Book 2. Chapter 13

Book 2. Chapter 13

Brin stood to pace, but then realized that the enchanted circle wasn’t big enough for that and sat back down again.

“I don’t even know where to start. How could you miss something like that?”

“Look, I could make excuses. Undead are hard to spot until they start getting hungry, and Neptune was already a loner. The long and the short of it is that he fooled my [Inspect],” said Hogg. “I don’t have the time to [Inspect] everyone every day, but I do make an effort to check out notable citizens pretty often. Neptune has been at the top of my list for a while, and [Inspect] didn’t show me anything until I had already figured it out.”

“How? You told me you have the best [Inspect] in the country,” said Brin.This chapter was first shared on the Ñøv€lß1n platform.

“It suggests that the person that turned Neptune is higher level than I am,” said Hogg. “Much higher.”

“That’s insane. You’re insanely high-leveled. You’ve got to be at least level fifty. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were level sixty.”

Hogg blinked slowly.

“Fine, but answer me this, because it’s important. Are any of the known [Witches] in Hammon’s Bog higher level than you?”

“No,” said Hogg.

“Then who? A [Witch] from Arcaena? Arcaena herself?”

Hogg folded his arms, leaning back in his chair. “If Arcaena herself were here, I have no idea why she wouldn’t simply walk into town and ask all of us to pledge fealty. We would do it, without question. That’s power on another level. No, more likely it’s one of her students. Keep in mind that until your talk with your dead dad, I didn’t even think Arcaena had students.”

“How much trouble would we be in if a student of Arcaena were hiding in the forest?” asked Brin.

“Too much trouble,” said Hogg. “We’re talking about the direct disciple of a major world power. It would be like if Lumina was out there. Pre-Travin’s Bog Lumina at the least. Why would they bother? We’re working on the assumption that the reason we’re all still alive is because we aren’t worth it. I think it’s more likely that they found another way. I think they found a method of fooling my [Inspect] that I haven’t heard of.”

“Like what?”

“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? I don’t know. Did [Know What’s Real] give you anything off him?”

“No,” said Brin. “It hasn’t been very useful for this. Neptune is there, he just isn’t alive. Maybe if I saw him doing something deceitful to pretend he’s human?”

“Give it some thought.”

“Next question: what are we going to do about it?” asked Brin.

“The [Witches] in town are eager to find out who turned him. They’re preparing a ritual to bring him under their control. Should be ready this week. Until then, we pretend we don’t know. One of the [Witches] has been tasked with keeping an eye on him. No one likes the idea of an undead roaming around unsupervised. But us, the [Witches], and the Prefit are the only ones who know.”

Brin tapped his chin in thought, and then brought out Calisto’s list of ingredients and handed it to Hogg.

“What’s this?”

Brin said, “The ingredients for a potion of Turn Undead. It’ll free an undead from the control of its current master. What if we took Neptune for ourselves? I doubt you really like the idea of turning control of him over to the [Witches], especially since one of them is probably the one who killed and turned him in the first place.”

“They wouldn’t like that.”

“They don’t have to know! All we have to do is get to him first, turn him, and interrogate him ourselves without anyone being the wiser,” said Brin.

“They would know when they complete the ritual,” said Hogg. He held up a hand to forestall Brin’s protests. “But... if we frame it the right way, we could make this look like we’re doing them a favor. After all, if none of them are responsible for his death, they’ll be happy to see we can prove their innocence. In this matter at least.”

“So we’re doing it?”

Hogg nodded. “We’ll leave right after dusk. Don’t wear yourself out before then.”

Brin smiled. Not trusting himself to not say anything stupid, he carefully walked out of the cellar. It wasn’t until he closed the door behind him until he broke into an all-out sprint.

If they were leaving at dusk, that meant that he only had today to prepare, and he didn't have a weapon, not really. Sure, he could borrow something from Hogg, and Hogg would say he didn't need one, but he wanted one. And he wanted it to be made of glass.

He dashed down the street. Townsfolk looked alarmed at first, but relaxed when they saw the look on his face. He laughed and they smiled in response.

Down the street, to the left, across that street, and straight into Toros’ shop. He banged the door open. Simao was at the counter helping a couple of customers. Brin shoved straight past them over to Toros, who held his hammer above his head, paused from striking a horseshoe he was working on.

“G– guh!” said Brin, panting so hard he couldn’t make it out. Was he out of shape? He really needed to put running back into his workout routine.

“What’s this about, lad?” asked Toros. He lifted his steampunk-looking goggles away from his eyes. Brin always thought the town [Smith] looked like a stereotypical dwarf. Muscular and wide, barely taller than Brin. His mouth was covered behind a reddish-brown beard, but his eyes crinkled in concern.

“Glass! Can you make metal into glass?”

“Can I... can I make metal into glass? What’s this about?”

“ I–” How to explain this? “I just learned that some metals, maybe all of them, have a glass state, and that if you can get them into that state they’ll be much stronger than normal and also work really well with my Class.”

“Oh. But what’s the emergency?” asked a perplexed Toros.

“Ah. No emergency.” Brin chuckled in embarrassment. “I just thought about it and got really excited.”

Toros threw his head back and let out gales of ground-shaking laughter. The couple at the counter joined in along with Simao, while Brin awkwardly smiled and scratched the back of his head.

“Sorry.”

Ademir slapped his hands together, shaking off the sawdust. “Not at all. What can I help you with?”

“I was just thinking, eventually I’ll want to make all kinds of things from glass. Household objects and the like. I have this cool knife Toros helped me make; it’s probably my favorite possession. I was wondering how I would go about making something like that with glass? I assume it wouldn’t start with blowing it.”

Ademir blinked. “You know, I can’t believe I haven’t taught you this before. I guess I got so focused on getting you the levels to fix my fogginess issue, I never thought about doing more than bottles and windows. You’re right, of course, it’s quite different. Here...”

The [Crafter] went to a storage cabinet and brought out a lumpy, blackened, misshapen blob of cold glass. He dug around and found another. Brin’s [Memory of Glass] showed him in perfect detail that those had been some of his failures with bottle making. You learned a lot from failure, and Brin’s Skill would never let him forget those lessons.

“It won’t be long until you do this with knives, and then with all Skill,” said Ademir. “But for starters, we’re going to take the glass and slowly, slowly file it down.”

He used an iron file and scraped the glass, taking off tiny amounts at a time, over and over.

“Now, I’m going to use my Skills to take a shortcut here, but you need to be patient. Just whittle it down slowly until you have something like this.”

Ademir cracked the glass open like an egg. Inside, the glass that came free was in the rough shape of a small, four-inch long knife.

“When it looks like this, we’ll sharpen it. It’ll be a lot like sharpening a real knife. A whetstone will do fine, as long as it’s not too rough,” said Ademir.

The whetstone he used looked to Brin to be as smooth as polished marble, but Ademir dutifully sharpened away. Not just the blade–he rubbed the stone all across the body of the knife, smoothing away the rough portions and making it shine.

“Last is an abrasive rag,” said Ademir.

He used a woolen rag the same as the whetstone, polishing and then sharpening it.

The demonstration seemed to go on forever, but Brin forced himself to wait without so much as tapping a foot. He had interrupted Ademir on his day off, after all. The least he could do was pay attention.

When Ademir was finally satisfied, he placed the knife on the table, blade up. He plucked a hair from his head, and dropped it. When the hair touched the knife, it split in half.

“Whoa,” said Brin.

“Don’t expect yours to be like that on your first time. Skills, remember. But Glass can be extremely sharp. It dulls quickly, but that won’t be an issue for you. Not for long,” said Ademir.

Brin leapt into work, and just like Ademir said, he didn’t rush it. He scraped the file against the glass, taking off bit by bit and resisted the urge to speed things along by breaking off larger chunks. He couldn’t risk cracking it into pieces that were too small.

He kept scraping, watching it slowly take shape, and watching the sun climb down the sky from the workshop windows. Would he even get done in time? One thing was sure, he wasn’t going to make a knife and a spearhead today. But how would it look if he made a spearhead after Ademir showed him a knife?

“Hey, would you mind if I took this and worked on it at home? I promise I’ll bring your tools back,” said Brin.

“No, that’s no trouble,” said Ademir, attention back on his new prototype oven. “Keep the knife I made, if you wish. I have better ones.”

Back at home, Brin worked quickly. He pumped the file back and forth as quick as he could, working through the burn in his arm until it was too much, and then switching arms. It was dull, tedious, yet strangely nerve-wracking work.

There wasn’t much he could do to speed things up, and it was hard to stay focused on the repetitive motion. He had to pull on his [Meditation] a little to concentrate on what he was doing.

He got the glass into the shape he wanted, and with an hour until dusk, he started sharpening. The sharpening seemed to go even slower. The flat whetstone didn’t seem to alter the glass at all in his hands. It wasn’t until he made twenty careful passes on the same spot that he started to see the shine that Ademir had gotten from just one. But it did shine.

With that little sight of the end goal, he worked with renewed vigor. He didn’t even notice the sun crest the horizon and disappear.

Finally satisfied, he set the glossy, razor-sharp spearhead down on the table.

Alert! [Shape Glass] leveled up! 6 -> 7

It was dark outside.

“Whoa. What time is it?”

“Two hours after dusk,” said Hogg.

“Oh. I’m so sorry. I–”

“Don’t. It’s not like we’re on a deadline. You don’t need a weapon. You know that, right?” asked Hogg.

Brin sighed. “Yeah. But I want one.”

“Fine. Let’s get that thing attached and head out. Unless you have any other last-minute art projects?”

“Maybe a portrait to commemorate the moment?”

Hogg snorted. He took the spearhead, and used a string of leather to attach it to the haft. “It’ll hold for now. Frankly, we can attach it better when we have a better spearhead.”

Brin used [Inpsect].

Spear. A Bog Standard shaft with a common quality head.

“Heh. Common quality,” said Brin. “That’s a first! Everything else I’ve made has been poor or amateur quality.”

“Congratulations,” Hogg said drily. “Are we ready?”

Brin stood, using his spear as a walking staff. That’s probably all it would be used for tonight, but he was glad he had it. “I’m ready.”