The shopkeeper’s tea had gone cold and he slurped it in a single go as he’d always done.

“You should have it already,” he said to the open pages of the book like the characters were supposed to hear him and change their predetermined course. “She’s the killer, don't be so naive,” he flipped the page with great agitation, almost bending it in half, then changed the position of his feet on the counter. The chair screeched under him as he kept swaying back and forward, anticipating a finale. "Oh, please, how irrational is that?"

He was too invested in the story to hear the chimes announce a customer.

***

“Are you sure this is it?” Rooren said twitching her arm in the broad direction of the small corner shop. “It doesn’t look like this is it.”

“This is Kaiden Island, Roor,” returned Lei as he tried to kick a stink bug off his shirt. “The literal butt of the world. Don’t expect it to be anything at all, and you won’t be disappointed.” He flicked his fingers and launched the bug straight at Brano’s arm, who in turn kicked it further to the street, where it died.

“We made it this far. Might as well get this over with. We can’t afford to get into any more trouble,” Brano added, pulling off his sunglasses. His left eyelid danced in an unpleasant rhythm, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

“Yeah, sure thing. I just never thought I’d get to see you so riled up over a stupid artefact. You’re more nervous now than you were in an actual haunted house. It’s just weird.”

“He’s actually got a point,” Rooren cut in. “It’s not like this is the first time we got in trouble over some bauble, but you seem a bit too jumpy is all. Case in point,” she pointed once again to the corner shop, and the long sign above the door, that in elegant cursive letters wrote Little Vrevramil’s Antique Shop. “Who the hell is this Vrevr… ah, whatever his name, anyway?”

Brano responded with a low growl and clenched his bag tightly before looking at both sides of the street. It was as deserted as it was when they arrived, safe for several old ladies watching over from their balconies and a stray cat lurking between the trash cans.

“Just stay on guard. Please.”

***

The shop had a smell to it. Not an old smell like most such places had, and neither a sweet aroma some people used to compensate for it. It was the scent of fresh resin that made them feel like they’d entered the heart of a pine forest and not a shop on an island.

  “Listen to me young man, you sold me this teapot. You said it was one of a kind, worth much more than you were asking for,” said a plump old lady clenching her coin purse under her arm and shoving a ceramic teapot over the counter. From the distance, it looked like any piece of a modern take on traditional artistry, but if one were to look closer, one would discover the limitless beauty of red lines and black flowers decorating its body. Nonetheless, she kept pushing it over the glass like a battle piece on a map.

“Yes, indeed I did,” returned the shopkeeper, pulling his unusually gray hair behind his ears. His tone was not affected by the woman’s frustration, nor did he seem too concerned with what she was saying. He was, almost annoyingly, calm.  

“I find it preposterous that you would sell me such a foul thing. I held you in a higher regard.”

“I’m sorry you found this item dis-satisfactory,” he added as he spun the teapot around and brought it closer to him. “I’ll make sure to refund you fully.”

“Refund me?” she flustered up and turned slightly red in her cheeks. The coins in her purse may as well have merged together from the pressure she put on them. “You think money will solve this? Young man, your teapot ate my cat.”

“I’m quite certain such a thing is not possible,” the shopkeeper insisted. “Look,” he removed the top and tilted the ceramic masterpiece towards her, revealing nothing but white emptiness inside.

“I know what I saw. I am not crazy,” the woman growled. “Juniper was a sweet cat, and that thing just... oh, I can’t bear this injustice. All of Kaiden Port will hear of this. I promise you that.”

“Please take this,” he handed her several paper bills from the register and nodded politely. “I’m sorry, but there is nothing I can do about Juniper now.”

“Sorcery,” she cried as she wobbled to the door, wiping her tears with a purple handkerchief, barely paying any mind to the three newcomers in the back.

“How may I help you?” the shopkeeper said and smiled warmly as he called them forward. “Looking for something in particular?”

They stood, equally stunned by what they heard and enchanted by the amount of things surrounding them. A thousand trinkets beckoned their attention with intrigue and beauty, and they found it hard to peel their eyes away.

“Is that a real skull?” Roor said with her fingers wrapped around a glass case, reinforced by a metal frame and a massive lock. “What happened to it?”

“Ah, a good choice,” the shopkeeper said. “That used to be a chalice. One of the northern kings liked to drink from his enemies’ skulls from time to time. They say if you are not careful, it may bite you. Would you like to try?”

“Oh, I-”

Brano cleared his throat, cutting the fun short. He pulled the bag off his shoulder, still holding it tightly. “We’re looking for Mr. Vrevramil,” he said, a bit too formally.

“I’m afraid he is travelling on business,” the shopkeeper returned shaking his head. “Perhaps I can be of service? Hi, I’m Ullie,” he added raising his hand like he was saluting a class of children.

Brano paused, taking a long moment to think through his next move. Too many thighs hung in the balance and not everyone could be trusted. He looked at the blades on the walls, the bones in the boxes and things he knew nothing about, trying to make a decision. He did not notice Lei inching towards the counter.

“So, did the teapot really eat the cat?” Lei asked joyfully pacing around like the porcelain held all the secrets of the universe. He did not dare touch it, though, merely admired it from above, as he bent over the counter.

“But of course it did,” Ullie laughed, as he hurried to lower the teapot into a wooden crate before anyone else got the opportunity to peek inside it. Closing the lid he added, “Except this is not a teapot and Juniper isn’t really a cat.”

“What?” Lei upstarted before Brano pulled him away, not too gently.

"Well, Mrs Loffer just wasn't aware of a... rat infestation in her house."

Brano however, did not seem interested in such parlour tricks and his restless thoughts remained on the thing he kept in his close possession.

“I was told Mr Vrevramil was an expert on artefacts,” Brano said once he knew he would not be interrupted.

“Well, it’s an antique shop, after all,” Ullie joked.

Brano’s face crumpled into a grimace and then released into a neutral, indifferent expression. “Can you tell me when he’ll be back?”

Ullie squinted his eyes at the calender he kept on the wall close to the door. “It's hard to say. I doubt it will be any time soon. But, you are in the right place, either way. I am equally versatile in… artefacts.”

“He means magical artefacts,” Roor intruded, peeking over Brano’s shoulder. “Do you know anything about those?”

“I told you to…” Brano whispered signaling the others to head for the exit. “Sorry to bother you,” he added nodding at Ullie. “I think we’re in the wrong place. Goodbye.”

He turned to leave, pulling Lei away with him, as they argued among themselves in loud whispers.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“That artefact you’ve got in your bag,” Ullie said as the wind chimes clinked. His tone was slightly different, and a lot more serious. “Where did it come from?”

Something in the air had changed in those short moments. Some invisible force flew around them, like a soft electrical current or gentle strands of twine touching their skin. 

“Oh, no. Nope, get back,” Roor said pushing them back into the store. She was the first one to spot a suspicious group of people, lingering not too far down the street. They did not do a good job of blending in with the island life and looked like a bunch of ravens in a rainforest. “I told you this was the right place.”

“No you didn’t,” Lei protested, but after seeing the group slowly moving towards the shop, he too decided it was a good idea to stay.

They peered through the windows, pretending they were a part of the decorum.

“Are you one of them?” Brano asked the shopkeeper. “How did you know?”

Ullie chuckled, before reaching into the pocket of his long knitted jacket and pulling out a key.

“Not to worry. I have finer tastes than those friends of yours,” he said pulling the draperies over the windows and flipping the sign on the door to say “CLOSED.”

Finally, he locked every entrance and offered them some cookies.

Long shadows of men dressed in black passed by the shop, some trying to see what was inside, others knocking on the glass. They were quick to swarm the place and did not seem to care about being seen. There was not much they could do in the daytime, but soon enough, they were bound to return with more unorthodox methods.

“These guys don’t give up,” Lei said hiding behind a garden gnome that looked like it ate the gardener. “They’d been after us for days. How did they even find us here?”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Brano insisted as Ullie offered him another plate of almond pastries he kept somewhere at hand.

“Do I need to?” Ullie returned. “You hold that bag as if your head was inside it, and you come looking for someone who knows a thing about magical artefacts. It is pretty easy to deduct what's going on.”

“Right,” Brano lowered his head and looked at his companions. “This is the last place we could turn to because as you can see, we have a problem.”

“Must be important, the thing you carry," Ullie said with a growing intrigue in his eyes. "Now, you answer my question. Where did you find it?”

“One year ago,” Brano began, as the twitching in his eye returned. ”A group of divers found a wreckage near one of the submerged caves in Angalin. At first, they thought they discovered a vessel from the Paranian War. They believed it could be one of the ships that sunk while carrying gold to fund the campaign, so they rushed the expedition. When they dragged it ashore they realized something was off with the ship itself. Turns out, it is actually several millennia old, all the while holding the resemblance and technology of ships from two hundred years ago. At that point, the government got involved and the whole thing became very... restricted, including all that was found on the ship. However, thanks to all the rumors, some things did manage to find their way to the black market before it was shut down.”

“A ship...” Ullie whispered as he tapped his pockets looking for something. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to follow me into the back room.”

***

At first glance, it did not look like much, just a regular room with trinkets that clanked and gleamed and waited for their turn to shine out front. Arrays of wooden masks, ritual weapons, pots and figurines all stared at them from the walls, like they entered the lair of some devout collector. The back room, however, was a treasure trove, the kind that cannot be found anywhere else, worth more than the whole archipelago.

He sat them down on a yellow couch and brought the most elaborate looking-glass he had on hand. It looked like it belonged to a king, but its secret was not in the decorum, but in the glass it was made of. it could see things, most eyes could not.

“Can I see it now?” Ullie kept his hand outstretched as Brano placed a metal sphere into it. 

A thousand shivers ran down Ullie's spine. Something he never had a name for came rushing back to him, a signature of an energy that did not belong to his world.

He did not know how to look at it. He’d seen complex things before, things that hold supreme power captured in a small item that could fit inside a pocket. They lived as a remnant from a different age and ley scattered across the world, waiting to be found. They had different names and strange purposes, but none of them had the same effect on him as the one was now holding.

Ring after ring all layered together, forming a sphere of rough metal and bone. Small, intricate words followed every curve and told a story no one could read. It was heavy, like a rock and no bigger than a ball of yarn. Its very presence made his stomach shift like the artefact was trying to pull pieces of him into itself. He could not help but wonder if he finally found what he was looking for.

“So, is it worth anything?” Lei whispered leaning in. His movement made the leather sofa squeal and it threw Ullie out of his trance.

“Is it cursed?” Rooren added. “Did we pick up something cursed again? Is that why they want it?”

“Shhh…” Brano pulled them both back like a dam. “Why do you always go there?” he whispered.

“It could be,” Ullie said shrugging his shoulders. “Most things are one way or another. It’s just that…” he took a long breath and laid the looking glass back on the table. “You said this came from a very old ship, right?”

“Yes,” said Brano.

“Near Angolin?”

“Yes.”

“What’s going on?” Roor intruded. “We picked up a curse, didn’t we? I knew it. I told you we should leave it there, but nooo...”

“It’s in those little letters, isn’t it? What does it say?” Lei followed.

“I have no idea,” Ullie returned propping himself back on his feet. He remained unnaturally serious, like the thing he was both delighted and terrified by the thing he was holding. It had been a long time since things weren't so utterly predictable. “I’ve seen this language but once…”

Something shifted behind him, making a thunderous noise as it moved through the jingling bells and the crystal lamps in the hidden corner of the room. There was a hallway there, dark and almost untouchable, leading somewhere else.

“You’re scaring people,” said Ullie, paying it no mind, unable to turn his eyes away from the sphere. 

The three guests looked at one another in utter dread and then followed the sounds until the light revealed a fluffy orange cat. A gold medallion around its neck gleamed like a mirror, with the clear inscription of its name, Juniper.

“Don’t tell me that’s the same Juniper that was eaten by the teapot?” Lei said quietly as the cat marched straight towards him and jumped into his lap without a warning. He did not dare to pet it.

“Not a cat,” Ullie repeated like it made all the sense in the world.

“Then what is it?” Lei squealed as the yellow ball of fur took him as its personal groomer. He tapped the cat’s head and it began to purr. He did not dare move a muscle afterwards.

“How much do you want for this?” Ullie cut in, grasping the mysterious sphere tightly. “I believe it will take some time to decipher it, and I don’t want to keep you.”

“Buy it?” Brano launched up from the couch like someone lit up a fire under him. “No one said it was for sale.”

“And yet you came all the way here, to the edge of the world, looking for help. You wouldn't do that if you didn’t think this was valuable? And especially if you didn’t think it was powerful magic, which would make it almost priceless.”

“Is it then? Is it magic?” Roor insisted. "What does it do?"

“Hmm, I cannot say for certain. Not everything that looks like magic is magic, and these old scribbles could be nothing more than a bad poem. For all I can tell, this could be a child's toy,” he lied.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” Lei mumbled under her breath, as Juniper cemented itself in his lap, becoming a loaf. 

“Let me make you a proposition. Leave this here with me for the night. You can return in the morning, and hopefully, I'll know its true purpose by then. As a matter of fact, I can even give you something as a guarantee.”

He shuffled through his pocket and plucked an egg-shaped stone that gave out a golden glow around the edges. If it were just a little bigger, it would have been enough to illuminate the night. 

Rooren did not hesitate to push everyone aside and get to it. “Salikar egg,” she said loudly. "Impossible."

“I thought those were a myth,” Brano said adjusting his eyes to the light. “How could you possibly have one? It’s… it’s magic. It's real magic.”

“I don’t care,” Rooren said grabbing the eye from Ullie’s hand. She held it tightly and did not let anyone come near it. “Curses be damned.”

"We should go now," Lei insisted, hoping to rid himself of the thing that wasn't a cat. "Is there a way to avoid those guys outside?" 

Ullie scratched his nose and looked at the ceiling and then the sphere. "You should use the back door. Take the stairs down to the harbour. There's a hotel nearby, stinks of fish a little but you'll be safe there. If anyone bothers you, send them this way please."

With a lot of caution, Lei picked up the cat and placed it at his side where it stretched and flipped onto his back, continuing to purr. He was finally free and in a hurry to leave before the teapot tried to befriend him as well.

"Wait?" he asked, seeing how there was no exit anywhere around. "Where's the door?"

"Oh, just knock on the wall three times," Ullie said waving his hand in the direction of a chunk of wallpaper on the other side. "It'll open."

"We'll be back in the morning," said Brano, as he guided Roor. She put one foot in front of the other, with an ear-to-ear smile illuminated by a tiny rock. 

After they left, the door disappeared, leaving no trace they were ever there to begin with, and Ullie was left to ponder if they had delivered hope to his doorstep.

***

"Could it be it," he whispered as he let a small spark of light glide over the artefact back and forward. He watched as the layers revealed themselves one underneath the other, so intricately made, that it would have taken decades to put it all together. It did not look like a mechanism based on logic. It was not a clock and it did not move to the passing of time.

He tried giving it small shocks of electricity at first. Then, he powered through all the elements and simple spells, things that one would use to unlock a door or make a rusty gear move. It wasn’t just the lack of reaction that baffled him, but the way the metal refused to heat up to fire or freeze under the ice.

Most things imbued by magic give some of that energy back to the world, be it a small shock or a radiant glow. Even the simplest of beings are able to sense this to some degree, and some are even able to feed off this energy and live in symbiosis. Nature recognizes magic as its integral part, but the thing Ullie was trying to study did not speak that language.

The symbols written on the rings were the greatest puzzle. Some part of his mind believed he’d seen them before, somewhere far away and long ago. He traced the vertical lines around the ring, trying to recall the memory he wasn’t sure was real.

Juniper lay curdled up on the sofa, purring and shaking its paw in its sleep.

“This would be so much easier if those archaic rules did not exist,” he said, gently petting Juniper’s head. “If people stopped destroying everything for one day, so much knowledge would be preserved.”

“You hate them, don’t you?” Juniper said popping one of its eyes open, revealing a faint red glow. “What a good wizard you are.”

“Hate? No. I’m too old for that. I’m just saying it would be so much easier if everyone was a little bit more honest with themselves.”

“Pity. You could cleanse this pathetic world if you weren’t such a coward.”

“This world… I’d rather just leave it.”