Adventures of a Scribe

by Michael Deyhim

  I left the closet where I had smuggled in my stuff and went down into the sewer grate. I made sure to close it after me to hide my entry to the lower region of the city. It was incredibly dark but thankfully the smell wasn’t so bad yet. The light runes on either side of my head provided illumination for about ten feet before quickly dropping off into darkness. I set off down the tunnel. The good thing about this entrance was that the church complex was placed in the upper middle of the city. I just needed to head straight and I would be fine in getting back to where I had started.

  I did make sure to use my dagger at every intersection to leave a clear and obvious mark. No matter how good my sense of direction this was one of the common sense things listed in a manuscript detailing good practices for adventuring and the reasons behind them. It was probably the most useful book I had read so far since it was all practical advice which I had planned to follow.

  It was hard to tell time without seeing the sun but I didn’t increase my pace for fear of tiring myself out. I needed all my energy if I had to fight. I passed by a number of grates that let in illumination into the slightly sloping tunnel and I heard the noise of the city above. I almost screamed when someone dumped a bucket of waste and water through one of the grates. That scare definitely took a portion of my life. Thankfully it hadn’t been dumped on top of me.

  I finally came to something interesting. The sewers had a small ledge to walk on and a deeper channel for the rest of it which the waste traveled down. There was a passage that branched off from the ledge with no corresponding channel. That was definitely something new, since normally the channel followed where the ledge went.

  I marked the turnoff and went down the side passage, sword at the ready. It quickly began to angle downwards and the floor was very slick. I had to make sure I didn’t lose my footing and slide down the rest of the way on the angled floor.

  Taking a deep breath of the putrid air I continued forward. The passage quickly leveled out and then opened up into another sewer system, one that didn’t looked used by the mold on the sides of the walls and lack of water. This was probably the lower sewers I had read about. It probably only got water from leakage and overflow from the main sewers. I heard movement in the darkness other than the occasional dripping sound.

  I saw movement at the edge of my light. My back was still to the passage I had come down with the tunnel going either way to my left and right. While the movement came from my left I didn’t want to leave by back exposed. That had been a key point in the manuscript I had read, always keep your back safe and be patient. It also helped since I had met an adventurer who had sworn by the manuscript when he dropped it off to be copied for a friend, real life evidence was always the best kind of evidence.

  I had read a couple of history manuscripts that contradicted each other. Manuscripts were written by people and people didn’t know everything. That is why I asked so many questions that got me into trouble. I needed to focus on the here and now. I kept looking either way but nothing was coming out of the darkness.

  Counting in my head, I would go to one hundred five times before moving. That would mean the creature went back to get help or would attack. Either way I wasn’t going to advance forward. The monster lost its patience first. A creature burst out of the darkness towards me, bone club in hand. It was about my size and had vicious looking teeth. I panicked and stabbed out in fear and the creature impaled itself on the blade through its head. It swung its club and hit me on the side causing me to lose my grip on my weapon and stumble back.

  The creature collapsed as dark blood pooled beneath it. I pulled my sword free and looked the creature. It was a kobold, a lizard looking monster that stood on two feet. I heard a noise behind me and turned around. There were two more kobolds advancing on me both with bone clubs. They were completely naked like the first creature and by the white of their eyes, completely blind as well.

  I grabbed up the bone club from the dead kobold and threw it off to the side. Both the approaching enemies turned towards the sound. I moved forward as quickly as I could while not slipping in the slick moss. I swung my blade into the neck of one of the kobolds. I managed to keep a grip on my weapon and pulled it free unleashing a spray of blood onto the third kobold.

  It let out a guttural noise from its throat and grabbed its companion, biting into him and tearing away flesh it began to chew on. I backed away as blood and flesh were scattered about the mossy sewer tunnel. I had seen the butchers at work before, but nothing this violent and primal. The kobold began to slow down in its feast and I moved in. With an overhead swing I drove the edge of my blade into the kobold’s skull. It shook once and then collapsed on the ground dead.

  I looked around and listened but didn’t hear anything approaching over my pounding heart. I backed away from the corpses and wiped my blade off on the moss. My heart rate increased again when I got another scare.

  I read the blue panel floating in front of me over and over soaking in all the information. Reaching out I tried to touch it there was nothing but air. It flickered once and then disappeared. I had done it. I had really done it. It seemed almost like a dream. I needed to get back home quickly. It was tempting to look at more blue panels but now was not the time. I left the corpses and made my way back up the sloped passage to the first level of the sewers.

  It was beyond tempting to check the rest of my panels now that I was a bit safer, but I knew once I started I wouldn’t be able to stop and I needed to get home before my absence was noted. I reached the top of the passage and made a right. My pace was faster than before but I made sure to confirm all the markings I had made at each intersection.

  I reached the sewer entrance under the church complex gasping for breath. My side was killing me from rushing back and my injury from the bone club. I wanted to see the exact effects of my only health potion but now wasn’t the time for experimenting unfortunately. I stripped off the rags and swallowed the potion. The pain instantly faded and the bruising disappeared. That was a hundred copper well spent. I carefully climbed out and made my way to the closet unspotted. I stripped off my sewer clothes into my regular outfit and tossed everything but the boots into a sack.

  With that completed I made my way home just as the midday bells from the church rang out. I let out a sigh of relief. I left the sack and my boots in the rear courtyard we shared with other shops along the street and then went to see my mother. Each shop had their own area in the courtyard and my family never went out here except to get water from the pump and toss stuff into the sewers. I wasn’t worried about anyone stealing the bundle and I didn’t want to bring anything smelly into the house where it would raise unwanted questions.

  I waited off to the side of mother’s workstation until she was finished writing whatever it was she was working on. By the look of it, it was a detailed map. After a short time she set down her brush and turned towards me. “Hello dear, back early?”

  At least she was in a good mood. “Yeah. Priest Hendric was happy with me so he let me out early. If I can have lunch and clean up a bit, I can watch the shop this afternoon.” That would also give me time to go over my panels and I knew she would tell me to do that anyway. It was better to volunteer and earn credit for that rather than even trying to get out of chores.

  “That sounds good dear. Don’t take too long.” I nodded and went to the back courtyard. I rinsed out the clothes and the boots and left them off to the side to dry. No one should notice them during the day and I could hide them in my room tonight. The sword I oiled and then hid in my room along with the empty vial of healing potion. The glass vials were worth twenty five copper by themselves. With that done I washed up and grabbed a piece of bread from this morning’s breakfast to scarf down.

  “What took you so long? It was torture standing around all day.” My brother Galric complained.

  “Just cleaning up. You think the shop is dirty the chapel was a lot worse and huge.” I said. He just gave me a look and then rolled his eyes. />
  “Well at least you are back. I have to finish up a series of maps.”

  “More adventurers?” I asked.

  “Their guild placed an order for twenty basic maps of the surrounding area. A bit too many people getting lost.” Sometimes larger orders were placed but they weren’t common.

  “Hmm, good luck with that.” He went off to the back of the shop. It was quiet and there I was behind the counter alone, finally. “Status panel.” I whispered out loud. Panels couldn’t be seen by others but I had caught a couple people staring off weirdly at something or waving their hands. If anyone came in I would have to close it immediately so as not to arouse suspicion and get asked tough questions.

  I smiled as I looked over my status panel. I compared it to what I had read. My name and age were displayed, which was a good thing. Some people received a nasty surprise when finding out their true name. Then there was my level, which is a sign of overall skill and experience from what I had read. People gained levels from either adventuring or improving their skills. Adventuring was faster but the mortality rate was incredibly high to make most people turn away.

  Title had N/A which stood for Not Available. Titles were incredibly rare. I had heard a rumor that the king had a title but it was only speculation. To gain one was the stuff of legends and if anyone knew more about titles they weren’t sharing.

  Health was a product of vitality, mana a combination of wisdom and intelligence, and stamina endurance. A second was the time it took to say ‘By the Gods’. I had read an entire book on the exact nature of a second and how the measurement of time was precisely determined.

  I heard there was an artificer in the capital that made clocks and that the duke had one. They could tell the time based on the second. The main issue was the insane cost. A single clock cost at least ten gold due to their mechanical nature and was out of reach except for the nobility. My values didn’t have decimals so I couldn’t see their progress in regenerating.

  That was annoying and doing some mental math I realized that health and mana recovery was insanely long like my books said. A lot of research had been done into the second. It was one of the few things that was common knowledge and shared with people. There were 86,400 seconds in one day. Mana would take a little over three days and health would take about a day to regenerate fully. This made sense, since the healers almost always dealt with permanent conditions like broken bones or illness rather than cuts or scrapes which healed in about a day which made sense to my personal observations.

  That meant I had wasted the health potion and a huge chunk of my saved up money. At least I know they worked. I should have waited until I could see my health and what effect the potion had on regeneration. The alchemy shop listed it as a grade one, the cheapest for minor injuries only.

  It was so exciting to finally have my status panel. I was looking it over I couldn’t stop a grin from growing across my face. I had points I could spend but I was hesitant. One could raise the points on their page which represented their skills through hard work. It was explained as a slow and tedious process but provided far greater benefits long term when one could not naturally raise them up any further or it was too difficult to do so.

  I had read two books speculating on what changes one’s points gave in various areas. Vitality was directly linked to health and it had been proven that people with higher vitality could survive greater injuries before dying. There was speculation that it was linked to life span as well but no one had ever managed to determine if that was true or not.

  Strength was easily figured out. One merely needed to work on lifting various sized weights to see the effect of strength increasing. Endurance tied directly into stamina. I would need to experiment with various actions to see how tired I became but that would be simple enough to figure out.

  Dexterity was tied in with balance and reaction time but it was near impossible to determine its exact effects. Supposedly people with high dexterity had perfect balance and fine muscle control. I smiled at my high wisdom and intelligence. Unfortunately their effects were near impossible to determine similar to dexterity. Charisma was tied in with social interaction but beyond that it was also impossible to determine any more.

  “Close, skill panel.” The one panel closed and another one appeared.

  I blinked in surprise. I had expected Scribe and Rune Crafting since my parents had those. It was common for children to inherit their parents’ skills especially when they had previously worked in the same profession before unlocking the blue panels. The big thing was Loremaster. I had never even heard or read about that skill. A unique skill already. I let out a shout of triumph on the inside.

  “Loremaster.” I whispered quietly in anticipation.

  I looked at the % symbol and sighed. No one knew what it meant but it was suspected that it stood for percentage. Anything to do with Truth Detection was never a bad thing. It was passive so there was no easy way to determine if it was working without an active ability demonstrate success. Skills had ten ranks per level, which went from Beginner, Experienced, Advanced, Senior, and Master. My father was only a Senior Scribe and he had been working at that job almost his entire life. To achieve a Master ranking in a skill was a huge deal.

  I closed the blue panels as a customer entered. It took only took a minute to address their needs since they were only purchasing a stack of blank parchment and some ink. I put the money away in a strong box and marked down the sale in the sales book. I then got back to thinking. The main problem was time. Sure one could reach Master rank after forty years of work, but that would be their entire life.

  If I was going to unravel the secrets of this world, time was the most precious commodity. The only things that didn’t die were the Gods and the undead. The bestiary I had read once described a lich, a mage who had taken the undead powers inside of themselves to become undead and live forever. That was always a possibility, but nothing was without a cost and I suspected any mage who became a lich had some heavy penalties. The fact that it was listed in a bestiary did not help my opinion of the undead. Also the church was set completely against them.

  Healing wouldn’t work either since age was not a condition. The priests often said that each person was gifted with a life by the Gods at birth which we burned through with our passions. The only other thing I could think of was someone using time mana in some way to stop or reverse aging. It was claimed by mages that with enough learning and training mana could accomplish anything.

  The problem was mana regenerated slowly and didn’t scale as ones mana pool increased. This meant that mages couldn’t use their abilities to solve every little task. The big problem was that all mage skills were tightly controlled. If the nobles were bad the mages were an absolute fortress of secrets. Rogue mages were punished heavily and anyone using mana had to register and pay fees to the Mages Guild.

  This included my mother. She had to pay ten silver a year to be approved by the Mages Guild. Rogue mages were hunted down with a passion by both the guild and the church. The only exception to being a mana use by priests who specialized in healing and light mana. They worked hand in hand with the Mages Guild to crush rogues. They actually had their own scribes to copy books for their use and they were sworn to secrecy on penalty of death.

  Some nobles had speculated on mana in their writings, but it was more of a passing fancy than detailed discussion of how using mana based abilities actually worked. I had come full circle, I needed information on mana but I couldn’t ask anyone. The few times I had seen Priest Hendric heal it was always with a chant and then there was a golden glow around his hands and the person’s injury.

  I would need to develop my own field of mana, chants, and everything else if I was going to succeed. The one thing I was sure about skills, was that repetition was the key to unlocking them. The big question was what I could try in order to unlock time mana for visible results. I wasn’t crazy enough to practice on myself since combining mana and people was considered incredi
bly dangerous for all mana.

  Dinner finally came and we all ate together. That was a family rule. Breakfast and lunch, were a do it yourself kind of thing while dinner was prepared by mother and we ate together every night. If that wasn’t the case I would probably never see my father. It was beef stew with fresh vegetables tonight. I always liked things with meat.

  “Edward has finished his punishment at the chapel today.” My mother said to father.

  “Hmmm, that is good.” He gave me a look and I smiled.

  “Priest Hendric forgave me for my rudeness and I definitely learned my lesson.” I said. No need to go into my adventure under the city. My father paused in his eating and looked at me directly.

  “That is good. While times aren’t tough, we provide a luxury service. One does not need manuscripts or maps to survive. It is good to remember this, since we live at the whims of nobility.” My father looked around the table. He was often prone to such grand statements. “Clarissa, have you given any thought to what we talked about?” My father asked my sister.

  “No father, can’t I work in the shop?” My sister had a pained look on her face.

  “Clarissa, tomorrow you and your mother will speak with Matchmaker Ulnera. Now that I think on it, you will speak with her too Rothgar.” The last part was directed at my eldest sibling and brother.

  “What!” My eldest brother said. My father glared at him.

  “The Monteger family line goes back over five hundred years to the Master Scribe Gegorivan Monteger. Our line will continue. If my father had not pushed me to marry, I would have spent all day scribing and never have met your wonderful mother.” He looked at her and smiled.

  “Thank you dear husband.” She gave him a smile back. Father then turned back towards Rothgar.

  “You will get married. You are young and talented, so you can pick a good match. You will also be inheriting this shop. I will let you have your say as long as you accept you are getting married. Understood.” Both my brother and sister gave affirmatives. I could tell my sister was not happy though.