Underkeeper

Bernt wasn’t expected to show up to work the next day, so he resolved to spend it studying. Jori had come in sometime during the night, climbing in through the window without waking him. He still didn’t know exactly how she opened it, but he supposed it didn’t matter. She lived here too.

It was already noon, but she was still asleep—curled up on top of the stove. He hadn’t wanted to wake her, but he was starting to get hungry now. He needed her to move so he could make himself something to eat.

“Jori, wake up! Do you want breakfast?”

The demon’s head perked up and she looked around, as if she thought he was holding food out to her right then.

“I am hungry!” she declared, eyes locking onto Bernt, before her face contorted into a plaintive expression. “Where is the food?”

“You need to move, so I can make it.” Bernt nudged her off the stove and reached for his pan. She landed with a cranky hiss. He packed the stove with wood, lit it, and began rapidly slicing potatoes into the pan.

It felt wrong to just feed Jori dried rat meat now that she could talk, so he’d started cooking meals for both of them instead of just himself. Before, he’d thought of her as something of a pet. It wasn’t until he saw how Elyn had reacted to her that he realized he didn’t anymore. Jori was a person, if a very strange one.

His hand was mostly back to normal, though it was still slightly discolored and his grip felt a little weak. He almost dropped the pan. It wasn’t bad enough to keep him from working, but he wasn’t showing up to work if he didn’t have to. He wasn’t eager to be sent on any more plumbing assignments for the Alchemists’ Guild. He wasn’t sure what exactly Ed could do about Master Alchemist Theresa and her ilk, but he hoped that whatever it was, he would do it soon.

While he knew he should probably focus on memorizing the safety procedures, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he’d spent the morning devouring Ed’s books on various augmentations and their architectures. The ways different investitures interacted with one another weren’t predictable, even if they always seemed logical in hindsight.

One pyromancer augmentation used by the giants of the Giant Wastes started with an investiture that actually made it more difficult to cohere fire into fireballs, lights or ignition spells. It was worse than useless. But the augmentation it eventually built—in conjunction with two further investitures—allowed the newly minted magister to emit an efficient fire aura at will that would burn anyone who approached them. That made it an incredibly rare personal defense augmentation. While all mages learned defensive spells, these not only consumed a lot of mana, they also usually needed to be actively maintained.

Unlike traditional pyromancers, these fire giants didn’t specialize in long-range combat. They served as formation-breakers, who simply waded into an enemy army and let their aura scatter their lines.

That augmentation didn’t suit Bernt, of course. He would need something that could work in tight spaces and wouldn’t endanger his allies. The last thing he wanted was to lead a charge at an enemy army. No, thank you.

To his surprise, he did find one pyromantic architecture that would work underground. In fact, it was almost too perfect. Bernt was sure that Ed had meant for him to find and choose this one, and that made a very loud part of him want to do something else. He wanted to become extraordinary, somehow, and he couldn’t just blindly go down the first path he was pointed toward. A more rational part of him, however, knew that was childish. His experience in the dungeon had shown him the cost of waiting—and he was certainly fighting kobolds again, soon.

The architecture in question belonged to the Illurians, and it was used primarily at sea. That made sense, considering that Illuria was a major naval power. The first investiture did essentially the opposite of the fire giants’ aura, condensing flame into an extremely hot, near-liquid state. This could be harnessed to create fireballs that would splash on impact, igniting flammable materials in a wide area.

The finished augmentation permanently modified fire spells to create a liquid flame that could feed on ambient mana and mundane materials while retaining its liquid-like properties. Illurian pyromancers sank enemy vessels in minutes with flames that dripped down through wooden decks in an unstoppable waterfall of destruction.

He didn’t really need that augmentation, but the first investiture would be immediately beneficial to him. It would contain the heat of his flames, preventing fireballs from overheating tunnels or underground chambers. It would do horrific damage to anyone directly exposed, but it also wouldn’t burn anyone nearby.

The problem would be actually performing the investment process. He would need to bind a droplet of burning rain into his spirit, and there were only two ways to get one of those. Bernt might be able to get one from an alchemy supplier, or he could make a trip of over four hundred miles to the Phoenix Reaches, where it fell in a constant shower onto smoldering fire grass. The region was uninhabited by humans, unsurprisingly. Despite that, it was technically under Illurian control, since they controlled the only safe access point.

Bernt didn’t want to approach anyone even remotely associated with the Alchemists’ Guild. In the best-case scenario, they would price gouge him—he didn’t even want to consider the worst-case scenario. But he couldn’t just take a month off to travel to a hellish wasteland in another country, either.

Adding onions and an egg to the pan, Bernt explained the issue to Jori, who looked like she wasn’t listening. He didn’t mind—he was mostly voicing his frustrations out loud for his own benefit.

“I mean, come on!” he finished a few minutes later. “What’s the point of giving me an ideal pyromantic architecture if I can’t get the thing I need to attempt it?”

“Ask your master,” Jori answered, as if stating the obvious.

Bernt stopped, then shook his head. “He already gave me the books. This would be like asking him to double my pay while he was at it. Do you have any idea how valuable a droplet of burning rain is? I can’t do it.”

He dished a bit of the food into a bowl for Jori, and held it out to her. She snatched it from him, rolling her eyes.

“Then ask your party,” she said, in the same tone as before.

Bernt ground his teeth in frustration. She didn’t understand.

“I’m already taking a standardized pyromantic architecture from a book. The first investiture for it, anyway. It was handed to me on a plate. I can’t just… let somebody hand me the materials for it, too. Then I would be just like them.”

Jori squinted at him dubiously. Then she leaned slowly toward him and sniffed at the air.

“You do not smell like a kobold,” she said, as if that settled it.

“What? No! I mean, I’d be like all of the others. People who just take what’s given to them. It’s a bad habit. It’s safe, but it’s also a trap. That’s what I always liked about wizards. They don’t just invent their own augmentation for fun, or to make something new. I mean, maybe some of them. But I think it’s about expressing who and what you are through your power and not allowing someone else to define you. If I’m already going to borrow someone else’s ideas, I have to make them my own, somehow, from the very beginning. Even if I go with something boring like this, it has to be personal, somehow. That means, at the very least, that I should solve this myself. Maybe I could steal it from the Alchemists’ Guild or—”

Bernt stopped as something hit his shoulder and a tiny clawed hand slapped him across the back of the head. Jori was sitting on his shoulder—he hadn’t even seen her move. She was surprisingly strong.

“Ask the party how to get fire water yourself!”

“But I know how to…” Bernt started to protest halfheartedly, but he stopped himself. He didn’t know how to get it—not really.

He sighed. He couldn’t just sit around feeling sorry for himself and thinking in circles all day, and this was a way forward.

“Fine.”

Jori shook her head in a far too human gesture, grumbling as she returned to shoveling potatoes into her mouth.

“Needs spicy pepper,” she commented, smacking her lips.

***

Bernt knocked on the door of the Halfbridge Orphanage, listening to the clamor of playing children inside. He was on his way to see Therion—he was! But he had time for a quick detour.

He wasn’t stalling. No—he still needed to let Farrin know that he couldn’t show up to teach tonight. He’d already missed the last lesson when he was in the dungeon, but as far as she knew, he’d been taking a vacation. He was supposed to start again today.

When the door opened, though, it wasn’t Farrin. A tiny gnome girl no more than ten years old was hanging from the latch, which she’d jumped up to to open the door. She dropped to the floor and beamed up at him.

“Bernt, you’re here! Where have you been? You’re not going to believe what just happened!”

Bernt smiled.

“Hi, Trip, do you know where Farrin is?”

Trip put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Just listen! The magefinders were here—they said I’m a good candidate for the Mages’ Academy!” As she talked, her expression morphed back into one of barely restrained excitement until she was practically singing.

At that, Bernt stopped. “Wow, really? When do you go?” It wasn’t unheard of for the magefinders to pull someone out of the orphanage—it had happened to him, after all. Of the general population, nearly one in a hundred people was talented enough to attract the attention of the magefinders. It was a surprise that they hadn’t found anyone else at the orphanage sooner, all things considered.

“Next year at the start of term!!” she gushed. “I’m going to be a researcher—an archwizard! I’m going to unravel the secrets of the universe!”

Only about two-thirds of the acolytes recruited to the Academy ever managed to cast their first spell, and not all of those would graduate. Dropouts often apprenticed themselves to the Enchanters’ or the Alchemists’ Guilds—both places where a prior magical education could provide an enormous benefit. But Bernt supposed this wasn’t the time to cast doubt on her aspirations.

“That’s incredible!” He crouched down, and put a hand on her little shoulder. “You’ll do great. Just do your best, and don’t forget where you came from. You can come talk to me if you need help, alright? Mama Farrin knows how to find me.”

“Bernie, is that you? Why would she need to go find you?” came Farrin’s voice from the hallway beyond the door.

“For emotional support,” Bernt replied with a tight smile. The old woman looked confused for a second. Then her gaze flicked down to Trip and she nodded in comprehension.

“Right. So, what are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Yeah… that’s part of it,” Bernt said. “I’m not going to make it to the lesson today, I’m sorry. There was an incident at work…”

***

It was nearly an hour later and with a belly full of stale tea cakes that Bernt finally arrived at the Upper District—a relatively recent addition to the city where many of the city’s wealthy merchants and successful adventurers lived. Though it was technically outside the main city’s walls, the district’s residents had financed the construction of their own outer walls, which were incidentally quite a bit higher and thicker than the city wall at their back. It made the district not only the wealthiest, but also the best-protected part of the city after the castle itself.

The place felt wrong somehow to Bernt. It was too clean, too quiet, and there weren’t enough pedestrians. Where food carts and hawkers crowded every corner in the main city, the Upper District had restaurants and dedicated entertainment venues—theaters, art galleries, and a dedicated training ground for adventurers, complete with stands for spectators.

Bernt rarely came up here—something he was glad for. Fiora handled sewer maintenance in this district and, from what he’d heard, it involved less actual maintenance work than it did managing the overinflated egos of the residents.

He knew where Therion lived because everyone knew. His father, after all, was the kind of famous that made it impossible not to know. Garius Treespeaker was the second-highest-ranked adventurer in Halfbridge at rank 11, just one below Branchmaster Ambrose. The house in question was large, opulent, and centrally located. At least, it was large in Bernt’s view. As far as the Upper District was concerned, it was just a bit bigger than average.

The front path cut through a garden that was meant to look as though it had been left to grow wild, but was also so beautifully composed that it had to have been carefully cultivated. The walk was so long that Bernt couldn’t help but feel he was intruding just by walking up to the door without announcing himself first in some way. But then he was standing in front of the door, and there was nothing left to do but knock.

He raised his hand and gave the heavy oak a few solid raps with his knuckles before realizing there was a heavy silver knocker he probably should have used instead.

Oh well.

The door swung open, revealing… not Therion.