The next day, Seymour sat cross-legged with a squadron of tacky little broaches situated on the floor in front of him. Gaudy trinkets made of flattened silver and copper and gold, some decorated with gemstones – all of them non-precious. He lifted a cheesy, sausage-on-croissant sandwich to his mouth and had a bite.
“Top-notch hangover food, right here.”
For the first time in his life, he’d had trouble sleeping not because he was dreading work, but rather because he actually felt too eager to get back to it. Gorgudan the Golden had busted him stealing and instead of canning his ass, the dragon had actually rewarded him with a promotion of sorts. In the aftermath, he and Dathon had spent the night drinking and saying their farewells before turning in at well past midnight.
And despite having enjoyed no fewer than eight rounds of Chester Hedwick’s homebrew, Seymour still struggled to fall into a deep sleep. Eventually he surrendered to the fact that getting adequate rest simply wasn’t meant to be. So while Dathon snored, he packed up his meager possessions and boarded the shuttle one last time, knowing that tonight he would sleep in the artificer’s workshop at Dragon Dan’s Adventure Depot, and would no longer be forced to get up early each morning to make the commute.
A mother browsed nearby with her twin boys in tow, each no more than six or seven years old. It seemed she had promised to buy each of the boys a magical toy. Seymour soaked up the children’s exuberance and smiled.
Now this is really the freaking life, isn’t it? He had another bite of his savory sammie. All of a sudden I live in a big ass magic shop where a sassy little dwarf dude is gonna cook me breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Movin’ on up and whatnot.
But he had no illusions about why he had been invited by Dragon Dan to live onsite and sleep in the artificer’s workshop. As much as the shop could use his Infringement power to expedite repairs, that wasn’t the true reason Seymour had been hired on permanently. He knew that the real gig would be keeping tabs on Ridley and keeping him off-balance. Whatever he and his bosses at the Guild of Artificers were up to, Seymour’s task was to disrupt their plans and report back to Eusebio and Dragon Dan in the event he managed to uncover any specifics.
I’m like a spy who lives in a goddamn magic shop!
For the time being, though, his primary task would continue to be conducting this endless inventory of the third floor, which had finally reverted back to its original state after about thirty-six hours. Seymour couldn’t deny the anxious, eerie feeling inhabiting his mind as he worked. He worried that the maze would return to trap him, even though Eusebio had assured him that it wouldn’t return for at least a month – if history could be trusted to guide them.
He picked up the next broach and examined it with his catalogoggles:
It looked like a toy sheriff’s star, complete with a pin attached to the back so it could be stuck onto someone’s lapel. The silver had been pounded leaf-thin so that it barely weighed anything. Scanning it with Infringement revealed that the lone material required to reproduce it would be an equal amount of silver, so he filed the schematic away in his Object Memory, with the intention of using it to practice later once his shift was over. He’d memorized a number of simple schematics for this purpose; schematics he could recreate using materials he knew Ridley had stashed away in his workbenches downstairs; materials that wouldn’t be missed if he decided to convert the finished products into gold coins using Cash Out.
However, the original badge’s worn condition also meant that it belonged with the busted stuff in his basket of bummers, so he dropped it inside and continued processing the other weird little pieces of magical costume jewelry. Then he moved on to a batch of enchanted hairclips. And after that: a collection of false eyelashes that all conveyed different sight-based powers. It struck him that a lot of this stuff could have been displayed downstairs in the showroom’s jewelry department.
“But none of it meets the aesthetic criteria, I’d guess.” He held up a hairclip that would give its wearer the ability to identify any bird simply by hearing its call. It was made from some sort of cheap-feeling plastic-like material and decorated with plain, raggedy feathers. “Like who would actually wear this? It’d look like a sick bird made a nest in your hair and then straight up died there.”
Soon, his basket was full enough to take downstairs to Ridley. Upon entering the artificer’s workshop, he found his so-called mentor sitting at one of the workbenches, hunched over a green cube that looked like it was made from slick marble. His Sculpting Wand sparked as he worked to repair the item’s sacred geometry.
Without turning away from the cube, he said, “you and I need to have a talk.”
“Good morning, Ridley.” Seymour emptied his basket on the other workbench; the one that was currently unoccupied. “What’s on your mind?”
“First, if you’re going to be sleeping in my workshop, we‘re going to need to lay down some ground rules.” He set aside his wand and swiveled in his chair to lock eyes with Seymour. “Put simply: you stay out of my way, and you stay out of my things.”
“I’ll do my best.” He nodded at the cot that had been shoved up against the wall beside the door. “But I mean, it’s kinda my room now, too, isn’t it? So everything in here should probably be considered ours, right? Like community property, and whatnot. I’m just saying – I think for all legal intents and purposes we’re basically common law married now.”
Ridley’s jaw bulged as he grinded his teeth. “I don’t find any of this funny, Little. It’s obvious what Dan and Eusebio are up to and, quite frankly, I find this entire situation insulting.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Like hell you don’t. They think I’m working with the Guild of Artificers to undermine their operation here.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “And they’ve deployed you to tempt me into revealing the nature of my plans – plans which simply do not exist.”
“Then I guess you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“That’s right.” He sighed and hung his head. “Except for this damned pocket oracle here. I don’t think my wand alone will be enough to return it to working order.”
“Pocket oracle, eh?” Seymour wondered. “I remember inventorying that thing before the maze popped up. It’s like a magic eightball but like, actually magic.”
“If you mean to say in your obtuse, Riftborn way that it is a minor, handheld divination item – then yes, in layman’s terms that is correct.” Ridley swiveled back around to snatch up the green cube. “And this one has lost a significant amount of its mass. It happens from time to time, and it’s why in my unheeded opinion these things should always be kept locked up. To activate a pocket oracle, you rub its surface and then you ask it a question. But with the way this thing had been stored up on the third floor where anyone could easily access it, customers have now rubbed away approximately twenty percent of its exterior surface.”
“If it’s lost that much mass, that means you can’t repair it just by reconfiguring its sacred geometry, right? Like, there’s just not enough material left to fit all the angles and whatnot.”
“Correct again – and that’s where you come in.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes, I have a task for you to complete as part of your artificer training. My job here at the depot consists of much more than the mere act of completing hands-on repairs, and one of the most common activities I am forced to perform is sourcing exotic raw materials – a practice which I believe will be particularly useful for you to become acquainted with, given your power of Infringement.”
Seymour thought for a moment. “So, am I guessing right that you need me to get you more of whatever that pocket oracle is made from?”
“Precisely right.” Ridley turned back to his workbench again and opened one of the drawers to retrieve a sheet of parchment. Then he began to sketch something on it using a quill and ink. “I’m going to draw you a map which will lead you to a treant graveyard located nearby, just a short distance within the jungle.”
“‘Treant’? Like a tree-man?”
“Basically correct, yes.” He finished sketching the map and passed it to Seymour. Then he pulled something that looked like a corkscrew combined with a syringe and handed it over, as well. “This is a Treant Tap. You simply screw it into the carcass and press the plunger, which will extract the resin we need.”
Seymour captured the corkscrew-thing’s schematic to get a better idea of what he was working with:
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“You’re sending me out into the jungle to harvest blood from a dead tree-dude?”
“Aye.” Ridley nodded. “And you should leave immediately, so that you can be finished with your work and out of the jungle well before dark.”
“Alright then.” He pocketed the Treant Tap and gave Ridley’s map a quick going over. “Guess I’ll see you later.”
“Until then.” Ridley bowed his head dismissively and then turned back to his workbench.
Seymour headed out into the showroom and found Eusebio waiting nearby at the showroom’s main counter. The manager nodded and gestured for Seymour to join him.
“How goes it with Ridley?” he asked.
“Not too bad.” Seymour leaned on the counter beside Eusebio and spoke quietly. “He’s obviously irritated that he has to share the workshop with me, but I mean who wouldn’t be? I’m invading his workspace and whatnot.”
“What’s that you have there?”
“It’s a map.” Seymour gave it to Eusebio, who scanned Ridley’s drawing. “He wants me to head out into the jungle to harvest some sentient resin. Says he needs it to repair a pocket oracle.”
Eusebio’s brow furrowed as he studied the map. “Interesting, should be a fun little daytrip for you. But before you go, follow me for a moment.”
Seymour trailed after him as they made their way to a counter off to the side of the main sales floor. Eusebio led him behind it, and then stood with his hands on his hips as he looked over the weapons hung on the wall.
“Here, take this for protection.” He pulled a plain-looking shortsword down from the wall and gave it to Seymour. The blade measured about the same length as his forearm, and the handle appeared to be made of wood wrapped in leather. “But be sure to return it when you’re done. It’s only a loaner.”
Seymour captured the sword’s schematic:
“Thanks.” The shortsword felt good in his grip – better than it rightfully should have, he realized. He almost hoped he’d end up needing to use it, just to see what executing combat actions at a rank higher than his base ability really meant. “You think I’ll run into trouble?”
“Always a possibility when one enters the jungle. Also, before you go, choose yourself a weight-reduction scabbard. They’re in aisle four.” He bowed and looked Seymour directly in the eye. “And be careful out there, Little. Be certain you give yourself enough time to exit the jungle before dark – even if it means you return empty-handed. You can always make another attempt to harvest the resin tomorrow, if need be.”
“Will do, and thanks again.”
Without further delay, Seymour found himself a weight-reducing scabbard and strapped it to his belt. Once the shortsword was placed within it he couldn't even feel it hanging on his hip. He quickly realized how cumbersome it would have been, otherwise, which inspired an unexpected admiration toward the adventurers he passed on his way out. Some of these people were carrying whole arsenals on their belts and backs, and he doubted they all owned scabbards like the one he now wore.
Eusebio had known what I’d need better than I even did. Way better, actually. He pushed through the swinging saloon doors and hit the sun-drenched savannah outside. Guess that’s what makes him a good magical sales-dude.
As he marched across the grassy flatland toward the jungle’s dark boundary, Seymour’s head swam and his mind wandered. He’d been assigned a simple collection quest, really – but this honestly felt like the biggest adventure of his life. He was wearing a sword on his hip and following directions written on a piece of legit parchment. It was a far cry from using his GPS to find his way to a secret poker game in the hidden backroom of some shitty little dive bar, which he cringed to think might have been the most adventurous thing he’d done in recent years back on Earth.
Gambling had certainly become how he fed his addictive personality. How he fed himself a steady diet of adrenaline and dopamine. And he was good at it, supplementing the income he’d earned waiting tables to such a degree that before he’d been whisked away to this fantasy world he’d hadn’t needed a roommate in over a year – which was sort of unheard of for a service worker in Los Angeles.
He arrived at the edge of the jungle shortly after midday. Ridley’s directions had been true and easy to follow, leading Seymour to a footpath winding between the palm fronds and waist-high ferns. He waded in, leaving the golden savannah behind for the gloom of the rainforest, where sunlight could barely penetrate the dense canopy overhead – a fact which suddenly made reading the map unsettlingly difficult. But he knew that so long as he remained on the trail—so long as he didn’t lose it entirely—he would eventually arrive at the Treant graveyard.
The jungle smelled overwhelmingly of petrichor and sounded like the primate house at the zoo, but far-off and muted. He was grateful for the fact that it seemed like the creatures lurking out there wanted to keep their distance from him, at least for now. But Seymour had the distinct foreboding that if he didn’t get back to the savannah before dusk, the residents of the jungle would take a much greater interest in him.
Following roughly an hour-and-a-half of hiking, an idea occurred to him. He paused his march to find a twig on the jungle floor, and analyzing it with Infringement revealed it to be made from softwood.
“Nice, that’ll do.”
Nestled within his Object Memory, Seymour still possessed the sacred schematic for the Wand of Sneezing he’d used in his roundabout way to cripple the topiary tiger which had ambushed him two days earlier in the hedge maze. He called it up in his mind, and used Infringement to produce a completed wand.
Then, he concentrated on his newest sigil power, Cash Out. He couldn’t be one-hundred percent certain how this was going to work, but he had his suspicions. With the Wand of Sneezing held in his right hand, pressed flush against his pig-faced Sigil of Greed, he willed the power to activate and an interface element appeared in his vision:
He silently gave Cash Out permission to consume the Wand of Sneezing and as soon as he did so his sigil opened its mouth and slurped the wand inside. In the next moment, gold coins began to barf out from the center of his palm and tumbled to the soft dirt at his feet.
“Jackpot.” Seymour grinned and knelt to gather up his loot. The coins gleamed, perfectly clean as if they’d only just been minted. Each one had somehow been pressed with Dragon Dan’s silhouette. “Weird, but I don’t know what else I expected, really.”
These ten gold coins could be exchanged for thirty imperial chits if he took them all back to the shop, but he had other plans. Closing his eyes, he paused a beat to call up what he conceived of as his character sheet, and mentally scrolled down to double-check the description of the first class trait he’d gained:
It seemed safe to assume that the act of consuming gold coins would function the same way as consuming the Wand of Sneezing had a moment earlier and the softwood twig before it. He collected a stack of the freshly-minted currency in his left hand and then fed it into his right.
As soon as the coins came in contact with his Sigil of Greed, another notification appeared in the center of his vision:
Seymour mentally selected Cash Out, and the coins in his palm were suddenly slurped into his flesh. Without being able to describe the sensation even to himself, he felt them dissolve into his bloodstream.
After calculating the difference before and after his Blood Money deposit, Seymour was able to see that each coin invested would advance the selected power by .2%; five coins would push it up by an entire percent. It was the same amount of progress he gained with each use of each power.
He appreciated the symmetry, but felt safe in assuming the future journeys from adept-to-master and beyond would require increasingly larger sums of gold. For now, though, he only needed to come up with a total of five-hundred coins to move a sigil power from the very bottom of neophyte-rank to the beginning of adept. That seemed entirely doable, especially given the synergistic relationship between Infringement, Cash Out, and Blood Money.
“Works just like I’d hoped. Straight up hax.”
He resumed his trek through the jungle then, mindful of Eusebio’s warning to be out before dusk, and whistling as he went. Soon, the path he’d been following ended in an unexpected clearing. He blinked and took in the scene: a vast, barren ring in the otherwise implacable crush of the jungle. It might have been a big enough space to host a basketball court.
“But not entirely barren, is it?” An unseen creature bolted across the clearing, spooked by Seymour’s voice, and fled into the dense undergrowth. “Oops, my bad little buddy.”
But the presence of whatever critter he’d just scared off wasn’t what he’d meant by not entirely barren. Strewn across the clearing he saw mounds of dirt which stood roughly as tall as himself. He carefully crept into the clearing, feeling exposed, to have a closer look.
Upon closer inspection, these mounds weren’t dirt at all. What he found were huge tree stumps, covered in sinewy roots. Seymour couldn’t claim to be any kind of fantasy-world botanist, but it looked to him like these narrow roots were reaching up from the ground to capture the stumps. Closer examination seemed to confirm his hunch, as he realized the stumps were the treant carcasses he’d been sent to harvest, and the roots appeared to be breaking them down, festering into the wood and rotting it. Leaning nearer still, Seymour could make out a wriggling rhythm. The roots were alive—possibly sentient—and seemed essentially to be making mulch of the treant carcasses.
“Extremely green operation you’ve got going on here,” he mused out loud. “Hope you don’t mind, I’m just gonna slurp out some sap real quick and I’ll be on my way.”
He drew out the Treant Tap and touched the sharp end of its corkscrew to the skin—the bark—of the deceased treant. He expected that it would need to be twisted manually for it to penetrate the surface, but instead it began to screw itself in, the corkscrew spinning like the head of a cordless drill.
“Okay that’s pretty sweet,” he chuffed. “Freaking magic, am I right?”
And then the device exploded in a blinding green flash, sending his fingers shooting away in every direction and shearing the rest of his hand off at the wrist.
