Quest SMASH

by Joseph Lallo

  One thing I will give Bastion, though, was he was no fool. He knew that it would only be a matter of time before his supply of armor was depleted. If that ever happened, how would he maintain the lifestyle that he and his family had become so obsessed with? Like so many entrepreneurs before him, he decided if he could learn how to make more armor, he could continue to amass his fortune at an astounding rate. He had found Nar! Surely somewhere in the city some blacksmith had kept detailed notes on what the process was for creating more. Fortunately for us, Bastion was no blacksmith. He had absolutely no skills with a hammer or chisel. He would be lost if he ever stepped foot in a foundry. He was also no scholar, having only mediocre reading skills.

  Bastion realized he needed to find someone that did possess those skills and also was familiar with the deep levels of research necessary to even begin to unlock the Narian secrets. How would he go about finding such a person? How could he get them to Bykram? That’s unfortunately why I became part of this accursed tale.

  “Wait a moment,” Tristofer interrupted. “Did Bastion know that he had discovered Nar?”

  “I’m coming to that. Be patient.”

  I believe I was imprisoned in that basement for nearly a century before one night I fell asleep and awoke in this chamber here. I can only assume that he had drugged my food. Upon awakening, and discovering that I was here, I began to explore the room. I saw, with dismay, that I was in yet another storage room, but this time all signs indicated that I was in Nar itself. I still couldn’t tell you how to get here from Bykram as the way remains concealed from me.

  “Don’t worry,” Tristofer assured him. “We know it. There’s no way any of us will ever forget it.”

  Breslin took a deep breath. “How were you able to create that mark and such a perfect plan to get us the hammer and reveal Nar’s location? You’re no wizard. None of us ever were.”

  In the midst of taking a drink of water from a nearby goblet, Kasnar choked.

  “Perfect? You think it was a perfect plan? Hardly. You’re right, lad, I’m no spellcaster. However, that doesn’t mean I didn’t have the time to learn.”

  “How does one learn how to cast spells?” Tristofer inquired, insanely curious.

  “With time,” Kasnar answered, giving the young scholar a patronizing smile. “With lots of time. And it doesn’t hurt to have several Narian spellbooks to guide you along.”

  “Narian spellbooks?” Tristofer repeated, shocked. “Narians practiced jhorun?”

  Kasnar reached over to the nearest bookshelf and pulled out a dilapidated blue tome from a stack of books in similar condition. He passed it to Tristofer, who was dumbstruck.

  “Apparently they dabbled,” Kasnar told him. “And fortunately for me, this volume was mixed in with one of the loads of books I was given by Rahygren, Bastion’s son.”

  Tristofer was ecstatic. “The Narians practiced jhorun! I knew it!!”

  “You did not,” Kasnar argued. “You just said so yourself. Now, let me continue.”

  “Get to the part where Bastion learns he had found Nar,” Athos told him impatiently. Although he’d deny it if confronted, he had become completely enraptured by Kasnar’s tale.

  Kasnar sighed. “Fine.”

  For those of you that are curious how Bastion learned what he had discovered, it was by accident. For that, let me switch briefly to Bastion’s routine when his gold ran low.

  Eager to hide his new fortune from prying eyes, Bastion only made the journey to Nar once every couple of months. Once there he’d collect some of the smallest trinkets he could find, which usually meant pieces of jewelry, small weapons, and the like. Whatever he chose to bring back had to be small enough to be concealed on his person as he didn’t want to be stopped in the streets by anyone.

  One day he came back from one of his pillaging trips with his customary load of jewels and artifacts. However, on this trip he had found a set of bejeweled wrist bands, and deciding he wanted to keep them for himself, he chose to wear them back. When he approached his usual contact, an unsavory fellow who stank of rotten fish…

  “How would you possibly know this?” Athos demanded. “You said it yourself. You never left this room.”

  “This was prior to my arrival as a prisoner held in Nar,” Kasnar explained. “Rahygren and Krisken, that would be Rahygren’s wife, have had many heated arguments, many of which I was able to overhear. The two of them were at each other’s throats constantly. At any rate, Bastion had brought this character to his house several times, presumably to make riskier and riskier deals. Apparently this fellow suspected Bastion was holding out on him and wanted a larger and larger cut of the profits in exchange for his silence.”

  “I’m surprised Rahygren agreed to that,” Venk murmured.

  “He didn’t want to,” Kasnar agreed. “He must have ranted and raved like a lunatic, if one was to believe Krisken. As the number of deals increased, their profits decreased, and soon Bastion was berating his son to look for a way to tie up loose ends.”

  Venk covered Lukas’ ears with both hands.

  “I think we all know what that means. There’s no need to go into further details.”

  Kasnar nodded. “As you wish.”

  When Bastion met with the fellow, like he typically did at whatever tavern the two of them frequented, the man noticed the bands immediately. He demanded to know how Bastion had acquired them. Thinking quickly, Bastion claimed he had relieved the bands from a drunken traveler. Liking how they had looked, he decided to keep them.

  Apparently Bastion learned of the nature of the bands and where they hailed from because as soon as he returned he threw enough food in my cellar for several weeks and disappeared. He was absent for three weeks. If I were to venture a guess I would say that was when Bastion began searching the blacksmith shops. The search for valuable trinkets was over. He had discovered a much more lucrative commodity. Armor.

  The armor was the key, Bastion figured. He had to unlock the secrets of the armor, and in order to do that, he needed a scholar. He began financing excursions to other cities. He hired mercenaries to do his searching for him, thereby leaving him with an irrefutable alibi in case any questionable actions had to be taken. Word trickled back to him of a toymaker who could make wonderful toys and was only interested in exchanging the toys for genuine Narian artifacts. He had one of his men approach me and claim that they wanted to purchase the most expensive figurine I had available and to personally deliver it to Bykram.

  I’m ashamed to say that I fell for it.

  “That explains how your path and Bastion’s crossed,” Breslin thoughtfully observed. “But that doesn’t explain how jhorun became involved. What happened there? Bastion simply gave you a spell book? Didn’t he check the titles before he gave them to you?”

  “He couldn’t,” Kasnar said with a shrug. “He couldn’t read Narian. I could. I had been researching it for so long that by then, I had taught it to myself. To this day I don’t think he realizes what he’s done. May I finish now?”

  “Sorry”.

  As I was perusing through the latest batch of books delivered by my captor, I was startled to find a tome of spells. I was so surprised that I flipped the book over and re-verified it was Narian. It was. It was written in the same fluid language that the rest of the books had been written in, so this was no fluke. Narians had jhorun and they obviously had used it.

  I don’t think I need to tell you that I read that book from cover to cover. Not only did the Narians practice jhorun, but as with the humans, some had become very adept at it. One such Narian, a skilled spellcaster by the name of Oricfed Galfodin, decided to put his favorite spells to the pen. That book is the result.

  Most of Oricfed’s spells were useless as what need have I to turn brown leather boots black? But interspersed throughout the book were much more useful spells, such as how to keep metal as hot as you want it without melting it. While it made for some incredibly interesting re
ading, it still didn’t help me out of my present predicament. Nothing in the book was powerful enough to break out of this cell. Perhaps Rahygren had checked the book after all and since it was harmless, felt he could safely give it to me. I don’t know. I was discouraged. I memorized what spells that I deemed useful and returned to my research as I had Bastion checking on my progress every three or four days.

  I kept returning to the volume of spells as I couldn’t help but feel there was something I was missing. It was a book of spells! There must be something in there that could help me escape! Two more hours of fruitless searching yielded no extra insight, so in disgust, I threw the book across the room. It hit the back wall and slid down on to the mattress, falling open somewhere around the middle of the book. The scholar in me detested mistreating any type book, so I bent to retrieve it when I noticed the page it had fallen on. Apparently there were two pages that had been stuck together, and the jolt against the wall and separated them. While parts of the page had ripped away, as whatever adhesive was holding the two pages together were too strong to break, the note on the page was still legible.

  It was simply entitled ‘layering’.

  “As in the layering of spells?” Tristofer eagerly asked. “Shardwyn started to tell us how complicated a multi-layered spell can be.”

  “I’m not familiar with that name. I’m assuming he’s a wizard?”

  Tristofer shook his head. “Yes.”

  The note was only three sentences long, but it was enough to get my hopes soaring again. Oricfed wrote that it was possible to combine two spells together and make them work in tandem with one another. Everyone with me so far?

  Breslin, Athos, Venk, Lukas, and Tristofer all nodded excitedly.

  Good. I thought back to what this book contained. Spells. Lots and lots of small insignificant spells that individually are inconsequential, but when layered with another, render completely unexpected results. I resolved right then that I had to master each and every spell contained in the book. And, funnily enough, I had to come to terms with the fact that I clearly had some level of jhorun in me as I could perform several of the less complex spells contained in the book and attain successful results.

  You can imagine I kept this hidden from Rahygren. Every time he left me alone I’d retrieve that book and begin to experiment. Let me tell all of you that when it comes to mastering your jhorun, it’s not an easy thing to do.

  “How did you do it?” Tristofer softly inquired.

  “With time,” Kasnar answered. “Something that I had lots of.”

  I began with a spell that would sketch out the dimensions of the room I was in. The spell was designed for cartographers, and I figured if I could make it draw out my chambers here, then I could start from there.

  It took many attempts to get it right. Jhorun is very fickle. Your mind plays just as an important role as does the spell itself. If you’re not thinking clearly about what you want the spell to do then it can easily backfire or give you unexpected results. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say that after much trial and error I could get it to map out not only my room but the existing city of Nar.

  Consequently, Nar is much larger than I ever dreamt it’d be.

  With that spell mastered, I moved on to the others. I learned so many, and could perform them so well, that I then started to experiment with layering. I fetched a fresh sheet of parchment, laid it on the table there, and tried my cartography spell once more, only this time I added in a seeker’s spell, specifying I wanted to know where my family was by showing me on the map. At the same time I imagined holding a map of Lentari, with dots indicating where my family was at that moment.

  It didn’t go over so well. I got my map of Lentari, but it had so many dots all over it that I could barely recognize the map for what it was. I tried again. And again. And again. Each time I got something a little different.

  With luck, and a little perseverance, I chanced upon the key to making a multi-layered spell work. You had to have all possible outcomes planned out. Give it a ‘if this happens then do that’ clause. I went through every formulation I could think of and asked yet again for the seeker/cartography spell to show me my family. A single dot appeared, and it was right over the Bohanis where Borahgg was.

  I was elated! I modified the spell to map out the city of Borahgg and then show me where my family was. I cried right then. There, in the family home that I remembered, was a dot with a tiny label next to it: Neika. Maelnar was nearby, as were several of my siblings and their children. It had worked!

  I should also mention here that it had taken me several months just to modify my spell from showing me my family in Lentari to showing them in Borahgg. It wasn’t easy, but it was possible, and that gave me hope.

  Now that I knew I could do it, I expanded my experiments and tried to see if I could find inanimate objects. I thought back to my home and knew that Neika would never do anything to the map I had received from the little human girl all those years ago, so I began the painstaking process of modifying the spell to no longer look for my family but instead, display the location of the map in Borahgg.

  Sure enough, a tiny dot appeared on my map. It was right where I remembered it being, namely in my home. I decided to see if anyone else in Borahgg had anything from Nar, so I modified my map again to see if there were other types of Narian artifacts nearby. You can imagine my dismay when after six months of creating my spell, nothing appeared on the paper.

  To make sure I had the spell right, I thought back to my favorite chisel back in my workshop. I modified the spell, again, to find and display that tool on my map. It worked! It was still in my workshop, provided my workshop was still mine. The map merely displayed the chisel’s location; it didn’t tell me whether or not the workshop was still mine. I had hoped it was.

  “Why not just send a message?” Venk interrupted. “Why go to so much trouble to create a multi-layer spell when a simple plea for help would have sufficed?”

  “Rahygren began to suspect I was up to no good,” Kasnar answered. “Bastion had passed away years ago, and unfortunately for me, Rahygren took over the family business. He was much smarter than his father ever was. He kept a much closer eye on me. The only way I was allowed to work on the spell was by convincing him that I was attempting to decipher ancient pictographs. I knew he would only believe that story for so long, but I had to try. I needed time. The problem was, I had run out.”

  “What do you mean?” Venk asked as he nervously looked around, as though Rahygren himself would jump out of the shadows at any moment.

  “Suspecting I was plotting something, and in retrospect I can only figure it was because my attitude had gone through a complete reversal because I was happy, even hopeful. I guess I hadn’t ever been like that because Rahygren grew very nervous. A week later that behemoth of a door had been installed.”

  Everyone turned to look at the heavily damaged iron door fifteen feet away.

  “I needed a way to defeat the door. Rahygren alone had the key, which he kept on a pendant he wore at all times. There was no way to wrest it away from him as I had become old and feeble. He had me stymied, and he knew it. What he didn’t know, though, is that I had a few tricks up my own sleeves. I just needed time. And thankfully, that’s what he gave me since he was certain there was no way I was ever going to get through that door without the key.

  Confident in my new-found abilities, I began to formulate an escape plan. First, I had to solve the door problem. I remembered reading something about special tools the Narians favored. I only remembered something about having special enhanced power. Maybe something like that could break the door down? I had to look, and now thanks to the spell book and my ability to find inanimate objects, I might be able to find something Topside that could be used to free me.

  The seeker/cartography spell took close to a year to write. It was the most complex spell I had ever written, but if I wanted to be successful, I knew
I had to be as thorough as possible. Any changes once it had been completed would necessitate a year long wait to plot it all out again. Once I was done, I activated the spell and held my breath. Would there even be anything out there to find, let alone be useful enough to be able to help me attain the freedom I so craved?

  My map lit up with speckled dots. Turns out remnants of the once mighty Narian people were everywhere. The problem was, however, I didn’t know enough about what could be out there to include that in the spell.

  “No labels,” Breslin guessed.

  Kasnar nodded.

  There were plenty of things to find, but not enough information to identify. What I needed now was to figure out what I was looking for. What was capable of breaking down that door? Maybe a chisel to cut away the stone from the locking bars? Perhaps a file to cut my way through the door? Perhaps a drill to bore through the locking mechanism?

  The answer came when I learned of the existence of the power hammers. There was a tool that was capable of pulverizing the largest boulders with minimal effort. Surely a tool of this magnitude could help me out. However, the more I researched, the more I realized that their hammers were closely guarded secrets. Apparently their construction was passed from father to son by word of mouth only.