“You think I’m amazing?” she asked, wiping her eyes with one hand before taking the piece of stone from me. She set it in her lap and stared at me.
“Of course. Your sculptures are amazing.” I smiled. “But, you’re right, and you’re wrong.” I leaned into her. “I know what it’s like to feel like you’re worthless, like you’re not doing well enough. Believe me when I say I’ve felt like I brought nothing but shame with me from my world.”
“You’re the Builder of Legend,” Annabeth said, meeting my eyes. “How could you feel that way?”
“It’s easy not to see your own value when you’re failing.” I put my hand on hers. “But you aren’t failing. You’re the most talented sculptor I know.”
“I’m the only sculptor you know,” Annabeth replied, looking down at my hand where it touched her own. “So, that’s not saying a lot.”
“You’re missing my point,” I said, squeezing her fingers around her sculpting knife and raising it to the stone.
“What are you doing?” she asked, watching me impassively.
“I want you to try something different, Annabeth. I want you to try taking out your emotions on that piece of rock.” I pressed her knife against the stone before releasing her. “Don’t try to carve anything in particular, just beat it up. Give it a good smackdown, okay?”
“You want me to just slice up the rock?” she asked, turning to look at me. “What good will that do?”
“Sometimes breaking things makes people feel better.” I shrugged. “I remember one time at work I was trying to fix the Slurpee machine and the damned lid wouldn’t go back on the machine. I wrestled with it for twenty minutes before freaking out and flinging it halfway across the store. It didn’t help fix the machine, and it made a mess I had to clean up, but for that brief moment, I felt really good.” I pointed to the rock. “No one will make you clean it up.”
“You realize that’s insane, right?” Annabeth said, turning away from me and looking at the rock in her hands.
“Humor me, Annabeth,” I said, nodding to her. “What have you got to lose?”
“Fine,” she said, and flicked her hand out, slashing a deep groove into the stone. She paused, hand outstretched and stared down at the stone. Her face screwed up in anger. She hit it again, and this time, tears filled her eyes. Another slash came down, taking a chunk of rock off as her tears spattered the ground.
The crazy thing was, as she continued to cry and cut and beat her knife against the hunk of rock, her experience started rising. Normally with Annabeth, she gained experience slowly and monotonously. I knew that it was partially because she was already really good at everything, but she wasn’t good at this. Not at emotive carving.
“Nyagh!” Annabeth cried, breaking my concentration, and as I glanced back at her, she drove her knife deep into the center of the stone, cracking it down the center. Fissures spread out from the slash, spider-webbing across its surface.
The stone slipped from her hand then and rolled a few feet away as she leaned over it huffing. Her cheeks were tear strewn, and as I reached out to comfort her, she waved me away.
“Thanks,” she said, turning away from me. “I do feel better.” She took a deep breath. “But I’m not sure what the point was. Feeling better won’t make me better at this.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, leaning forward and picking up the piece she’d been stabbing. It sort of resembled a chipped heart. Not the fake Valentine's hearts but a real beating heart. It was roughly hewn, but as I stared at it, I could clearly see how it had been broken and was shattering more thanks to the spider webbing cracks.
The Sculptor’s Heart
Class: Sculpture
Material: Stone
Grade: B
Use: The sculptor has managed to impart a feeling of sadness and desperation into this piece. All who look upon it will gain a temporary 10% bonus when trying to defend a loved one from a hopeless situation.
“This is pretty amazing, Annabeth,” I said, holding it up to her. Only instead of looking at me, she looked at the ground. “You’re amazing.”
“I’m not,” she said, finally looking at me. “If I were, you’d have taken me to your bed.”
“What?” I asked, suddenly confused. “What are you talking about?”
“You never took me to your bed. You took nearly everyone else, but not me.” She touched her chest. “So I tried to do better, tried to sculpt better for you, but always I wasn’t good enough.”
“That has nothing to do with anything,” I said, shaking my head. “I didn’t know you wanted to be with me. At least, not really. You took yourself out of the rotation and everything.”
“Of course I did, you idiot. I just wanted you to come of your own volition. Not because it was my turn,” she said, grabbing my hands and pulling me into a kiss. Her lips ate at mine hungrily while her hands pressed against my chest. Then she shoved me violently away. “But you never came to me. I thought that by taking myself out of the lottery that maybe you’d pick me, but I was wrong.” She got up then and turned away. “I wanted you to want me, Arthur, but you don’t.”
The way she said it hurt me in a way I couldn’t quite explain because I’d always meant to go to her, to make a move, and I just hadn’t. It had always felt like there’d be more time, and because of that, I hadn’t made Annabeth a priority. Thing was, she should have been.
“Would you believe that I’m an idiot?” I replied, getting to my feet and putting my arms around her. She stiffened at my touch but didn’t pull away. “Because that’s one hundred percent true.”
“Idiot or not, you didn’t pick me, didn’t want me,” she said, turning in my arms so she was looking up at me with tear-filled eyes. “And I don’t want to be just another number in the lottery. That’s already my life, just another one.” She took a deep breath. “I want to be important, be chosen.”
Listening to her made me think about what Gwen had revealed to me. She’d straight up told me some of the girls were waiting for me to pick them. It seemed crazy to me because I was, well, me, but at the same time I could see how they felt. They were special, and by not going to them sooner, they were starting to think less of themselves, and that was not okay.
“You are important,” I said, leaning down until our foreheads were touching. “No one can do what you do.” I smiled. “And even if that wasn’t true, even if we had fifty sculptors, I’d still like you best.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said, starting to pull away.
“You rode a ravager into battle, Annabeth. You were the only non-combat person to come through the breach, and you did it willingly.” I kissed her then, pressing my mouth against her forehead. “You’re brave and smart, and I love that you want to do things the right way, and I’m sorry, truly sorry, I didn’t see that before.”
“It’s okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “No one else looks at me that way, anyway. I’m used to it.” She bit her lip then. “But maybe we could change that? Maybe just this one time I could pretend that I believe you?” One of her hands drifted down and rested on my thigh. “Would that be okay?”
When I didn’t respond, she moved her hand up just a touch, so it rested just below the hem of my tunic before she leaned in close. Her breath was hot on my neck, sending little shivers scampering across my flesh, and I wasn’t sure I could tell her no even if I’d wanted to.
“You don’t need to pretend,” I replied as her tongue flicked out, licking my earlobe. “I really do care about you.”
“Good,” she said, pulling me into her, and as our lips touched, fireworks exploded in my brain.
15
“Well, I have good news, bad news, and worse news,” Buffy said when she arrived back in town the next day.
“Normally people start conversations with hello, how are you,” I said, offering her a glass of water because I’d been getting water for the girls. “They don’t normally barge in and start talking. It’s rude.” I held up the g
lass. “Water?”
“You know what is rude? Wasting time when time is money,” the goblin said, taking the offered glass and gulping it down. She wiped her mouth with the back of one hand as she stared at the empty glass. “This tastes like premium water.”
“It’s not, you’re just thirsty,” I said, pointing to the rain barrels Crystal had managed to fashion from some of the lumber. They’d leaked like a sieve, but thanks to some patching on Annabeth’s part, they more or less worked.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, refilling her glass with the ladle and sucking it down too. “But I’m going to allow it because we’re basically fucked.”
“Wait, I thought you said there was good news,” I replied, moving back to my work of refilling glasses. I couldn’t get much done on my own, and everyone else was busy. That had relegated me to water boy, which was fine because it gave me a chance to check in on everyone without appearing nosy.
“The good news is we were granted our charter,” Buffy said, pulling out a piece of parchment and showing it to me. “Congratulations. You are now the fine owner of a township on this piece of land.”
“That’s great!” I exclaimed, taking the charter from her and looking it over. The language was that same demonic one I couldn’t read, but thankfully it resolved into a tooltip I could.
Town Charter: Graveyard of Statues
Class: Deed
Owner: Arthur Curie
Use: The holder of this deed has been granted the official right to create a charter town on their property.
“There are two catches,” Buffy said, taking the deed from me like she thought I might break it. “The first is that I had to pay triple to get this through, and the only reason it succeeded is because of Mammon.”
“What do you mean?” I asked as Buffy put the deed into one of her many pockets. “How did Mammon help us?”
“She didn’t, per se. She more or less is a giant gorilla doing whatever the fuck she wants which is causing all sorts of chaos. Because of that, I managed to grease a few palms and get this through.” She took a deep breath. “That’s the good news.”
“That’s the good news?” I asked, taking a deep breath as I studied the goblin. “What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is that the guilds realized what I was doing after I got your deed signed and decided to enact an old bylaw.” She blew an explosive breath out and shook her head. “Basically you need to pay property tax for your new land.” She gestured around us. “I got the assessment lowered as much as I could, thanks to the proximity to the Darkness, but it’s still three times what we have saved, and we only have ten days to pay it.”
“How the hell are we supposed to do that?” I asked, a surge of rage filling me. I’d claimed this land from the Darkness myself, and now the guilds wanted to take it from me over taxes? It was ridiculous.
“I don’t know,” she shook her head. “I just don’t.” She bit her lip. “I looked through all the dark blood Sally managed to create on my way in, and even if we sold it all, we don’t have enough.”
“There has to be another way,” I said, shaking my head. “We can’t lose this land, if we do, we’ll have nothing.”
“Yeah… that’s the worse news.” Buffy looked at the floor. “There may be a deal on the table.”
“A deal?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at her. “You should have started with that, Buffy.”
“It’s not a good idea, but it was the best I could do.” She took a deep breath like she was bracing herself for impact.
“Just spit it out, Buffy,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
“The guilds want Mammon gone, and they will pay a lot of money to have it done.” She looked right at me before pointedly turning and pointing into the darkened horizon. “If you can get rid of her, well, everything will be fine.”
“How do I get rid of a Princess of Hell,” I asked, practically about to tear my hair out. “As you said, she can do whatever the heck she wants.”
“Her lands have been taken by the Darkness. The guilds think that if her lands were somehow purged of the Darkness, she will leave and everything will go back to how it was.” Buffy’s voice was so quiet, I almost didn’t hear her. It took another few seconds to actually understand what she had told me.
“You realize Mammon is the Princess of Greed, and of all the princesses is the least likely one to actually just leave. All that will mean is she’ll want both.” I shook my head. “And how the hell am I to rid the Darkness from her land?”
“I don’t know,” Buffy said, meeting my eyes. “But I suggest you and I meet with the guilds and hash out those terms. They know you’re the only one who can rid the Darkness of Mammon’s lands and they’re willing to pay. We should hear them out,” she gestured around us, “Unless you have a way to come into exorbitant wealth in the next ten days.”
I glared at her because I didn’t know what else to do. I knew it wasn’t her fault and that she’d likely done everything she could, but it still didn’t feel right to me. Not with the competition just a few days away.
That said, I couldn’t sit by and do nothing when I could save us. Maybe it wouldn’t work, maybe the whole thing would be a waste of precious time, but I had to at least meet with the guilds. After all, the enemy of my enemy was my friend, right?
“Fine, I’ll meet with them.” I picked up the water I’d ladled out and moved past her to bring it to the other girls. “We’re going there anyway so Annabeth can enter the sculptor’s competition. Speaking of which, I need you to buy a few things.”
“Did you not hear me say we’re broke? We don’t have the buy in for the sculptor’s competition nor to buy things.” Buffy hung her head. “Why are we doing this?”
“There’s an Armament that can be crafted. It’s a gauntlet. I need it.” I handed the tray of water to Buffy and picked up the second one. “Come with me, I could use the help.”
“I find it hard to believe an Armament can just be crafted so easily,” Buffy said, following behind me. She held the water out in front of herself hesitantly, like she was worried she’d spill it.
“That’s why we need to win the competition, so we can get Freya to sculpt us a Heart of the Storm.” I took a deep breath. “Sally says the rest is easy to get and should be cheap.”
“If she says that, I believe it,” Buffy said, and there was hesitation in her voice. “And your plan had better work because there’s no way we can get a Heart of the Storm otherwise.” She rubbed her face with one hand. “Guess it’s a good thing there’s a competition coming up. People will be in the mood for sculptures.” She licked her lips. “Annabeth has been crafting sculptures, right? If she hasn’t, I will hit you.”
“What’s it matter? We can never sell sculptures for a lot,” I said, not quite understanding. “But yeah, she’s made a million of them.”
“Well, if she does win, we can sell them for a bundle. Hell, as long as she places, we’ll make a bunch, and maybe we can actually buy the stuff you want.” She smiled at me. “Unless you really think you can make Mammon leave.”
“That’s an excellent point. I’m glad you’re in charge of the finances,” I said, smiling at the goblin as we approached the clearing where Sally normally worked. Only instead of seeing her there, I saw a thick canvas tent.
“Oh yeah, I bought some tents since we didn’t have buildings.” Buffy shrugged. “Besides, that way when they strip us of our land, we’ll at least be able to live in the forest like proper savages.”
16
“Okay, so what’s the plan?” Buffy asked, looking at me as we approached the gates of the Royal Centre. This time we’d used the Nexus Gateway, so it hadn’t taken long to get there, but from the way Buffy’s buggy was laden with processed dark blood and sculptures, we were still going slowly. Still, I was glad we’d managed to get it back. Part of me had been worried, but it really hadn’t been that hard since she’d filed an official motion with her guild.
“G
abriella will go with Annabeth to check into the competition while you and I meet with Saramana about Mammon,” I said, glancing behind me and giving a reassuring smile to Annabeth. The sculptor looked so nervous she might explode.
“I appreciate you bringing me,” Gabriella said, smiling brightly. “I’ve never seen a sculpting competition.” She reached out and shook Annabeth slightly, causing the other girl to recoil. “I’m gonna be your biggest fan!”
“Great,” Annabeth said, narrowing her eyes at me. “Look, I really don’t need a chaperon…”
“I know,” I said, smirking, “but how could I say no to that face?” I pointed to Gabriella who was smiling so brightly she could have given the sun a run for its money. “If you don’t want her to come, you tell her.”
“Of course she wants me to come,” Gabriella said, hugging Annabeth tightly. “She just doesn’t know how to show it, but that’s okay because my sisters kind of treat me the same way. They all tell me to go away, but I know they don’t really mean it.” She clapped her hands. “I am so excited!”
“Yeah, well, I’m glad she’s not with us,” Buffy said, rolling her eyes as the doors before us opened and we brought our cart into the staging area next to the guards. They didn’t even bother checking us, which I found odd but said nothing of it. There were so many other carts coming in for the tournament that they probably didn’t want to bother.
“Anyway, once we get the guild business settled, I’ll join them at the competition while you do your thing.” I smiled at Buffy. “Something tells me you want to be about your own business, anyway.”
Buffy quirked an eyebrow at me before inhaling deeply. “You know me. I love the smell of commerce in the morning.” With that, she turned off the main road, intending to bring us toward the square where the matches would be held, but before we made it more than a few meters, I realized that’d be impossible.
“Wow, it’s really crowded,” Gabriella said, leaping to the front of the cart and looking around. “Oh and do you smell that?” her stomach rumbled loudly, and she looked down at it. “Can we get some?”
The Builder's Greed (The Legendary Builder Book 2) Page 10
