revealing that quite a few of the rooms and offices were empty and apparently not being used at all.
The doors of the occupied rooms were adorned with small pques bearing the names and titles of those who worked there – they were often long and pretentious sounding, but Bernt supposed that was just how things were done. Pollock’s door, when he found it, had an even rger pque than most – he hadn’t seen it the day before because the door had been open.
Pollock
Magister - Wizard of Pyromancy
Director of Spell Development - Elementalism
Hoping he wasn’t te, Bernt knocked – or tried to. He barely made it to the sed knock before the old man’s reedy voiswered.
“In!”
Bernt stepped inside.
Both the offid the man looked exactly as he’d left them the day before, except this time someone else was sitting in a chair across from Pollock’s desk. It was an old woman, very nearly as a as Pollock himself, but where his back was bent with age, hers seemed to have calcified in a straight line. She sat perfectly upright, sipping on a steaming cup with the air of someone who felt that her tea deserved her full and undivided attention. She did not look up wheered.
Pollock, oher hand, shot him a long-toothed grin. “And there he is right now!” he excimed with a flourish, apparently tinuing a versation they’d been having.
Pg the cup down on its saucer with deliberate care, the woman turo look at him, examining him with a, watery eyes.
“Boy, meet Master Alchemist Yrtrude. She used to run the whole godsdamned guild branch here ba the day.”
Unsure of what to do, Bernt o her. “Hello, pleasure to meet you.”
Yrtrude sniffed, expressing her displeasure in a mahat only truly old people could really pull off.
“Yht me an Underkeeper,” she said. “Really, Pollock. Why do you bother? And why are you b me?”
“Oh rex,” he scoffed. “The Underkeepers have beeing rehabilitated – here in Halfbridge, at least. Haven’t you been paying attention? Besides, young Iria told me that the boy joihem deliberately. Bit of a rebel, this one, but he did fi the academy. I looked at his transcript. Didn’t want to join the military and couldn’t bear to i himself fuild membership with an apprenticeship.”
“My dear Pollock,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You just like him because he sounds like the same sort of fool you were sixty years ago.”
The old man shrugged and smiled. Yrtrude drew her lips into a line, but then she sighed and turo Bernt.
“Hand!” she said, holding out her own by way of demonstration. Her voice was still strong, unlike Pollock’s, and brimmed with a natural sense of authority.
Deg not to say anything, Bernt stepped up to her and held out his right hand, which she gripped by the wrist with her thumb and forefiurning it this way and that.
“Hmm. Nothing physical. Describe the poison used, any treatments attempted, and any other spells and magical substa’s e in tact with since.”
Bernt did, as best he could remember. When he finished, Yrtrude didn’t say anything right away, staring at him with a strange expression.
“You mean to tell me,” she began, voice thick with disapproval, “that you found a strange alchemical metal lying submerged in filth and you thought it would be fio just pick it up? With your bare hands? Don’t you even have gloves?”
Bernt shrugged, doing his best not to shift unfortably under her gaze. “You’d be surprised what you get used to when you work in a sewer. And no, gloves get in the way of casting. You don’t always have time to get them off if something es at you.”
“I see,” she said distastefully and leaned back, keeping her bapletely straight the whole time. “Pollock, what could you possibly want with someone like this? He’s a fool.”
Bernt frowned and opened his mouth to defend himself. Then he shut it again, thinkier of it. He didn’t actually know what he could say here that wouldn’t make him sound stupid, and besides, there was no point in arguing with the woman.
Fortunately, Pollock just ughed. “Oh, rex, dear. I teach proper experimental procedures, that’s the easy part. He’s an ideal didate. The boy successfully modified a pretty plex spell, and actually made it more useful in the process. Better yet, he’s willing to take risks. Else he wouldn’t have kept using the damaged arm at all, never mind throwing around spells he didn’t properly uand in the middle of a fight. You ’t teach that kind of recklessness. You bsp;teach restraint, though, and tempered properly it’ll make him a damned fine wizard.”
Yrtrude frowned. “You were too, but you still mao cripple yourself.”
Pollock shrugged, apparently unbothered. “Risk is io all real innovation. You ’t do animal testing on a new iure like you a new potion. Even my failure moved the entire field feions of mages and future wizards will be.”
Bernt cleared his throat. “Ehm. Weren’t we talking about my hand?”
He absolutely wao know more about Pollock’s apparent pns for him, but it seemed to him like the old man was skipping ahead a bit too far. He wasn’t going to amount to very much of anything if he couldn’t improve his dition – he’d just keep stressing his mawork and probably make it worse.
“We were, yes.” Yrtrude nodded. “The metal you touched is called Arefinium. It looks golden, but it’s an alchemical alloy that draws mana out of an object – it has many applications in alchemy. The reason your arm withered is likely because of tiny amounts of trace residue that remaiuck to your skin after you dropped it. Ohose traces were saturated with mana, the withering effect stopped, otherwise it might have killed you.”
Bernt grunted, abs that for a moment. He hadn’t realized that just pulling all the mana out of his flesh could have such a horrific physical impa it. It wasn’t hard to imagihat part of his mawork would have been damaged, even after the lesser restoration potion that he’d been given.
“And my mawork?” he asked, looking from her to Pollock.
“It was likely strained quite badly by this,” Yrtrude said. “But nothing perma, sidering that you received the proper treatment almost immediately. I expect, however, that repeated casting strain bined with exposure to some form of hellfire could easily do all kinds of damage to your spirit. Prior strain on your system would not have dohat any favors. Hellfire is, of course, a valuable alchemical reagent in its ht. Several martial-type guilds and the military incorporate derivatives of it in their various enha procedures, specifically because of its ability to affect the spirit.”
Bernt blinked. He’d known that hellfire could damage the spirit, and by examining the spellforms for simple fire as well as Jori’s blood, he’d learhat fire was ily a transformative effect. He hadn’t realized that the alchemists were not only aware of this, but actually using this particur effect of hellfire.
“Uh. Does this mean you fix me? With one of these kinds of elixirs, I mean?”
Yrtrude shook her head. “No, no. Your spirit is modified into a mawork. That would modify the effect – it would probably kill you. Never mind that any guild whose proprietary recipe I used would e after the both of us for it. Pollock here might believe in taking insane risks, but I don’t.”
The old man iion leaned forward impatiently. “Alright then. What do you think he should do about it?”
The alchemist shrugged. “Wait, stop casting spells and hope for it to get better. Maybe try another restoration potion if he afford it, but I doubt it would work. Those work better for heali trauma, not repairing these kinds of is. You think of it like trying to remove a scar with a healing potion. It wouldn't really do much.”
Bernt did his best to hide his disappoi behind a ral expression, but he didn’t think he succeeded very well. He couldn’t just not do magic for who knew how long. There was no way. It art of his job and, more importantly, part of what and who he was.
There had to be a better solution out there.
