Underkeeper

Bernt shook his still disturbingly gray hand, trying to banish the uncomfortable sensation of pins and needles creeping deeper into it. He’d drunk the lesser spirit restoration potion on the way home and felt an immediate effect. That wasn’t to say his hand was fine—it was still healing, and the healing process was more than a little uncomfortable. His hand also looked… horrible. By the time he’d made it to the magistrate’s office to pick up the potion, it had started to desiccate into a gray, mummified-looking husk.

He shuddered at the memory. The hand didn’t look, well… entirely dead anymore. The skin seemed to have been pulled too tightly over the bones, but this was already an immeasurable improvement. It had been a deliberate attack. A poisoning.

Now he sat in the only chair he owned in front of a small table that doubled as his kitchen counter and nightstand. It was only early evening, but he had nowhere else to be—Ed had sent him home early to pick up the potion and told him to take a day off to rest.

He was surprised the magistrate’s office would cover the cost of his treatment, but also relieved. While he didn’t know how much the potion cost exactly, it had to have been at least as expensive as a superior healing potion, maybe even more. That alchemist should have been forced to pay for it. She should have been arrested—there had to be consequences for something like this, right?

To distract himself from the horrifying memory of his dying hand, Bernt tried to make sense of the journal he’d found, slowly working his way through the archaic language it was written in. He balanced the open book on his lap and took notes on scratch paper with his still-functional left hand. It was tedious. Not just the words and the odd grammar—the author’s whole mode of expression was strange.

Still, he made some progress. Several pages were filled with what looked like random thoughts on the interactions of different alchemical ingredients. Some described them in terms of mana interactions, which made even less sense.

But he could interpret the spell diagrams. They looked vaguely familiar, even though they were obviously impossible to cast. It was something about the overall spell design, but he couldn’t place it because he didn’t understand how it all worked.

For the first time in his life, Bernt wished he knew more about alchemy.

There was a firm knock at the door, and Bernt nearly jumped out of his skin.

No one visited him here. He didn’t exactly advertise where he lived, and he couldn’t think of anyone who would willingly walk into this neighborhood if they didn’t have to.

Hesitantly, Bernt put the journal on top of his notes and rose, grabbing his wand off of his bed.

“Who is it?” he called.

“Open up, it’s Ed,” came his boss’s familiar voice.

Bernt frowned to himself. Well, Ed did have his address. But why would he come here? He tucked the wand awkwardly under his dead arm and opened the door to find Ed standing there carrying two books. He looked worn out in a way Bernt had never seen before. It made him look old—which Bernt supposed he was, but still… it looked wrong on him.

“Evening, son. Mind if I come in for a minute?”

Bernt nodded wordlessly and backed up a step to let him in. As an afterthought, he cast a torch spell to properly light the room against the fading light outside. Then he sat down on his bed and offered Ed the chair. There was nowhere else to sit in the tiny room.

Ed sat, taking in the space around him with a frown. His gaze lingered for a moment on Jori’s sandbox—even though it was freshly cleaned. Jori herself was still out hunting, which Bernt supposed was for the best.

“Yorith’s balls,” he cursed. “Why do you live like this? I know what you can afford, and it’s a lot better than this.”

Bernt shifted uncomfortably.

“I’m trying to save money,” he said, “and adventuring equipment is expensive.” Ed knew he wasn’t planning on being an Underkeeper forever—nobody actually aspired to be a lifer in the sewers.

Ed snorted a laugh.

“Boy, you’re in too much of a hurry.” Then he stopped, and looked down at the books in his hands with a dead expression. “Well. Maybe not.” He shook his head, changing the subject. “Ehm. How’s the hand?”

“Uncomfortable,” Bernt said, frowning down at it. “I still can’t believe she’s going to get away with it—the alchemist, I mean.”

Ed sighed. “We can’t prove that she did it deliberately, and her guild apparently did provide specific procedures on exactly how to handle dangerous alchemical substances. Speaking of which, I brought you a copy of the safety procedures. I’ll need to prove to the magistrate that you’ve been trained and certified as part of our ‘corrective actions,’ so expect a test later.”

Bernt scowled, accepting a rather thick packet of papers. “Fine. I can learn the procedures. But why do the alchemists think they can treat us like this? Why do we let them?” His voice rose with each question, and the second one came out as a demand.

Ed raised an eyebrow, pulled out his pipe and started stuffing it.

“What do you think I should have done, exactly? I didn’t have a legal leg to stand on—and I really should have made sure you knew how to recognize and handle alchemical hazards. She used your ignorance and my negligence against us, but there’s nothing illegal or punishable about that, even if she admitted that she did it on purpose—which she didn’t.”

“You’re an archmage!” Bernt insisted. “You’d think they would show a little respect, if only for self-preservation!”

“So, you think I should have threatened her with violence?” Ed puffed his pipe for a long moment, humming as he blew out a stream of smoke toward the closed window. “Do you remember a week ago, when you found me in a sewer bleeding out on a kobold’s rusty skewer trap?”

Bernt nodded. How could he forget something like that?

With an unnecessary flourish, Ed flicked the fingers of one hand in a complicated gesture. The window opened and a rustling of wind carried the smoke cloud outside, leaving the air perfectly clean. He gestured toward it with his pipe.

“We can do a lot of incredible things that nobody else can, and it’s easy to start thinking that that makes us special—more than mortal, somehow. But every mage, no matter how powerful, is one brick to the head away from death. Remember that. Any peasant can kill a mage when he sleeps, and usually if we’re awake too. Maybe not Iriala with her foresight, but you get what I mean. All of us have to play by the rules of society, unless we want to live totally outside of it. If you act like a monster, you will be forced to live like one. Alone, hunted, and hiding in a hole.” Ed took another drag of his pipe and squinted at him.

Bernt swallowed a lump, but that didn’t douse the burning pit in his gut. Shame at his suggestion warred with his sense of righteous fury. He’d been attacked. Why wouldn’t he have the right to defend himself?

“More importantly in this case, nobody wants to get into a mortal struggle with the alchemists,” Ed went on. “That’s how you end up with healing potions that spawn parasitic blood oozes in your brain. An honest miscalculation, they’ll say. Or maybe aerosolized elixirs of berserking will get mysteriously injected into your home so you kill your loved ones. That kind of thing. Fates worse than death, delivered with plausible deniability. That doesn’t even consider how well connected they are to the other guilds and the crown. Nearly everyone depends on them in some way or another. This was a shot across the bow and we need to tread carefully. You got hurt, but the message was for me. I’m going to handle it. Do not get involved.”

Those were not things Bernt had ever heard of before—or even imagined, really. After a stunned moment, he blurted, “Do they really do that? If they’re so dangerous, why doesn’t anyone do something about them?”

Ed’s scowl softened into a blank look Bernt associated with amusement. “They don’t normally do that sort of thing, no, but they could. And weren’t we just talking about archmages using force to subdue their enemies?” He sighed and put the pipe back in his mouth. “All the guilds are dangerous, and they all play these kinds of games. Nobody wants to push it too far, but it happens sometimes. The Underkeepers are not a guild, and they didn’t like us interfering with them.”

Bernt opened his mouth to respond, but Ed cut him off with a wave.

“This isn’t your problem anymore. Now, let me ask you a question,” he said, changing the subject. “Why haven’t you attempted an investiture yet? If you want to become an adventurer, or make more money to afford equipment to start, advancing should have been your first priority from the start. Are you having trouble choosing the right architecture?”

Bernt shook his head and rubbed his face. “No. Sort of. You already know I have my basic pyromancer’s qualification, and I do want to go in that direction, but I don’t actually know any pyromantic architectures. I don’t have access to the Mages’ Guild library. The only other way to get access to a good architecture is the military, and I didn’t want to be a war mage… I thought eventually I’d be able to afford guild membership, after I got started as an adventurer.”

A mage could become a magister of their particular specialization by developing an augmentation for it. That augmentation was, essentially, a greater function emerging from the way three investitures in his spirit would combine in his mana network. The design for creating a particular augmentation was the mage’s mana network architecture, or just architecture for short.

Each investment was done slightly differently depending on the material used, and what investitures the mage already had. That was because each new investiture interacted with those it was attached to. Worse, once an augmentation was complete, all later investitures—those used to make a second augmentation—would similarly need to be compatible with that prior augmentation. The more investitures a mage had, the more complicated and dangerous any further modification to their mana network became. A failed investment could have unpredictable effects. It could change how all the mages’ spells worked. In the worst case, it could scramble the mage’s entire mana network, making it difficult or impossible to cast spells at all.

This was the reason that so few people attempted a second augmentation. It was far more difficult to become an archmage than to become a magister. And, while many archwizards had attempted to form a third augmentation, no one had ever actually managed it—at least no definitively real people. There were plenty of myths and legends.

“Hmm. I figured it was going to be something like that. I wouldn’t call it a good plan—coming at it backwards, really—but at least you had one, I suppose.” Ed put the books he’d been carrying down on Bernt’s table. “Be that as it may, I don’t have time for you to get around to developing yourself on your own schedule. Take these and study them. They’re official analyses of different war mage augmentations used in Illuria and the Giant Wastes, including several pyromantic architectures. War’s coming here soon, and you’re going to be fighting in it.”

Bernt stared at the books, eyes wide. War mage architectures were national secrets—reserved for mages who enlisted in the military. Of course, there was no reason that information on foreign war mage architectures would be suppressed here in Besermark. It was something he hadn’t considered, though he probably wouldn’t be able to afford a book like this anyway. This would be incredibly useful.

“Thank you, I’ll study them carefully…”

“Don’t think too long. Look them over and let me know if you have any questions. You’ll want to get your first investiture as soon as you can.”

Bernt nodded uncertainly. He wanted to read them, of course, but that didn’t mean he just wanted to directly copy one of these architectures. It would make him predictable. These texts were probably required reading for practically every war mage in the country. He didn’t have money or political backing—if I want to make something of himself, he would need something less well-known. That was why he’d wanted to study in the guild library.

Ed must have read something in his expression, because he snorted and shook his head.

“Ah, I see. You want to be a wizard.” It was a statement, not a question.

Bernt shifted awkwardly. He hadn’t been planning on that specifically.

“Look, son, it’s not that rare. A lot of young people want to prove themselves by inventing something new and unique. But you’re going at it from the wrong end. Even successful wizards tend to, for all their years of research and preening egos, end up as magisters, cornered in their development and unable to hold a candle to a standard, interchangeable war mage. Trust me. I am one of those war mages, and I’ve put my share of wizards in the ground in my time.”

Bernt waved for Ed to stop, embarrassed. “No, no. I’ve thought about it, sure. I mean, who hasn’t? I just mean that I need something a little less… typical. Maybe just something rarer to help me stand out, or maybe I can figure out a way to add a little twist of my own.”

Ed patted the books on the table almost fondly. “Look, just read these, and then choose simple and flexible investitures with an open-ended augmentation. You need to grow while still keeping a variety of options for a second augmentation open. That’s how you make it to archmage when you don’t have a design for an archmage architecture to start with. You can figure out the second half when you have some experience under your belt. If you still feel like creativity is that important to your future, you’ll be far more qualified at that time to pull it off without crippling yourself.”

Bernt grunted in assent. He didn’t want to agree, but Ed was the archmage in the room. Plus, he was speaking sense.

He’d always dreamed of showing those privileged scions who had pushed him around at the Academy that they weren’t better than him. But they had access to secrets he had no hope of discovering, and wielded the genius of past generations against the crumbs left for lesser mages. He wanted to be able to compete, ideally sooner rather than later.

Bernt knew he wasn’t a genius, but he was persistent and determined. He knew he could find a way. But if Ed said he should wait until he was a magister to get creative, then he needed to at least consider that the man might have a point.

Trying not to feel disappointed, he picked up the books. It was still an incredible gift.