by Eric Ugland
There weren’t many people flying solo at this party, and I was having flashbacks to the homecoming dance where I’d been stood up by Kelsey McLaughlin, but still bravely remained there until I saw Kelsey McLaughlin dancing with Jeremy Kyle Lincoln. He was a jerk. Probably still is. But the food was hot and fresh and looked delicious. I had a large cut of meat, from an animal I didn’t recognize, and a hunk of bread still steaming on the inside. I ate it quite carefully, with a napkin tucked into my collar, and it most definitely hit the spot. I felt satiated and ready to start the second part of the plan. Finding the room with all the magical items and figuring out how it was guarded.
I went from the dining room into the next area of the wing, a room that turned out to be three stories high, filled with books. A library. There was an older man sitting in a chair, midway through a tome. He looked up when I entered, and then immediately returned to his book. A small glass half-full of amber liquid was resting on the arm of the chair, and I realized the smell in the room was the pipe dangling from his mouth. I thought about talking to him, but as soon as I opened my mouth, he glared at me over the top of his book.
Next was a sitting room, full of large couches and chairs, small tables, and a bar with a wide selection of wines. There were a few people lounging about, and one young couple tucked in a corner behind a column trying to have a discrete make-out session. There was an exit from this room to the rear of the house, and the veranda was exceedingly well-lit and well guarded, and I could see people already starting into the hedge maze. Which had several large glowstone lanterns hanging over it. A quick glance at the backyard made it quite clear that there wasn’t a spot of darkness remaining. I had a hollow unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach. Any sense of actually pulling this off was gone. I was tempted to just make a quick exit.
But a party is a party. And I hadn’t seen all of it yet.
So I went into the ballroom.
That was definitely where the action was taking place. It was almost as big as a football field and went up nearly sixty feet high. There was a balcony on the second floor coming out quite a distance, and it seemed as if there were nearly as many people on the second floor watching the dancers as there were dancers on the main ballroom floor. Above the second floor was, naturally, the third floor, but it only had a small protrusion, and the band was all the way up there, playing a rollicking tune that had the dancers spinning and twirling across the parquet floor. The very center of the ceiling was a massive stained glass light. It seemed too large to just be a light, really, but light was coming from it, sending brilliant colors everywhere, so I figured it was just an oversized lamp of sorts.
I made my way along the edge of the room, enjoying seeing people dancing, but since I could tell that the dance was a very regimented thing with extraordinarily specific steps I didn’t know, I knew it was better if I just watched.
Everything in the place was made of white marble, much like the exterior of the building. While the outside was a more matte finish with a lot of carvings, the inside was primarily clean lines and glossy. Except, of course, the dance floor. The dance floor was all wood. Likely there’d been one big bloody fall on the marble before someone pointed out that wood would probably be a better surface choice.
The far side of the ballroom had a few doors that led outside, and more than a few windows.
And then, I was back out to the foyer. I looked at the exit, or the entrance. There was a flow of people coming in, and I knew I’d make more of a scene trying to leave than just staying a while longer.
So I went upstairs.
The second floor was less crowded, for sure, and nearly everyone heading upstairs was going over to the ballroom balcony to watch the dancers. I followed their lead and saw one good reason to do so, the dance produced some fascinating patterns below. The intricate and interwoven steps of the dance caused ripples of color, shapes, and designs to move across the floor. It was beautiful and a little mesmerizing, but you could also easily see when someone didn’t know the steps. There’d be a broken part of the pattern, and I had the feeling that the other young nobles got quite angry when someone messed up. Especially because those nobles watching from the second floor made comments about those poor bastards messing up, mean comments.
I left them to their gossiping and commenting, and went to the far side of the ballroom’s second floor, which lead to a large balcony overlooking the eastern gardens. No one was out there except for a few guards. I moseyed out, still trying to be just a party guest, which, at that point, was all I was. I mean, I had a real invitation, however it had gotten to me, it was real. I was just a party goer.
A quick glance back at the mansion, and I saw what I was a little afraid of, the marksmen were still on the third floor, but also now on the fourth floor, and I saw a flash of movement on the top of the building, which I took to mean that there were also guards on the roof.
I continued my unguided self-tour of the Tollendahl mansion by going over to the other wing of the house. There, I saw another sitting room, this one empty save a lonely looking bartender, then the second floor of the library, and then, what I was looking for, the exhibition hall, for lack of a better term, where Tollendahl was showing off some of his more impressive treasures, magical and otherwise. It was a large room, almost the same size as the dining room, but there was one main difference. The exhibition hall had very thick walls. Several feet thick. Which made the windows rather odd-looking because they were still the thickness of windows, but mounted in what were essentially tunnels four feet long. Ish.
There were three guards in the room, and two on the entrance leading to the second-floor foyer. No one on the entrance leading to the library, though, which was interesting. Being that I was the only person in the room, all the eyes of the guards were on me. Not in an unkind way, it was pretty clear they were bored and expected not a whit of trouble in this room.
I moved carefully from item to item, reading over the small museum-style labels mounted in front of them. There were some really impressive items, and some that seemed they were the work of a trickster.
Boots of vigilance which help you detect attacks coming your way. Fantastic.
A Fine Mustache, which is an exquisite fake mustache which will fall from your face if ever someone compliments it. Somewhat less fantastic.
The Belt of Rearming, which would cause any weapon stored on itself to magically return to the belt if thrown. A game-changer.
The Bag of Chaos and Wonder Items: a bag which would produce a ‘random’ item upon reaching into it. A game. A potentially dangerous one. There was a handy list of items which had already been pulled from the bag, and none of them sounded particularly useful. Especially not a giant rat, or a swarm of insects.
One display was nothing but rings. There had to be forty or fifty, and each one a little different. Nothing incredible or bizarre, they were mostly things like water breathing or dark vision, there were some that purportedly had shields within them, ones that made you run faster, ones that let you jump higher.
In the middle of the room was a sword being held aloft by a metal hand, the blade of the sword was on fire, big red and orange flames licking the blade. Visually striking. But upon reading the label, I got a bit let down because the flames were basically all for show.
A row of armor stands lined one wall, leather armor glinting blue, mail armor flashing silver, plate mail of brilliant gold that reflected light back so brilliantly it was blinding. There was also plenty of exotic materials on display, leathers of plenty of animals I’d never heard of, metals I had no concept of, and even one suit of armor made out of exotic wood.
And then there was my goal, the Orb of Leeching. According to the label on the stand, the Orb of Leeching was used to rip mana from one entity and transfer it to the holder of the orb. Rowland had mentioned the orb didn’t do what they thought it did, but it’s not like I had any way to check it out. I’d been remarkably concerned that the orb would be some massive t
hing, like a basketball. Instead, it was smaller than a baseball, and there was a carved stone hand holding it up in the air. And it was wide open, unfettered access. Just there on the top of a carved wooden pedestal.
There had to be a second layer of protection I wasn’t seeing. Something just seemed so very off. The rings were kept behind glass, the scrolls were in glass and metal cases, the weapons were held in locked weapon’s racks, the armor stands were built in a way where you had to remove fake arms and heads to take the armor off. This was the only portion of the collection which was there to be touched. I was missing something, I knew it. And considering what Rowland had already done, the lies he’d peddled out to me, he knew something about it.
67
I did a second lap around the room as a few more guests came through. Those who were there were older, muttering about this thing and that. There wasn’t a sense of wonder from them, it was more a reflection of value. The wealth on display. I had the feeling they’d react similarly to a valuable painting as these magical artifacts.
As a test, I tossed my identification spell towards the orb of leeching, sending out just the barest wisp of mana. No one seemed to notice. There was no alarm sounding, no guards rushed me and sliced my head off for casting unapproved magic in the empire. It wasn’t proof positive casting magic was possible within the mansion, but it gave me a few more options in this increasingly hard quest.
Orb of Leeching
Item Type: ???
Item Class: ???
Material: ???
Description: It’s round?
No useful information, but, then again, my spell was really only good up to uncommon items.
I left the room, and I was in the foyer again. The flow of people coming into the party had slowed to a trickle, but while I watched, for about five minutes, not a single person left. Leaving now, I’d draw attention to myself. And to be honest, I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to succeed, if only to throw it in the face of Rowland and then tell the Biscuit Union to shove it up their collective butts.
Time to start making plans and finding tools. First stop, doing something stupid. If it worked, it’d be a good way to kick things off, and if it didn’t, I'd probably be able to leg it out of the building. Maybe.
I saw a guard who was on his own, a little fancier dressed than some of the other guards, and I walked this direction. As discretely as I could, I muttered some magic words and did a little finger wave, and let a spell slip out. Satisfaction.
There was no visible sign it hit the man, but this goofy sort of smile appeared on his face, and his entire demeanor relaxed to the degree that it was almost comical.
I continued towards him, and I bumped into him. On purpose. And I snatched a small purse from his belt.
The guy laughed a little and caught me, putting me back upright.
“Bit to drink, friend,” he said.
“The wine has bubbles in it,” I slurred back at him.
“Indeed it does,” he replied, the big silly smile still on his face.
I smiled back at him and then walked away.
“Have a lovely night,” the guard called back.
“You too,” I said.
I headed up to the third floor and went towards the ballroom wing of the place. There was a very small walkway going all the way around the ballroom, about four feet wide at most. The orchestra stage stuck out at the northern end of the room, and there was a rather small area that I bet functioned as a de facto green room with a few couches and a lot of instrument cases. I was also the only non-orchestra member up on the third floor, at least on this side of things, but I didn’t have the feeling I was out of place. It seemed logical for guests to come up to the third floor as well. Especially as it seemed the sound was the best there, I could finally hear all the nuances of the orchestra.
Going along the wall, I paused in the middle of the room and leaned on the railing, looking down onto the second-floor balcony and the ballroom beyond. The dance had changed, going down in tempo and becoming a little more sway-y. Gone were the regimented moves, and it was more of a partner thing. There was still a form they were following, and to my untrained eye, it looked a bit like a waltz. I looked up at the giant light hanging from the center of the room, and being that I was almost at eye level with the thing, I could see that it was coming off the ceiling almost like one of those boob lights so popular in hotels and builder-basic homes. It was a ginormous stained glass boob-light. The colors weren’t arranged in a picture of any kind, but there was a pattern of sorts, and if I had to guess, it was a please-the-eye type of aesthetics more than anything else.
I pulled out the purse and looked through it. Keys. A ton of keys. Why keep them in a pouch, though? Seemed a bit superfluous, though I supposed it might have had something to do with decorum. A big ring of keys was hardly pretty. Just sucked because I had a spell that made keys almost trivial to me. And, considering I hadn’t found a single locked door in the place, I wondered how useful they might be. Still, better than a poke in the eye, and I had the chance to try out both a new skill and a new spell. So not a total waste of time, just a minor one.
Because I wasn’t sure what to do next, I let my gaze wander around. I think I was hoping something would inspire me. I did not find inspiration. Instead, I saw someone looking at me. From inside the hanging stained glass boob lamp.
The glass was not fully transparent, so at first, I was a bit confused. Bear in mind, it was like looking across a football field and trying to see someone who was standing midfield. I never played football, but I went to a fair number of high school games and spent my time there looking across the field at Colleen Sullivan who was rumored to neglect wearing all the requisite undergarments for her cheerleading. Never confirmed that rumor.
But then the figure in the glass waved at me, and I backed away from the railing and shook my head just in case I was losing my mind. My first thought was actually that it might be some aftereffect of my visits to the shadow realm, something that had followed me back. And yet, Careena’d cleared me, so that wasn’t really a possibility.
The figure blew on the glass, fogging it up, and then I saw it writing.
H…
E…
L…
P…
Well shit. There went my night.
68
The face peered at me a moment longer, then looked over her shoulder, wiped out the message with her arm, and disappeared back into the world of the lamp. Maybe I’d seen a genie. I could certainly use a genie in my life. Prior to his passing, I would often spend afternoons watching tv with my grandfather, and our favorite show involved a buxom blonde genie, and I admit to some pre-pubescent fantasies involving said buxom blonde genie. I knew it wasn’t a genie. At least, I was reasonably sure it wasn’t a genie. I was, however, exceptionally curious now, and I had something to do. I had a plan of action: Find my way up to the boob light and get inside.
I moved through the rest of the third floor quickly, and I discovered the first place I couldn’t go. There was a guard in front of a door.
“Personal quarters of the Lord,” the guard said when I inquired.
“Ah, thanks,” I said.
Then I moved on quickly. That took up the bulk of the third floor of the house. Basically everything but the ballroom was the private family residence.
I did, however, find a thin door, that wasn’t locked, which, when opened, revealed a staircase, leading up. So I took it, making sure to close the door behind me. On the fourth floor, all the previous openness of the home disappeared. Instead, it was long hallways with plenty of closed doors on either side. The halls were covered in a thick and luxurious carpet, and if I’d had heavy shoes, I bet I’d still have made nary a sound. As it was, walking softly on the stuff made me pass nearly silent. There was some artwork on the walls, but it lacked any of the pizzazz the stuff on the first three floors had. This was more mundane and family-focused. Portraits of the past stared at me as I traipsed alon
g.
Trying to retrace my steps, I thought I’d made it back to the point where the center of the ballroom might be, at least, I got as close as I could to it as I could without opening doors. I’d taken a few turns, and I was genuinely mystified by the size of the place, at least, the perception I was getting. It seemed like there were far too many corridors. And doors. And, speaking of doors, I’d gotten to the first one I needed to open.
I put my ear against the door, and I listened.
Nothing.
I peeked through the keyhole.
There was a large table in the middle of the room, some bookshelves around the walls, and a fire on the opposite wall. Large chairs were in each corner.
The door was locked.
I started to go through the keys and got it on the seventh. The door opened without a sound, and I stepped into a meeting room. It had to be a meeting room. The table was big, like conference room-sized, and a map of the Empire had been carved atop it. There were no words on the table, but some cities had been placed there. It was really cool to finally get an idea of the country I was part of. Roughly diamond-shaped with a flat top, the Empire looked huge. From the look of it, mountains formed the borders to all of the north, a chunk of the east, and nearly all the west. Then, there were all the mountains inside the borders. Gouges were carved into the wood then filled with blue stones making rivers. It was a magnificent display of craftsmanship, and I had to tear my eyes away from it to look at the rest of the room. There were shelves lined with books on three walls with lots of drawers along the bottom of the shelves. The bookshelves didn’t go all the way to the ceiling, only about ten feet up. There was a good two or three feet above them for the ceiling. A large rectangular chandelier of glowstones hung above the map-table, managing to provide shadow-free lighting across the table. However, it did leave quite a bit of darkness up above.
