The Adept - Day 14
“Where do you keep getting those from?”
Reader was looking at Grim as he produced yet another pre-lit cigarette. Reader could not determine if smoking was prohibited in the maze-like library, but it was a limited concern. Plenty of rooms smelled of fumes from alchemy or smoke from engineering projects gone awry. If Cornelius wandered in, he had a feeling they would find out very vocally if this was a prohibited action.
Grim looked at Reader through half-lidded eyes. “Some fucking bullshit with my guts. No, before you fucking ask, I don’t have fucking guts. I mean my insides.”
“Your pages?”
Grim took a long drag and exhaled. “Something like that. My pages aren’t really fucking pages. I’m not really a fucking book. I’m just forced to represent myself like this. I’m a geist, but there’s temporal crockery with the way I’m built to hold knowledge, and while it mostly just sucks fucking ass, this is a perk.”
“So… you can put stuff… like inside you—”
“Heh heh…”
“And it just freezes? So what did you do? Light a bunch of cigarettes and just… stick them in there?”
“Exactly,” Grim said, utterly deadpan.
Reader just stared, mouth agape and speechless. “But… but… why would you do that?”
“If I lit a bunch of cigarettes and didn’t put them inside me, they would all just fucking burn out, wouldn’t they? That would be fucking stupid.”
“But… why light them first?”
Grim twirled a wrist. “Why the fuck not? Now I can do this.” Reader observed this time as Grim reached not behind his back, but into the space between his binding, emerging with another lit cigarette, adding it to the one in his mouth. He puffed along merrily, or as close to merrily as the creature could achieve. Then he said, “Shit. Shouldn’t have fucking done that. Getting pretty fucking low. Hey, shithead, what’s our money situation?”
Reader cast a withering glance. “Did you not notice me not eating yesterday?”
Grim shrugged.
Reader said, “Our financial situation is zero. We have zero gold. But maybe we are about to fix that.”
Reader held up a battered old lantern. It had cost the last of his coins. In researching weaves, he had discovered that enchanting weaves, the sort of weave that was attached to a physical object, varied in success depending on the materials they were attached to. Illumination weaves did best with glass. So Reader had decided to find an item with a glass component, but ideally with other more robust materials, that he could use to make his first salable product. Happily, what he called switch weaves, those that could be used by mundane users to activate or deactivate other weaves, bonded very well. So as he perused the general stores for something suitable, he had come across a battered and nonfunctional lantern and bought it for more gold than he expected it was worth.
When the weaves had finally come together, the green bar on his band had jumped about another tenth. It was now about 20% full.
Grim squinted at the lantern. “That fucking work? Like, is it gonna work long enough for you to get away from whatever poor schmuck you sell it to before it breaks down again?”
“Hey, I’m not trying to cheat anyone!” he said, but his expression was more one of doubt than outrage. “I think the weave will last a while at least…”
“What’s a while?”
Reader shrugged. “I don’t know. Still figuring this out. But I’m hoping at least a few weeks.”
Grim chuckled. “Heh heh heh. Can you imagine some poor bastard halfway down a fucking dungeon, fighting for his fucking life, then his fucking lamp goes out. Ahahahahah.”
Reader swallowed hard. “Oh… I don’t want to do that…”
“Ah, enough with the fucking morals. You’re starving and I’m low on smokes. Let’s go screw someone over.”
Reader got up and they moved down the hall. “Maybe I could sell it to someone who’s not going to need it in a life-and-death situation…”
Grim said, “Like who?”
Reader said, “I don’t know. Like, wouldn’t someone like to have something like this around the house?”
Grim’s interest seemed to wane as the consequences of the failing weave became theoretically less grave. “Whatever. So what’s the fucking plan? Gonna stand on the street and start shouting lamps for sale?”
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Reader said, “I was thinking… door to door?”
Grim rolled his eyes. “Fucking great. Whatever, let’s fucking do this.”
Once on Main Street they proceeded to one of the side lanes that led to rows of residential buildings. “How much should I charge?”
Grim shrugged. “Fucked if I know. A thousand gold coins?”
“That seems a bit high.”
“One?”
“That’s less than I paid for the broken lamp in the first place. I don’t know, will we try for ten?”
Grim said, “We ain’t fucking trying anything, shitweed. You’re trying, and I don’t give a fuck what you do as long as there’s a coin for me to get some smokes.”
Reader said, “If I go for ten then I can spend two coins on another lamp, or four for two, give you one, and still have coins left to eat while I make a couple more.”
The first door Reader knocked on produced no answer. The second door produced a well-dressed bufo lady whose toadish shouts of annoyance sent him scrambling away. The next door garnered some polite disinterest.
After working the first full row of houses with no positive outcomes, Reader found a bench by a fountain and sat down.
Grim said, “This isn’t getting me any closer to getting more smokes.”
Reader said, “I’m cold calling. It’s not ideal.”
They sat for a while, Grim smoking another cigarette with studied intensity, Reader just staring blankly.
“Hey, Grim.”
“Fuck is it?”
“I was reading about the syntras.”
“That bullshit?”
“Well, one of them will get me home. At the rate I’m going here I’m not going to be able to earn ten million gold this century, so I’m thinking that may be my best hope of getting home.”
“Mmmhmmm.”
Reader went on, pretending he had an interested audience. “Well… there’s not a whole lot out there about them. The history books are all messed up. Like, every single one of them. It’s like there was history, but it’s all vague and nonspecific. Then there’s a stretch of about three and a half years where there are dates and events and really good records, then all the dates skip about 840 years forward to, well, a few weeks ago. It’s really messed up.”
“And I’m meant to give a fuck about this because?...”
Reader glowered. “Because it makes researching really hard and confusing. When I do find the syntras mentioned, it’s in the messed-up before time. What I’ve got so far is that there seem to be five. Death, life, creation, destruction and preservation. Red, Green, Blue, Black and White. The Shopkeeper asked me to bring him the Blue syntra. Why didn’t he just ask me for any syntra?”
Grim stubbed out his cigarette, slumping in his seat. “I don’t fucking care.”
Reader continued, “You know there’s a picture in one of those books and it shows five men with the five syntras.”
“Ugggghhhhh…”
“Hang on, this is interesting.”
“Nnnnnhhhh.”
“The thing about the picture that keeps getting me is that the five men in the picture… they don’t have elf ears, or dwarf bodies, or green skin… they look like humans. Do you think there were humans here before? Do you think the syntras have something to do with humans? Do you think that’s why the Shopkeeper asked me to get one? But why the blue one specifically? Is it something specific to me? I’m an adept, which seems to be a generalized class for everything from magic users to builders and architects and engineers. Which is… creating, kind of? Grim? Grim!”
Grim’s eyelids fluttered open.
Reader snapped, “Do you really sleep?”
Grim said, “I pass out sometimes when I’m reeeeeallly fucking bored.”
Reader got up. “You’re a shit. A real little shit. And you want a coin for smokes.”
Grim joined him. “Hey dipshit, I’m getting that fucking coin.”
Reader didn’t respond. His eye had been caught by an approaching figure. It was a little blue man, in a dirty shirt and overalls. This wasn’t unusual. He had seen several of these little blue people. What was notable here was the little blue man was wearing a helmet, and that helmet had a candle stuck to it.
Feeling foolish and unsure of how to continue, he scrambled over to the little blue man. “Excuse me! Sorry, excuse me.”
The little man stopped and pointed to his own chest with a questioning expression. Reader blurted, “Yes, you, could I have a moment, please, if you don’t mind.”
It was hard to age the creature, but in human terms Reader thought he looked to be early twenties. “Hi, I’m Reader. You look to be a miner? Am I right? With a helmet like that?”
The little blue man cheerfully extended a hand. “Bobby Ganderson, and right you are. Bless us and save us, but it’d be a silly hat to be wearing if I wasn’t.”
Reader struggled to contain his excitement. “Oh! I’ve been working on enchanting, you see, kind of new to it, but I have this!”
He produced the lamp and twisted the nozzle, where he had attached the switch weave, a few times, the glass flaring to life with each twist.
Bobby made an appropriate expression of being impressed.
Reader said, “I’m just starting out, you see, but I was wondering if this wouldn’t be useful to you? A lot brighter than a candle or conventional lamp.”
Bobby accepted the item and turned it over in his hands. He twisted the knob, his eyes lighting at the effect. “Sure would, but I don’t think I could afford something like this. I’m a simple sort. Bless us and save us, but I don’t know where I’d be going with something so precious.”
Reader ventured, “Ten coins…”
Bobby’s eyes widened. “Oh! I could do ten… wait a minute now, that’s a very fair price… very fair… new at this, you said? How long are these weaves gonna last?”
Grim opened his mouth to answer, but Reader cut in before the lies could start. “The truth is I don’t know. I think it will go a few weeks. But I’m not sure. I’ll make you a deal, if the weave fades before eight weeks are up, bring it back to me, you’ll find me in the library, and I’ll reset them.”
Bobby rubbed his chin. “Well, that’s fair enough so it is… and it would be nice… you could hardly rent a lamp like this for that money for that long… you know what, you’ve got a deal.”
Reader said, “Really?”
Bobby nodded, digging in a pouch at his waist. “Better than that, if it lasts I’m sure Pa would buy a few more at that kind of money.”
Reader accepted the ten gold coins, his stomach rumbling at the touch of the cold metal on his fingers.
He watched Bobby walking away, unable to believe his success. “Grim! Did you hear that?”
Grim said, “Yeah, we got the cash for my fucking smokes.”
“No! Repeat business! He said he’d buy more if it works!”
The two started walking back towards Main Street, not noticing the figure resting in the shadows between an untrimmed hedge and stone arch.
Wait for it…
Reader spun. “What?”
He saw it, a figure in black robes, lurking. It shifted away at being spotted.
Reader stood frozen. His heart hammered in his chest. “Did you see it, Grim?”
“Yeah, I fucking saw it. Gonna do something about it?”
Reader said, “Like what? I don’t have any weapons.”
Grim inspected the shadowy corner, now seemingly vacated, then said, “Then what the fuck are you getting excited about?”
