by R J Triveri
He didn’t like the sound of that. “So she’s that expensive?”
“For something like this, anyone is expensive. Most people don’t worry about weapon upgrades and rely more on their skills and talents. They toss weapons away like they’re candy wrappers if they’re adventurers; they know they’ll find more. Spending the money to tweak and perfect a weapon just isn’t worth it to most of them when they can find enchanted gear or stat buffing weapons.”
Made sense to Athos. “Why pay for what you can find, right?”
Walter nodded. “She doesn’t do weapons often because of the demand, but she can. She’s upgraded every tool we have and patched up nearly everything here. Hell, she built the green houses so we could grow during any season.”
He scratched the back of his head, it was sounding less and less like he should bother her. “Sounds like she’s busy.”
The older farmer shook his head and began to lead Athos back to the front door of the building. “She’s bored, Athos. Well, she says she is anyways. At least this will be something new for her to do.”
Athos watched as each row of pots passed, speaking more to himself than to Walter as they reached the last set of tables and pots. “As long as I have the materials.”
Walter grinned, opening the lock on the door and pulling it open to the world outside. “Even if you don’t have them, trust me, it’ll be good for her.”
He tried not to smile but failed. Athos couldn’t begin to imagine how many times Sally had heard that from her father when someone needed her services. “I can’t imagine trusting anyone else today. Lead the way, Walt.”
And lead he did.
As the pair left the green house, Athos squinted his eyes against the brighter sun. Apparently, whatever Walter was growing couldn’t take the direct light, and the windows were tinted just enough to make it seem like a cloudy day. Outside those walls, the sun seemed to be catching them up on the day with it’s brilliant, bright light. It only took a moment, but it was enough for Athos to be trailing his friend as they walked towards the barn. The soft blue finish was almost enough to make it seem flushed with the sky, but the closer he got, the more he realized why it was set so far from the fields and green houses. Whether it was from whatever Sally was working on today or the anger of the sun, the heat seemed to rise bit by bit as he and Walter continued towards what he discovered to be Sally’s workshop.
“She spends all her time here. Tinkering with her abilities, trying to figure out how to build things without the proper plans or whatnot,” Walter explained as the shadow of the barn began to loom above them.
“Can you do that?”
He nodded. “It’s a really low chance, but it’s been known to happen. She usually ends up with a pile of parts to sell and not much else.” Walter brought the pair to a halt at the door and rubbed the back of his neck a bit nervously. “Go on ahead, Athos.”
This seemed all too familiar. “Why?”
His face flushed from something other than the heat as he spoke. “The last time I walked in when she was working, I ended up breaking her concentration and ruining her work. She didn’t forgive me for a week.”
Scapegoating? Again? He sighed, but Athos really couldn’t blame Walter for doing it this time. “Alright.”
Despite his hesitation, Athos was more than excited to see what kind of a workshop the girl had. He knew that she maintained the wagon and harnesses, that she could build weapons and tools, but that didn’t really mean that much. Curiosity was one of the reasons he wanted to become a scientist back on Earth. At the errant thought, a pang of guilt struck home, but to his surprise, it wasn’t the same sharp pain he had experienced when he first arrived. Back then, almost anything could have set him off into a fit of depression. Now, it was only a dull ache. The alchemical arm wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that as he took another step past the threshold.
The barn’s interior was painted gray with the smells of smoke, iron, and burning wood as the heat fought against his every step. Like a dark entity, it didn’t want to give him an inch without raising the temperature all that much more. Once he fought past it though, the workshop was a whirlwind of activity being governed from the center by the mechanic girl. Small done-like bots hovered around the furnaces and piles of wood with small, clawed arms hanging at their sides just waiting for their next order to be given. Half-finished projects were stacked against walls, hanging on walls, and sitting on any surface that would accept them as she sat hunched over a table looking at a particularly bad set of plans. At least, from the way she was cursing, he thought it was at least not the greatest of plans.
Clearing his throat, Athos thought it best to announce himself. “Did we come at a bad time?”
Sweat drenched her forehead as she looked up. “We?”
Sure enough, Walter was long gone. “Damn him.”
She smiled a bit before pulling up a cloth from her table and wiping her face. “Yeah, he does that when he knows I won’t be happy with something. So, I’m guessing this isn’t a social visit, Pointy Ears?”
“Pointy Ears? Funny, it isn’t like I haven’t heard that one before.” He hadn’t yet, but it just seemed like the right response.
She simply grinned at his retort and balanced herself on the back two legs of the chair. “It’s a gift, what can I say. Now, what brings you to my lair?”
He really didn’t like the sound of it being called her lair, but he shook it off and took the weapon from its holster. “Your dad said that this needs to be modified to fit my new class.”
She perked her eyebrow up and went back to all four chair legs, picking up a pair of goggles from a drawer, she beckoned him forward as she put them on. “A class change? Someone’s moving up in the world. Let me see it.”
He set it into her waiting hands as she studied the gun as if it were a piece of art rather than a weapon. “It’s old. A Flintlock, right?” He nodded as she continued. “I haven’t seen these in a long time, most gunners don’t use them anymore. Too slow even with their high damage shot and were mostly broken down after the integrity update.”
She really knows her stuff, Athos rationed as she flipped it over again. “You must study a lot to know all that off hand.”
“As much as I’d like to take the compliment, the weapon tells me everything,” Sally explained as she turned a small dial on her goggles. “It’s one of my job perks. My materials can literally tell me everything about themselves. What they’re made from, where they’ve been, and even who’s owned it since my rank is high enough. This Flintlock has quite a long list of owners until it got to you, Athos. Seems like it was sold, traded, and just given away. It’s funny, most people don’t worry about things like this…” her voice trailed off as she seemed to finish reading. “Oh, never mind.”
That was never a good sign. “What?”
Looking back at him, she removed the goggles and set the item down. “It’s a cursed item. Couldn’t be destroyed even if it wanted to be.”
At least it explained to Athos why it’s last owner hadn’t gotten rid of it. “Is it bad?”
Pressing an unseen set of keys, Sally brought forth a screen Athos hadn’t seen before, dark gray with a small inventory, some text, and glowing purple letters at the bottom under both that read, Curse of Binding. “In all honesty, it could have been a lot worse than that. The Curse of Binding just says you can’t throw the item away or recycle it for parts unless you have an enchanter dual classed with the disenchantment perk. Even worse, you have to give it to someone willing to accept it.”
“Could be worse,” Athos agreed while looking over the weapon’s screen. As something caught his attention, he pointed to the gray screen’s inventory. “What’s this?”
Turning the screen back to her, then him again, she continued, “That’s the upgrade window. See how there’s an outline behind each of the slots? That’s what your class upgrade requires for it.”
“Can you tell what they are?”
It only took her a few more moments before she answered. “A large barrel, some copper tubing, scales, any type will do, and hmm, spawn oil, too, it looks like.” Her goggles came back up and she began ticking things off on her personal inventory window. “I’ve got the materials for everything that needs to be built for it, but I still need some scales and some oil.”
Checking his own windows, a pang of guilt hit home as he noticed a few new items. “I have oil and scales.” The way that Vedava looked, he wouldn’t have taken that smooth tail as being scaled. However, the twenty pink scales in his inventory said otherwise. He tried to shrug it off and materialized all twenty scales and the spawn’s oil. Thankfully, the later was contained in one of his extra vials. “Take ‘em.”
“Pearl scales and shadow spawn oil, not the best options, but they’ll do.“ The way his face shifted as she spoke granted him a second, curious look before she took them off the table and into her inventory. “You okay?”
He shook his head. “Just didn’t realize I got those is all.”
The words register only a moment later as to how he got them, but Sally nodded all the same. “You know you can’t save everything.”
“I know,” quickly leapt from his mouth, “but I don’t have to be happy about it.”
In her same tone, she continued with something obvious to her, obvious to anyone that had lived there long enough. “Some things just aren’t meant to be saved.”
It didn’t sit well with Athos. “That just doesn’t make sense though. Why is it even an option to escort someone if they aren’t meant to be given a chance?”
She shrugged as she enforced the Flintlock with the scales and oil before pulling some dark orange metal out of a near by inventory before heading to one of her forges. “It’s just how things are sometimes here. Sometimes you’re born to do something great and sometimes you’re born just to die.”
“Don’t say that!” The heat in his words escaped his mouth like the heat from the forge she had opened. He didn’t mean it to, but it did all the same.
The anger in his voice shook her enough to abandon her task at the forge and look at him in a new light, “What?” A thousand thoughts raced through his head, but none could make their way to the front. His mind became clogged with words, but his eyes told her enough. As if he had punched her unprovoked, her confusion grew with her words. “Did I say something wrong? What did I say?”
He shook his head before his words even ventured to come back. A long moment passed before it would though and found himself a seat facing the door using her desk as a prop. His voice was quiet as he answered, the flames gone from his forge. “I’m sorry.”
The crackling of the forge seemed to drone for a moment and stop as she reluctantly retrieved the material and move it to a workbench covered in tools. “I must have said something to set you off like that, so either you explain yourself or make it up to me.”
“Just, I didn’t mean to yell at you.” He shook the anger off, giving her a little of both. “Just, don’t tell Walter. I don’t want him to feel sorry for me.”
“And you don’t care if I do?” she asked as the sounds of tools added to the forge’s fires.
“I just don’t think it’s in you,” he managed with a slightly grim smile. “I’m sure that he told you that I didn’t come here under the best of terms.”
“I heard about as much last night.”
Well, it was now or never. “I didn’t have an option. It was come here and start a new life away from everyone and everything I ever knew or die. I guess, I just don’t like the idea of being told that maybe, just maybe, I was supposed to do nothing more with my life than die in a hospital bed.” It didn’t seem like the best way to explain it, but it was the truth.
Athos could hear her sigh over the instruments and fire. “I didn’t mean it that way, Athos.”
He got up as the sounds of the hammering died and looked her way again. “I know you didn’t, I just, I don’t know.”
The sounds of tools interrupted any thought she was about to make despite the fact there was nothing else moving at the moment, “Damn auto-crafting. Look,” she managed through the noise, “I’m sorry if I bothered you, but here, you have to know you can’t save everyone.”
He heard the words, but he refused their meaning. “I can try.”
The hammering stopped as Sally took a seat back by the gun and began to work on it. “You’re a dreamer, Athos.” As she spoke, she began filling the last of the empty slots in the weapon’s inventory. With the last in place, the weapon flashed into a small explosion of white light and green wire frames before it phrased back into reality. The gun was still sleek, but the metal was polished now. The barrel was much wider, and tubes ran from the stock into the back of the barrel bypassing the chamber. The stock was no longer just wood either. The soft, pink scales had been fashioned into a padding to reduce recoil and protect his hand even more. “But sometimes, it’s good to dream.”
Athos took his time as he looked over the gun as it sat on her table. It may have been cursed, but it really was his now. “What will it do?”
She handed the gun back to him with little more ceremony than a smile. “It can use your potions as ammo in addition to regular bullets. It’s nothing too special, but I think it’s perfect for an alchemical arm.” Opening the trade window, she offered it back to him. “Its name is Magus.”
He nodded and placed the ticket in the window across from the weapon. “Thank you.”
“Keep it,” she said knocking the ticket from the window with a rejection click. “You weren’t a slouch and all I did was assemble it. Anyway, how do you think I’d feel if you died out there and all it would have taken was an upgrade to save your life?” She could see that smirk growing on his face, as she added, “Besides, shadow spawn oil might be cheap, but those extra pearl scales will sell for quite a bit more than what I spent to make your Magus.”
He wasn’t even going to argue. With a nod, he simply accepted the weapon. As he accepted the return trade, it materialized back on his side as if it had never been gone. “I won’t argue.”
“Good,” she said with a grin as she opened her window again.
A second later, a message appeared on Athos’s screen:
Friend Request Received: Sally Queen - Rank 10 Mechanist
Accept?
“Besides, it would suck if you couldn’t afford my work when you really needed it and had your ass handed to you.”
It didn’t take him nearly as long to accept her request as it did for Walter’s.
Nightbloom
The rest of the day passed pretty quickly compared to the morning shift.
The animals and pens were already fed by the time Athos got to them with Sally’s directions thanks to Walter, so he was content returning to the house and sitting on the couches near the fireplace. Flicking open his inventory, he took the time to study what he had gained since his ill-fated dungeon run. In his possession now were an old pocket watch, two books, a green covered book sealed with a red wax seal and a blue one with a bit more of a blue gray seal, a small box, the Leritate Omnes scroll from earlier, a green bag, and a new scroll with a blue seal. The Leritate Omnes scroll was the first that he decided to inspect, but once he clicked it, the scroll vanished from his inventory with a message.
New Potion Recipe Acquired: Leritate Omnes. See your Alchemist’s skills book for more details.
A simple enough message. It only took him a few seconds to click the skills book and open to his newest section, Rank 2 Brewing.
Leritate Omnes, he began reading to himself, is an augmentation potion. This particular brew will fortify the user or users’ momentum potential. In short, the brew will allow faster movement and reaction time with no damage incurred to their data. Though the buff it grants is limited, it has the added benefit of not needing to be ingested. Simple absorption though the skin is all it takes to grant the buff. The more concentrated the dose, the longer it will last. Ingredients includ
e…
Wow, that was not what he had expected. Sugarswell, luminous petals, and purified water, all of which were part of his current stock. He wanted to brew it, but Athos realized all his brewing supplies were at the small room he had been paying for back in Oenus which he wouldn’t be able to get back to until tomorrow.
With that thought shrugged off, he looked at the second scroll with the blue seal and clicked it, expecting the same result. All he was met with was a rather loud buzz accompanied by a different message:
Requirements for Sanando Donum Not Met: Rank 3 Alchemist
So much for that one. Well, he still had quite a few things to look at as the door behind him opened and closed, “Athos, you in here?” Walter’s voice rang clear into the room.
In response, Athos raised his hand before returning to his screen. “Just checking what I got the other day.”
“Anything good?” He asked moving to sit next to him, making Athos scoot himself over just a bit as he clicked on the box and materialized it.
“Not sure.” He admitted as it fell into his lap and let him study it. It looked like a small chest, but it wouldn’t open and seemed to have no key hole. He almost gave up hope until he noticed a pattern going all around the box. “Have you ever seen one of these before?”
Walt looked at the object and scratched his beard before tapping it, producing a small screen with an image. “Looks like a puzzle box to me.”
“Really?” he asked looking the image through the opaque screen, it just looked like a jumble of a picture. He did have a love of puzzles. “So all I have to do is solve it?”
Walter nodded. “Yeah, that’s about the whole of it, but finish up. We’ve got the hunt to take care of tonight.”
He returned the box to his inventory before materializing the soft green book. “I’ve only got these books left now.” It was heavy in his lap and the cover was stiffer than he had figured. Around it, a ribbon held fast with a wax seal that crumbled as soon as he had touched it. To his surprise, the ribbon and wax vanished with little more than a small flicker of light. The flicker grew brighter from the book as it dissolved much the same way as the seal.
