When we entered the warehouse again, it was to the sight of blood-soaked concrete and twenty-eight laid out sets of equipment. The already grim image made more so by the attempt to sanitize it.

  “Before we begin, what are the looting rights?” I asked.

  Based on the looks I got from my party members, no one had thought about that until now. Back home the rights were simple, first come, firsts serve. If two people came into conflict over a piece of loot, it was to be mediated by a member of the clergy. The rank of the clergy member presiding over the issue depended on value, with my mom usually dealing with the most expensive pieces.

  Mika was the first to come up with a coherent set of rules and spouted them off in quick succession.

  “First, take whatever you want. Second, if two of us want the same thing, then Maggie decides who gets it based on whose development it best serves. Third, if the group decides that a piece of loot is too valuable, then Maggie gets to decide who keeps it or if we sell it off and split the profits. Fourth, we sell whatever we don’t keep and anything left after expenses gets split five ways. With the fifth share being the party fund. Fair?”

  Everyone agreed with Mika’s rules, including Maggie. For right now, the rules would serve well. Eventually, we’d have to revisit them. Maggie would get to know each of us, and inevitably, conflicts of interest would arise.

  Rules agreed to. The four of us walked towards the loot. We all power walked while trying to look like we were doing anything but. I looked at the fully armored sets first.

  Over the next two hours, we scoured the sets of equipment for anything to take. None of the gear was magical. The plate armor’s design was novel to me, but was of a lesser quality than what I wore. Even with the damage it sustained during the campaign thus far. That didn’t mean I found nothing. Over the course of our small looting session, I found four things I wanted to take home with me.

  The first thing I grabbed was a small copper pendant with a blue, amber stone that had a bug frozen within. I had no idea what kind of bug it was besides the fact that it resembled a dragonfly that had eight wings. The pendant wasn’t for me; it was for Rebecca. She had a small collection of things from eras long past and I thought it would make a nice addition to the collection, so I grabbed it.

  The next thing I found was next to one of the smaller sets of half-plate. It was a long feather made of light blues and greens, with an eye pattern at the tip. I wasn’t sure what kind of bird the feather belonged to, but thought it was pretty, so I grabbed it.

  Laid out next to the sword of the first man to charge us was a small book the size of my fist, with a small chain attached to the binding. In neat gold painted text, the cover read Parables and Fables of the Solar Coast. When I opened it, a dense wall of small, if still legible text greeted me. After I got the go ahead from the group, I tucked it into my pocket to read later. Who knew, maybe I’d find a couple of bedtime stories for Helena.

  The last thing grabbed was a small bronze figurine of a bull. Just smaller than my palm, the craftsperson who made this compensated for the small size by adding an incredible number of details. They were barely visible, but when I ran my hand along the side of the figure, I could feel thousands of hairs carved into the figure. One of the bull’s horns looked to be broken and the [Carver] was able to make it look like it was in the process of healing again. I doubted I’d find something like this in the entire warehouse again and couldn’t wait to put it up on a bookshelf or something when I built my own house.

  Nora and Ellen were reserved with looting, and both of them only ended up grabbing a few things. Ellen took only a couple pieces of plate from the pile; and Nora took a small focus made of sea glass and carved into the shape of a spiral seashell. Mika was like me, however, and grabbed a bunch of knick knacks he found cool. They could have been things useful for his craft, but either way, he and I were the only ones to really take advantage of the [Looter’s] rights.

  “Everyone got what they wanted?” Maggie asked the group after we’d all started to idle. To which she received a chorus of agreement.

  “In that case, I can hold the rest of the loot in my storage ring, if you like. But there’ll be a fifteen percent [Porter’s] fee if you want me to haul your loot around.”

  “What, why?” Nora asked.

  “I’m not going to be following you around forever, eventually you’ll attain enough renown for actual [Bards] to follow y’all and I’ll head back to Woodsedge or where ever you set up and focus on all the regular duties of a steward. In keeping with that, I’m not going to act as porter for you all. I’m here as your [Bard] and if you want me to be your [Porter] than you have to pay me like one.”

  The four of us looked at each other to see if we had any objections, and Nora spoke first.

  “I’m okay with that as long as you guys are.”

  There was vague agreement from everyone. No one really had a problem with Maggie charging for a service, though it was annoying.

  “Speaking of being our [Bard], how are our songs coming along?” Nora asked, almost professionally curious, as we watched Maggie visit each set one by one and disappear the loot into her ring.

  “It was going okay before, but last night was the kind of encounter [Bards], [Poets], and [Skalds] all drool over. Adventurers doing good, overwhelmed by the enemy, yet still victorious. Not to mention I’ve watched you all fight a good bit and I’m starting to understand what your brands will be.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Really?” Ellen asked, rare excitement tinging her voice.

  “I can practically hear it already. Ellen Smallbard, a tempest of death and mayhem, a [Warrior] equal in her beauty and ferocity. A perfect rose with deadly thorns.” Maggie waxed, closing her eyes as if listening to a symphony.

  “Ooh, what about me?” Nora chimed.

  “A mystic of the mists, a conjurer of foul beasts and dread horrors. She alone can walk amongst the fog and emerge unscathed.”

  Rather than look offended by the description, Nora preened. She struck a couple poses as if she were a [Mage] in her tower and boomed out an evil laugh.

  Maggie waxed on for a time. She weaved evermore fanciful descriptions, but eventually her poetry and the sets of loot came to an end. Attention no longer occupied by the equipment, she turned her gaze onto Mika and I. We’d both stayed quiet while she spoke to Nora and Ellen.

  “Well? What about you two? Aren’t you curious how your [Bard] is going to spin last night’s heroics?”

  I was curious, but I’d also had my experiences turned into songs and fables before and knew they tended to be so embellished or sanitized as to be untrue. I kept silent and hoped that would be enough to get Maggie to drop the subject. It wasn’t working, however, and I could see not only Maggie’s but Ellen and Nora’s smiles grow as their attention focused in on us.

  Thankfully, Mika chimed in and saved me, a favor I would repay with a drink someday.

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Fantastic my good sir!” Maggie exclaimed with a theatrical bow. “A trickster, most cunning, an artisan of death and beauty. Your prowess with the chisel matched only by the stratagems locked away inside your head!”

  She continued on for a few moments but once she finished with Mika; she turned to me. I tried to get her to stop with a look, but she continued.

  “And finally, we come to Bran. A towering sentinel, an oaken bear, a serpent amongst the willow branches. No wound will stop him, no harm will reach his charges. You will find no mercy in this man, but he will give you the grace of a quick death.”

  Maggie gave me a secretive smile, and I wondered just how much she knew about cult doctrine. Considering how many sacred images she put into my brief descriptor. With a pivot, she returned her attention to the other three.

  “Keep it up and all of y’all will develop suitably large legends in no time. Now what do you say we go check out the rest of the warehouse, huh?”

  We debated what to search first for a couple of minutes, each of us having our own ideas, but we settled on searching through the crates and storage containers haphazardly scattered throughout the warehouse floor by the band.

  We started with the surrounding crates, which all contained items of no actual interest. Simple textiles and other bulk goods of middling quality. Perhaps the band continued using the warehouse for its intended purpose, or maybe it was all leftovers from before Hardbuckle inherited it. Either way, it was ours by right of conquest and we had Maggie store the crates in her ring.

  The next dozen crates we checked all contained mundane bulk trade goods. Some were firewood, some cloth, others bricks. The only exciting crate out of the loot must have been one of the member’s stash because it had several small kegs of ale and cider, along with a small bag of red dust.

  We put each crate in Maggie’s container to be sold later, and Maggie made it clear to us that the dust would be handed into the Guild, which I had no issue with. I liked my eyes in my skull.

  By the time we opened our fourteenth or fifteenth crate the groan of the nails leaving the dried wood was grating and we were all bored. There was still some left unopened underneath the walkway and the offices, their tops stained a deep red by the blood, but we left those for later.

  We wound up heading to the barracks Nora and Ellen spotted when they first scouted the building. It was a small room, long and narrow, that ran parallel to the main warehouse floor. Metal cots lined either side of the room, each with a green painted chest at the foot of the bed. The entire room was in disarray. Clothes, blankets, pillows, furniture, left behind equipment, all of it scattered about the barrack. A final display of the Ivory Band’s desperate defense.

  We found nothing of real value aside from the occasional coin or small trinket. Above one particularly messy cot, the sheets stained yellow from sweat, on the windowsill was a small birch sapling in a green glass jar. Whoever had been in charge of the tree had done a terrible job and even from a distance, I could tell that the tree was not only starved, but the jar was too small for its root system.

  After the barracks, we went into the offices. Aside from Trevor, each office was boringly austere and with all the extra places to hide things, it took us two hours to finish the search. We left the final unoccupied office was eighteen gold coins, twenty silver coins, and a copious amount of drugs and liquor bottles. The main drug we found was a small rock, almost crystal but with fibers like cloth that stuck out from it. I’d asked Ellen what it was, but all she said was she’d tell me when I’m older, which the others found hilarious. In my defense, I’d never seen or heard of a drug that came as a fibrous crystal you had to melt to get high.

  With the rest of the warehouse looted and safely stored in Maggie’s ring, we had to open the last of the crates. We got through another two stacks of crates, all of them filled with half-rotted barley, when Ellen kicked a pile of small crates.

  The crates broke easily on impact with the ground and spilled a small hill of weevil infested rye onto the red concrete and revealed a small metal hatch, barely wide enough for me. The hatch reignited the interest that had died over the course of six hours and the five of us gathered around it, uncaring of the weevils that continued to scurry about the grain at our feet.

  “Hey Mika, could you send one of your golems down there?” Ellen asked.

  Mika’s nascent smile died on his face as he took out one of his golems and looked back at the hatch, The golem Mika pulled was carved to be an incredibly handsome middle-aged man, but during the campaign the golem received a plethora of wounds and now the pristine marble was pockmarked and scarred. It made the statue look like it was of a warrior god, but also diminished what the golem could do in battle.

  Mika looked from the hatch to Maggie and opened his mouth to ask something, but Maggie cut him off.

  “Divination doesn’t work in Dustreach, my skills won’t do anything.”

  Mika’s mouth shut with a snap and he looked back to his golem, weighing if it could handle the job.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why would divination not work?”

  Maggie looked at me for a moment before realization lit up her face.

  “That’s on me, Bran. I should have mentioned this earlier. It’s common knowledge here, so I just forgot to say anything. Some trace of the magic that made this mesa is stuck in the stone and interferes with divination spells of any kind.”

  “How?”

  “No one’s really sure of the exact reason it does this, but something about the mana within the stone unravels divination spells that get close. Only divination for some reason, though.”

  “And it stops all divination spells?” I asked, wondering how the mesa was still standing. If that was the case, a stone that could completely prevent magical spying would be valuable enough to strip-mine the entire mesa for it.

  “As far as I know, if it doesn’t, then none of the powerful [Diviners] have announced it.”

  “I’m surprised there isn’t a bigger mining industry in this city then. I’d think the stone would be valuable enough to do almost anything for.”

  “It’s certainly valuable, but only for so long. The stones soak up the magic that’s here, but as soon as they’re taken from the mesa, they leak that magic and eventually turn mundane. It’s a pretty slow process, but it still means you have to get a new anti-scrying device every couple of months.

  “As far as I know, it’s only the super-rich outside the city who can afford to use the mesa stone as anti-scrying devices. It’s just prohibitedly expensive otherwise.”

  “I know the [Emperor] has a chamber that’s lined with the stuff, and he replaces the stones once a week. But he’s also the [Emperor] so…” Ellen said as she watched Mika fiddled with the runes on the chest of his golem.

  During Maggie's and I’s brief conversation, Mika’s had his attention entirely absorbed in checking on the runes of his golem and making minor adjustments with his chisel here and there when a series was out of alignment.

  Ten minutes later and I threw open the iron hatch with one hand and stepped back, shield raised to cover any attacks. Behind me, Mika was holding onto his golem while Nora and Ellen held onto the rope tied around the construct’s waist.

  We waited, tensed, for anything to emerge from the hatch for five minutes. When nothing did, Mika and I approached the hatch with caution. When I peered over the edge, it was into absolute darkness. Lit only for a couple of feet by the light of the warehouse to reveal a natural stone floor and a single sprout of some kind of lichen.

  Slowly Mika moved up behind me when I motioned him forward and, under guard, he moved to place his golem just off the edge so Nora and Ellen could lower it.

  It took us a minute to safely lower the golem and, when it reached the bottom, the quiet impact echoed down the tunnel.

  Slowly, slower than I’d seen it before, the runes on Mika’s golem lit up, flashing a pale orange and blue to illuminate slightly more of the tunnel before him.

  “Wish me luck.” Mika said as the golem took its first step down the corridor.