Underkeeper

Bernt arrived at work the next morning to find Dayle manning Ed’s office. To Dayle, that meant sitting in Ed’s chair and using a spell to spin a rock around in a circle as quickly as he could—he wasn’t much of an administrator. When he saw Bernt, he released the spell, which sent the rock flying into the wall with a loud bang.

“Bernt! Did y’hear? It’s a deep dragon. A young ‘un, most likely, but there’s a den less than a mile away if you don’t count the depth. Not sure how far down it’s going to be. The scryers done found it last night when they went to scope out that new kobold tunnel for the count. The Adventurers’ Guild is working on getting the quests issued right now. In the meantime, the city has to secure the new dungeon entrance and guard it. And the count wants us to do that along with the City Guard!”

Great. Just perfect. Bernt sighed. “Alright… but why? Doesn’t the Mages’ Guild usually do that?”

“Normally, yeah. But they have to pay the Mages’ Guild. Apparently there’s also something with the contract about where guild mages are and aren’t allowed to operate. The sewers are considered city infrastructure, which is protected. They don’t automatically get the assignment; the count has to sign off on it. The thing is, Halfbridge happens to have its own corps of nonguild mages who are directly employed by the government.”

Bernt frowned. “What?”

Dayle sighed, gesturing at the room around them. “It’s simple, son. The count doesn’t have to pay us a single rusty copper that he isn’t already paying us, and the guild can’t make a legal claim to the job.” He chuckled. “Iriala is going to be pissed. Dungeon security is a big revenue stream for them.”

Bernt didn’t think it was funny. The Underkeepers weren’t prestigious, but usually nobody bothered them, either. If the guard commander had a grudge against their organization now, and they were costing the Mages’ Guild money as well, that could change.

“Who’s going to take care of sewer maintenance if we’re handling dungeon security? And won’t the Mages’ Guild make trouble for us, regardless of what’s in their government contract?”

Dayle snorted. “Oh, relax. Iriala knows we’re getting screwed even harder than they are. We’re not getting anything for this and she knows it. And of course, we have to keep up with the regular work as well. Technically, anyway. We’re cutting all the basic work and just handling complaints and escalations from the maintenance office for the time being. Assignments are going to be distributed on a first come, first served basis.”

He grinned. “Wanna guess what you’re going to be doing?”

Bernt sighed. He really needed to start getting up earlier.

***

True to his word, Dayle put Bernt to work settling every plumbing issue in the city. Well, not every plumbing issue, but all those that had been flagged for the Underkeepers—problems that might be dangerous or magical in nature, or that were simply impractical for a regular maintenance worker to handle.

Unfortunately, what was impractical for a regular worker wasn’t necessarily easy for a mage to handle either. When he met one at his first site that morning, he knew it was going to be trouble.

The older woman, Kai, didn’t like calling for help, and she didn’t like magic or magical solutions in general. She subscribed to the idea that since so many of the city’s maintenance problems were caused by magic, mages in general couldn’t be trusted to fix them. She always projected the utmost sincerity when she spoke, but like all the Underkeepers, Bernt knew not to take her at face value.

Meaning the smile she wore when she explained the problem did nothing to reassure Bernt.

“So, you’ve got a broken drainpipe,” Bernt said flatly. “And you want me to go in there and fix it.” He inhaled. “Why didn’t you just replace it like normal?”

Kai’s expression turned earnestly regretful and she gestured to the building in question. “Well, you know how it is. It’s a temple! We can’t just go breaking things. Who knows what might happen? It’s not respectful, you know? And floors, those are things too! It’s much too dangerous for the likes of us.”

The broken drainpipe was in a consecrated temple of Garrus, and damaging temples for any reason was incredibly dangerous. Depending on the temperament of the relevant god, even a moment of carelessness could call down their divine displeasure—even if the one who damaged the sanctuary floor was the same one trying to stop the vile seepage coming up through said floor.

Bernt sighed and went in without saying goodbye. He thought he could hear Kai humming cheerfully as she took her leave.

As he worked, he felt the eyes of the god’s statue bore into his back. Garrus took the shape of a massive six-legged bear with an insect’s wings. Instead of a tail, he sported a long, nasty-looking stinger.

Bernt shuddered. He spent far too much time wandering around outdoors to piss off this particular deity, no matter that he was considered minor.

By the time his lunch break rolled around, he had cobbled together a modified force spell to scrape the interior of the ancient clay pipe and remove any stray shards. Then he placed a small force barrier at the bottom of the break and dropped a narrow cylinder of wet clay down the pipe. A simple earth-shaping spell later, the basic shape of the pipe was restored. Then he had to wet the entire thing, run the force spell over it a few times to ensure it was sealed properly, and—very carefully—heat the entire pipe by pushing superheated air through with an annoyingly difficult pyromancy/aeromancy spell he cobbled together on the fly. He had to stop every few seconds to slowly pull the heat out of the surrounding floor with another pyromancy spell for fear of cracking the tiles.

He was sure there was a simpler way to do this, but it wasn’t as though he had access to the guild library. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to get creative to solve a problem on the job. Besides, it was working! A warm sense of satisfaction grew in his chest. Maybe he should put all his spells and procedures together in a book and try to sell it to the guild. Bernt’s Sewerage Solutions, by Underkeeper Bernard!

“Hey, Bernt!” a familiar voice called as he finally stepped out of the building. “I didn’t know you found religion.”

Bernt looked up, surprised. The tall young man was striding toward him, followed by a female dwarf wearing some kind of priest’s raiment. A dwarven god’s, probably—he didn’t know anything about dwarven religions.

“Therion? Wha—”

“And why Garrus?” he continued, not waiting for Bernt to finish. “What could you possibly get from worshiping a god of pollinators and beekeepers? I mean, really?”

Bernt gave Therion an unamused glare. Like most mages, Bernt didn’t put much stock in the gods, except maybe Aedina, the goddess of knowledge—and she didn’t actually require any open worship. She simply blessed those who shared in her pursuit of greater understanding.

“You damned well know I’m working, Therion. What are you doing here?”

“We dropped by the Underkeepers’ headquarters and that old guy there told us you’d probably be working here for most of the day. He seemed to think it was pretty funny, too.”

Of course he did. Godsdamned Dayle.

“Wait, you were looking for me?” Bernt said. “Why?”

The two exchanged a glance.

“Well, I’m sure you know about that new dungeon that just got declared, and we heard that you guys—the Underkeepers, I mean—were going to be running security on the entrance…”

Bernt sighed.

Dungeons always had at least one main quest that defined their difficulty rankings. For this one, it would be killing that deep dragon. The Adventurers’ Guild would give the quest to a highly ranked party of adventurers, who would enter first. That party, however, wouldn’t clear out every crevice of the entire place. After all, most dungeons were massive—some might be as large as entire cities.

After that prime party began mapping the dungeon, they would designate any unpromising areas as “secondary.” Other parties could go in to clear out these secondary areas and loot whatever they could find—for a fee. Every party would be paying in gold for that opportunity—gold that would be collected by dungeon security, who were responsible for properly documenting all who entered.

Bernt wasn’t about to try to talk Ed or the other Underkeepers into committing fraud for the sake of an old acquaintance—not that he thought he even could.

“We’re just providing magical support, like the Mages’ Guild usually does,” Bernt corrected him. “The guard commander is in charge. Besides, you might have noticed that I’m still out here trying to keep the sewer system under control. If you’re trying to skip the fee or something, you’re going to need to talk to someone else.”

“What?” Therion said in clear surprise. “No, no. We don’t have liquidity issues. I was hoping for a different kind of favor…”

“Then what is it? And aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend first?”

Therion looked embarrassed. “Right, sorry. This is Syrah, our healer. She wanted to come and meet the mage who managed to put a stop to Halfbridge’s slime menace.” He turned to Syrah and bowed slightly. “Syrah, meet Bernt the Underkeeper.”

Syrah smiled broadly at him. “Sure, right. And because this was actually my idea…” She leaned forward and stage-whispered conspiratorially. “We need a guide!”

Her breath smelled of wine.

“…A guide?” Bernt repeated.

“A guide!” she said, much louder. “See, I heard that the City Guard has been slacking off more than a bit of late. More specifically, I heard that a bunch of the city’s Underkeepers got themselves in a bit of a tangle with a bunch of kobolds a few days back. As in, before they spilled up and out from under the wall yesterday. And I figure that means you might know a way into the new dungeon that isn’t quite so… official. And since the prime party went in to start clearing the way this morning…”

Bernt looked from her back to Therion. “What? Why? I mean, if you can afford the fee, you can just go in like normal…”

Now it was Syrah and Therion’s turn to looks confused.

“Uh… Bernt?” Therion said. “You know that there’s a deep dragon in there, right?”

Bernt shrugged. “Yeah?”

“Dragon Lairs have a minimum threat ranking of seven,” Therion explained, as if it were obvious. “And usually it’s closer to ten.”

That… explained a lot. Therion was probably the highest-ranked adventurer in his party at rank 3. Which presented a serious problem. While only the prime dungeon party had to meet or exceed the dungeon’s rank, the secondary mop-up parties couldn’t be lower than half of that rank, with preference given to higher-ranked parties.

Though Therion had achieved a respectable rank for his barely two-year-old adventuring career, there was no way he or his party would be permitted to enter, no matter who his parents were, or how much money he had.

Of course, adventurers weren’t exactly known for their fear of danger, or their respect for authority. The tradition of trying to circumvent dungeon security was almost as old as the ranking system itself.

“I was in there,” Bernt admitted reluctantly. “We were rescuing two of my coworkers. But that room alone had over twenty kobolds in it. It wasn’t too bad with so many experienced mages, but I can’t imagine what you might run into if you actually tried to delve in there looking for loot.”

Syrah scoffed with more bravado than Bernt thought was warranted. Therion looked at him strangely.

“Do you know what deep dragons hoard?” he asked. “As in, what those kobolds were probably stealing from here and every other village, town and city they could reach?”

Bernt was getting annoyed at Therion’s tone, but tried not to show it.

“Kobolds are miners, not thieves. I’m not an idiot. That dungeon is probably full of gold and other valuables. I don’t know what’s special about deep dragons, no. Do they prefer gemstones to gold or something? You still have to survive long enough to get it back out!”

Syrah snorted as if he’d told a joke.

“The gold isn’t that important,” she said. “It’s just for decoration, really. You really should brush up on your beast lore a bit if you want to go adventuring, Bernt. Deep dragons hoard knowledge—especially spells. They’re obsessed with it. We’ve practically had to tie Therion down all day to keep him from trying to dig his way in willy-nilly.”

Therion glared at Syrah indignantly. “No you didn’t! I just said—”

“Easy, relax!” Syrah waved him down. “The point is, there’s a lot of things down there that might interest a mage. And there’s no reason we wouldn’t be able to let you have a look at anything that might be interesting for an aspiring adventurer.”

It was a good offer. There was no telling what kinds of books or scrolls they might find. The Mages’ Academy gave their students a very solid spellcasting foundation, including what they needed to begin to specialize. But that was all Bernt really had. He didn’t have access to the Mages’ Guild to continue his education there. More importantly, though, the dungeon might contain something truly extraordinary—lost or entirely unknown spells and magical knowledge.

But… just looking over what they chose to show him wasn’t enough. They actually needed him. He had leverage.

The limits of magic were practically nonexistent, but they would remain out of reach for him unless he was prepared to take risks.

“Alright. I’ll do it,” he said, “…but I’m coming with you.”