Chapter 17 – Literally Can’t Even

  Olivia

  Olivia literally could not even anymore. She just could not.

  “Please tell me where to find an artificer,” Olivia begged the merchant in front of her. It was a halfling man, kneeling before a blanket arranged with bags of hard candies – one of many set up along Market Road. Being late afternoon, the road bustled with shoppers picking up goods after their daily duties. The halfling gave her a patronizing smile and offered no response, instead casually glancing down at his candies and back to her.

  “Er, right,” Olivia sighed and pointed to a small bag on the side, “how about that one then?”

  “Twenty copper,” The halfling said, holding his hand out already. Olivia suppressed the urge to be outraged.

  “That’s five coppers of candy anywhere else!” Olivia said. “I’ll do fifteen.”

  The halfling shook his head and said: “ten for the candy, ten for information.”

  Bleh, she hated how fair that was. Olivia located twenty small chips of copper from her coin purse, handing them over and taking her candy. She then gazed hopefully at him. He casually pointed further down the street and said: “try out Familiar Craftings, you’ll have to go down an alley between the stylist and the arcanery.”

  “Oh,” Olivia blinked, “I probably could have found that on my own, huh? Er – thanks, regardless.”

  The halfling chuckled and shrugged, those coppers already far out of sight. Clutching her candy and trying not to think about how much of her day’s earnings she’d just handed over, she made her way through the crowd to the alleyway he mentioned. It was an unassuming space between Fizbaun’s Arcanery and Cintral Commonclothes, again made difficult to navigate by stacks of crates and barrels. Eventually Olivia spotted a door leading into the rear section of the arcanery, what would normally be a service entrance. A piece of weathered cloth was nailed to the front of the door, with faded ink reading Familiar Craftings.

  Er, it was a store, so she should just walk in, right? She did so.

  This was certainly the storage room for the arcanery, but rather than being full of crates and shelves, it had been converted into some kind of workshop. The noise of the place hit her all at once when she stepped inside: rhythmic metal clunking, hurried footfalls, and chattering voices; suddenly unmuted – some manner of silencing spellcraft. The metallic sounds came from various constructed devices around the windowless room, Olivia couldn’t even begin to guess at their functions, only that they were certainly doing something.

  Three people were moving from machine to machine, making adjustments to the dials or repositioning levers. One was a gnomish boy wearing opaque goggles, operating one of the machines while standing on a well-worn footstool. The second was a young dwarven lad, dressed in arcanist’s robes and examining a milky-colored crystal. The final worker, not much taller than the dwarf and gnome, was the first to notice Olivia.

  She was a petite rabbit-folk, even shorter than Olivia, with two bladed rabbit ears poking through a hastily-tied mess of purple hair. She had one blue eye and one purple eye – though the whites of her eyes were actually black. Her fur pattern was mostly grey with some black on her limbs, accented with white; save for the insides of her ears, which were purple. She wore a simple worker’s outfit, a pocketed apron filled with tools, and a pair of large circular spectacles.

  “Inspection!” The rabbit-folk yelled. The dwarf and gnome suddenly glanced her way, then scrambled around, pulling levers on the machines until they stopped their movements and lowered the noise level to a quiet hum coming from the largest, free-standing machine in the corner. Once things had calmed, the woman approached Olivia.

  “Wait, you don’t look from the university,” the rabbit-folk commented.

  “I’m not?” Olivia said, openly confused. “I just-”

  “Nevermind, customer! Get the goods!” the rabbit-folk called out again. Olivia’s ears flattened against the volume. After that, the gnome and dwarf hurried off somewhere, and the rabbit-folk turned her attention to Olivia with a small wave.

  “Syna Tyakoto, artificer,” Syna introduced herself with a smile.

  “Olivia Knoh, erm, clerk,” Olivia responded, then winced. “I’m not necessarily here to buy anything. I need some help with my armor. It’s uh – cursed, but like, mega cursed. They can’t fix it with a remove curse spell.”

  “Mega cursed, huh?” Syna chuckled. “Any specifics?”

  Olivia felt her cheeks burn slightly.

  “Any time I try to take it off,” Olivia mumbled, “a fairy comes out and stops me.”

  Olivia demonstrated: she unclasped her gauntlet’s buckle, flinching at the immediate giggling that followed. The sprite flew out again and re-clasped the buckle. This time, it made mocking meowing sounds at her before returning to the chest piece. Syna politely turned her laugh into clearing her throat, before digging through the pockets of her apron and pulling out a small scope.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Let’s see what we’re working with,” Syna said, peering at Olivia through the scope. Then, Syna bounced up and down in sudden exuberance.

  “Strings-and-scales-I’ve-never-seen-this-in-person-” Syna said this all as one word, paused, calmed herself somewhat.

  “Wow, talk about lucky,” Syna continued. Olivia meowed in fuss.

  “Lucky?” Olivia grumbled. “I haven’t been able to groom myself for months!”

  “I just mean how rare what you’ve got is,” Syna shrugged. “There are three types of magic on Terria: arcane, draconic, and primal. And you have the fourth type: fae. Not of Terria. Here, take a look.”

  Syna handed Olivia the scope, who carefully put it to her eye. Through the lens, the room appeared in shades of gray; with thin bands of luminescence woven through the air. Their color – it was like a swirled rainbow all at once, creating some new color Olivia had never seen. It was strongest around the machines, each of them emitting a strong aura of this novel color.

  Her jaw dropped.

  “Never seen octarine?” Syna asked. “Those are ley lines; they’re everywhere. That’s where arcane magic comes from. Look at your armor, though.”

  Olivia peered down and saw her armor radiating a pink-purple aura that formed tendrils toward the end, and they bat the octarine strings aside wherever they would intersect. It wasn’t necessarily aggressive; it was more like her aura was playing keep-away with the ley lines.

  “What’s happening?” Olivia asked, entranced by the display.

  “Well, Terran magic all has its own setup,” Syna explained. “Mistral’s weave – the one you’re seeing – is the one I work with, and it’s all what wizards call axiomatic. Then there’s the dragon magic, where you gotta ask your dragon to let you use it and walk their path. Finally, the primal magic of Terria itself, like what druids get into. I don’t know that one too well, but I know it exists ‘cause I got struck by lightning.”

  “Wh- were you alright?” Olivia was blindsided.

  “I think so, I got some interesting stuff from it,” Syna smirked, then booped Olivia’s snoot.

  Bzzt!

  Olivia flinched from a small shock and felt all her fur poof out. The cat-folk meowed in indignation.

  “What about fae magic?” Olivia asked, lowering the scope and handing it back to Syna so she could smooth out her tail.

  “Fae magic plays by its own rules,” Syna continued. “It’s specific to the Greater Fairy’s domain, and they always override. I’m guessing you went into the Fae Wilds?”

  “Yeah,” Olivia nodded sheepishly. “My uh – one and only adventure. It was really pretty, right up until it wasn’t. Then it was terrifying. The fairy there – Ivy – said we were too precious to kill but needed to learn our lessons. We didn’t even get the lantern we were sent to retrieve. Still counted for the certificate though, somehow? So that’s the good part!”

  Olivia didn’t mention that she wanted nothing to do with field adventuring after all of that.

  “Ough, Ivy, tough break,” Syna bit her lip. “That might be fortunate for us, though. Come on over. I know a magister who had to deal with one of hers once.”

  Olivia followed Syna to a nearby table, where a glass orb rested on a dais, and watched her swirl her paw around it several times. The orb glowed for a brief moment. Then, the image of a gnomish woman appeared within. She had blue eyes, sunny hair tied into braids, and a warm smile.

  “’Ullo Jezza,” Syna said, “glad you’re in your office!”

  “Just sat down, I-kitty!” the gnome, Jezza, looked directly at Olivia, who blinked and pointed at herself.

  “Er, me?” Olivia stammered. Jezza nodded and emitted an exotic friendly meow at her, then gave a slow blink. How lovely! Olivia blinked back and smiled.

  “That’s Olivia,” Syna said, “she had a run-in with Ivy.”

  “Oh boy,” Jezza said. “Picked up a fae curse, did you?”

  “Yes!” Olivia almost shouted it. This gnome seemed really magical. She needed someone like that so badly. “Please can you help me, like tonight maybe?”

  “Tonight huh?” Jezza said, sounding almost pained. “Well, I need to be near it to get into it, but my evening is full of faculty stuff that I can’t really get out of. Can you come to the campus at lunch tomorrow?”

  Olivia deflated. Jezza looked deeply apologetic, though.

  “Okay, if you really want to try something tonight,” Jezza said, “the fae curse I solved required meeting certain conditions here on Terria. So, what exactly is your curse?”

  Olivia explained it.

  “She forces it back on, huh?” Jezza seemed thoughtful. “Well, have you tried getting all of it off at once?”

  The cat-folk scratched the back of her head. Truthfully, the whole situation spooked her so much she had barely tried anything.

  “Well, no, is that how to fix it?” Olivia asked.

  “It’s a guess!” Jezza was quick to respond. “Fae love their irony, can’t get enough of it. When we meet in person, I’ll be able to say the conditions for sure. I’ll also see about getting a pandispellus stone as a shortcut, but I’m not hopeful Aoife will part with one for such a simple hex.”

  Olivia drummed her fingers together nervously despite the immense relief of hearing there were fixes. The problem: would she still have a job by then?

  “Right, thank you,” Olivia said, “I’ll be there at lunch tomorrow, for sure!”

  “See you then!” Jezza waved. “Oh, Sunie, how’s the progress?”

  “Still leaking energy like a sieve,” Syna said, “but slower! I think if we could add a chemical component inside the quartz, it would reduce it even more. I have ideas on how to solve the refractive stability issues.”

  “Alright, I’ll swing by later this week,” Jezza said, “take care y’all!”

  The orb returned to its clear state.

  “Well, there you go,” Syna smiled. At the same time, the workers from earlier returned, bearing boxes of curio. Olivia frowned and was about to explain she couldn’t spare any more money when one of the items caught her eye. A vial of royal-looking purple ink. That meant magical! And it was decorative, too. Olivia imagined having a writing desk in her townhome, something like that would look pretty on it.

  “That!” Olivia pointed at the ink. Syna tilted her head.

  “That’s – just magister’s ink,” Syna said. “What’s it doing here with the goods? Ooh, y’know what, that candy you got?”

  Syna pointed at the bag of candy Olivia had tied to her belt. Olivia nodded, pulling it free.

  “Here, trade?” Syna offered her the beautiful ink, which Olivia happily traded the candy for.

  “Thank you so much!” Olivia chirped, clutching the vial to her chest. “You really helped me!”

  “Come back by sometime,” Syna said, distributing the candies to the other artificers.

  Olivia gave a parting word before beginning her walk home, ink on display, feeling like the fanciest cat in the city. Soon, she would be free of her leather nightmare. Thinking about how good that would feel felt good.