Underkeeper

As he turned off of the main tunnel thoroughfare and into the smaller one that made up his street, Bernt was struck by just how different the Undercity felt compared to the surface. There were goblin children here, playing in the street while their parents sat out in front of their doors and gossiped.

Down the street a bit, a gray-haired goblin directed traffic away from a hole in the road, where two more had opened one of the septic tanks that made up the Undercity’s more labor-intensive waste-management system. They weren’t Underkeepers. No, a tank like that wouldn’t really need to be serviced for a long time yet. But, they had permission from Ed – not that anyone would have stopped them if they’d just gone and done it without asking. Why turn down the help?

The muck that they scraped out of the tank would go into buckets, which were loaded into a nearby hand cart that would then be hauled over to a brand new agricultural chamber back behind the goblin quarter – the goblins had dug it out themselves. There, two goblin druids, both of whom Bernt knew were part of the Underkeepers, worked with nearly thirty goblin laborers to produce edible fungi, which they sold at the Undercity Market. They weren’t very good, but that's what spicy peppers were for. Nobody turned down a cheap food source during a siege.

Opening the door, Bernt stepped inside to find that he had company. Nirlig sat on the broad stone “couch” that Bernt had made a week before. It would have been passably comfortable if he’d had proper cushions for it – but he wasn't planning to spend silver on that sort of thing anytime soon.

Jori sat next to him, drinking out of a small cup she held with both hands. She was wearing a new robe – more of a long, sleeveless tunic, really, in gray. It fit remarkably well, considering that Grixit hadn’t taken any measurements. If he’d done the job properly, it should be extremely fire resistant and quite a bit more durable than the robe he’d bought her before. Hopefully, it wouldn’t get shredded quite so quickly.

On a low table in front of the two of them stood four different-sized clay bottles.

“Nah,” Jori said, putting the cup down. “This one is boring! Give me some more of the mushroom fire gin. That’s the good stuff!”

“Really?” Nirlig grimaced, “Ugh. That stuff is terrible. The only one who drinks it is my aunt Striga. You just like it because it has fire in the name.”

Jori scoffed. “Aunt Striga has good taste! Gimme!”

Bernt cleared his throat. Both of them turned to look and Nirlig gave him a friendly wave. “Bernt! I heard your team took out a unit of diggers today! Torvald was super jealous. We just stood guard in front of a side tunnel all day. Literally nothing happened.”

“Uh. Yea, it wasn’t really a fight. They never even broke through. Not really Torvald’s kind of fight, if I’m being honest. He probably wouldn’t think it was fair or something.” Bernt hesitated, trying to organize his feelings into a coherent thought. “Have you heard what they’re doing up there on the surface? The duergar, I mean..”

Nirlig shrugged. “Uh, yes? They bottled us up and are keeping us pinned down. I heard they’re doing it in Yetin’s Harbor, too, but that’s just a rumor, I think. No official news from anywhere.”

“Right – not what I meant. I mean the way they’re doing it.” Bernt clarified. “They just cut off the roads and now they just sit there, sending these small groups at us. It doesn’t make sense. None of the groups could do very much damage, even if they got in.

“It’s not that strange.” Nirlig said with a mirthless smile. “They’re just sending adventurer parties.”

Bernt stared at the goblin. “You mean, like in a dungeon?”

“Sure. I mean, I don't really know how they do things, but there's no practical difference from their perspective, right? They’ve put it under containment and now they’ve got teams of people trying their luck to get in and take whatever they can. The only thing missing is a real front-line party. Humans always send in a strong party first to soften the place up. I guess they must not be very serious about killing us. That, or maybe their high-ranking adventurers aren't dumb enough to take a job like this. There are a lot of scary people in this city.

Bernt sat down slowly on a misshapen lump across from them – his first attempt at a chair. What did that mean? What could that mean?

“Ahh.” Jori sighed contentedly, putting her cup down. “That’s the stuff. So, how did it go up there? Did you sell the spell?”

“Uh, yes,” Bernt nodded, looking down at his hand. “I got guild membership for it, and they’re going to help me figure out what to do about my arm.”

Nirlig looked curiously at his arm, but he didn’t ask about it. “So, how does that work? Isn’t it a conflict of interest to work for the Underkeepers and also be in the Mage’s Guild?”

“Eh,” Bernt shook his head, taking a seat across from the other two. “Not really. I mean, they both have their interests, but Ed and Iriala are friends, so it’s not really an issue. It just means I could theoretically pursue other kinds of work now without getting into trouble with the guild. And I can get access to their institutional knowledge and resources, which is a lot more important right now. It’s not a bad deal, really, just kind of expensive. Most mages join sooner or later – except most war mages and people like Kustov, because he’s a foreigner.”

“Huh.” Nirlig grunted. “Why didn’t you do it sooner?”

Bernt sighed tiredly. “Because guild membership comes with strings. Guild members are required to respond to emergencies, follow all the guild procedures for various professions, protect guild secrets, and work directly with the government when called upon to ‘secure dungeons and contain threats as described in the guild’s charter’.”

“Oh!” Nirlig chuckled, taking a sip of whatever he had in his own cup. “That makes sense. We already have to do half of that as Underkeepers.”

“Yeah.” Bernt smiled. “Might as well have the benefits to go with it.”

--------

After work the next day, Bernt made his way back up to the Mages’ Guild. Ignoring the receptionist entirely, he simply walked right in and headed up toward Pollock’s office. The man still busily copying papers behind the desk didn’t even appear to notice him. Now that he thought about it, he probably could have just gone up to Iriala’s office all along.

Oh well.

Letting himself in through the Wizards’ Society’s door, Bernt wandered down the hall, trying to remember exactly where Pollock’s office was. Unlike what he would have expected from the local guild’s research center, the place had an oddly abandoned feel to it. More than one door stood open, revealing that quite a few of the rooms and offices were empty and apparently not being used at all.

The doors of the occupied rooms were adorned with small plaques bearing the names and titles of those who worked there – they were often long and pretentious sounding, but Bernt supposed that was just how things were done. Pollock’s door, when he found it, had an even larger plaque than most – he hadn’t seen it the day before because the door had been open.

Pollock

Magister - Wizard of Pyromancy

Director of Spell Development - Elementalism

Hoping he wasn’t late, Bernt knocked – or tried to. He barely made it to the second knock before the old man’s reedy voice answered.

“In!”

Bernt stepped inside.

Both the office and the man looked exactly as he’d left them the day before, except this time someone else was sitting in a chair across from Pollock’s desk. It was an old woman, very nearly as ancient as Pollock himself, but where his back was bent with age, hers seemed to have calcified in a straight line. She sat perfectly upright, sipping on a steaming cup with the air of someone who felt that her tea deserved her full and undivided attention. She did not look up when he entered.

Pollock, on the other hand, shot him a long-toothed grin. “And there he is right now!” he exclaimed with a flourish, apparently continuing a conversation they’d been having.

Placing the cup down on its saucer with deliberate care, the woman turned to look at him, examining him with ancient, watery eyes.

“Boy, meet Master Alchemist Yrtrude. She used to run the whole godsdamned guild branch here back in the day.”

Unsure of what to do, Bernt nodded to her. “Hello, pleasure to meet you.”

Yrtrude sniffed, expressing her displeasure in a manner that only truly old people could really pull off.

“You brought me an Underkeeper,” she said. “Really, Pollock. Why do you bother? And why are you bothering me?”

“Oh relax,” he scoffed. “The Underkeepers have been getting rehabilitated – here in Halfbridge, at least. Haven’t you been paying attention? Besides, young Iriala told me that the boy joined them deliberately. Bit of a rebel, this one, but he did fine at the academy. I looked at his transcript. Didn’t want to join the military and couldn’t bear to indebt himself for a guild membership with an apprenticeship.”

“My dear Pollock,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You just like him because he sounds like the same sort of fool you were sixty years ago.”

The old man shrugged and smiled. Yrtrude drew her lips into a line, but then she sighed and turned to Bernt.

“Hand!” she said, holding out her own by way of demonstration. Her voice was still strong, unlike Pollock’s, and brimmed with a natural sense of authority.

Deciding not to say anything, Bernt stepped up to her and held out his right hand, which she gripped by the wrist with her thumb and forefinger, turning it this way and that.

“Hmm. Nothing physical. Describe the poison used, any treatments attempted, and any other spells and magical substances it’s come in contact with since.”

Bernt did, as best he could remember. When he finished, Yrtrude didn’t say anything right away, staring at him with a strange expression.

“You mean to tell me,” she began, voice thick with disapproval, “that you found a strange alchemical metal lying submerged in filth and you thought it would be fine to just pick it up? With your bare hands? Don’t you even have gloves?”

Bernt shrugged, doing his best not to shift uncomfortably under her gaze. “You’d be surprised what you can get used to when you work in a sewer. And no, gloves get in the way of casting. You don’t always have time to get them off if something comes at you.”

“I see,” she said distastefully and leaned back, keeping her back completely straight the whole time. “Pollock, what could you possibly want with someone like this? He’s a fool.”

Bernt frowned and opened his mouth to defend himself. Then he shut it again, thinking better of it. He didn’t actually know what he could say here that wouldn’t make him sound stupid, and besides, there was no point in arguing with the woman.

Fortunately, Pollock just laughed. “Oh, relax, dear. I can teach proper experimental procedures, that’s the easy part. He’s an ideal candidate. The boy successfully modified a pretty complex spell, and actually made it more useful in the process. Better yet, he’s willing to take risks. Else he wouldn’t have kept using the damaged arm at all, never mind throwing around spells he didn’t properly understand in the middle of a fight. You can’t teach that kind of recklessness. You can teach restraint, though, and tempered properly it’ll make him a damned fine wizard.”

Yrtrude frowned. “You were too, but you still managed to cripple yourself.”

Pollock shrugged, apparently unbothered. “Risk is inherent to all real innovation. You can’t do animal testing on a new investiture like you can a new potion. Even my failure moved the entire field forward. Generations of mages and future wizards will benefit.”

Bernt cleared his throat. “Ehm. Weren’t we talking about my hand?”

He absolutely wanted to know more about Pollock’s apparent plans for him, but it seemed to him like the old man was skipping ahead a bit too far. He wasn’t going to amount to very much of anything if he couldn’t improve his condition – he’d just keep stressing his mana network and probably make it worse.

“We were, yes.” Yrtrude nodded. “The metal you touched is called Arefinium. It looks golden, but it’s an alchemical alloy that draws mana out of an object – it has many applications in alchemy. The reason your arm withered is likely because of tiny amounts of trace residue that remained stuck to your skin after you dropped it. Once those traces were saturated with mana, the withering effect stopped, otherwise it might have killed you.”

Bernt grunted, absorbing that for a moment. He hadn’t realized that just pulling all the mana out of his flesh could have such a horrific physical impact on it. It wasn’t hard to imagine that part of his mana network would have been damaged, even after the lesser restoration potion that he’d been given.

“And my mana network?” he asked, looking from her to Pollock.

“It was likely strained quite badly by this,” Yrtrude said. “But nothing permanent, considering that you received the proper treatment almost immediately. I expect, however, that repeated casting strain combined with exposure to some form of hellfire could easily do all kinds of damage to your spirit. Prior strain on your system would not have done that any favors. Hellfire is, of course, a valuable alchemical reagent in its own right. Several martial-type guilds and the military incorporate derivatives of it in their various enhancement procedures, specifically because of its ability to affect the spirit.”

Bernt blinked. He’d known that hellfire could damage the spirit, and by examining the spellforms for simple fire as well as Jori’s blood, he’d learned that fire was inherently a transformative effect. He hadn’t realized that the alchemists were not only aware of this, but actually using this particular effect of hellfire.

“Uh. Does this mean you can fix me? With one of these kinds of elixirs, I mean?”

Yrtrude shook her head. “No, no. Your spirit is modified into a mana network. That would modify the effect – it would probably kill you. Never mind that any guild whose proprietary recipe I used would come after the both of us for it. Pollock here might believe in taking insane risks, but I don’t.”

The old man in question leaned forward impatiently. “Alright then. What do you think he should do about it?”

The alchemist shrugged. “Wait, stop casting spells and hope for it to get better. Maybe try another restoration potion if he can afford it, but I doubt it would work. Those work better for healing recent trauma, not repairing these kinds of chronic problems. You can think of it like trying to remove a scar with a healing potion. It wouldn't really do much.”

Bernt did his best to hide his disappointment behind a neutral expression, but he didn’t think he succeeded very well. He couldn’t just not do magic for who knew how long. There was no way. It was part of his job and, more importantly, part of what and who he was.

There had to be a better solution out there.