Jim precariously perched up onto his knees, brushing the sand from his eyes. He flinched as a knock of a club poked into his back.
“Did you hear me? You’re paying for that, or repairing it. Don’t you dare try and run off either, else I’ll have Hoggle run ya' in.”
“Sorry, what? Sand in the ear.” Jim said as he tried to plunge his left ear loose of sand with a pinkie finger.
With an audacious whistle from the women, the gallop of what sounded to be an animal the size of a bear charged through the door behind her.
Continuing to remove the sand gristle from his eye, Jim could only hear the approaching paws, he huddled into a cautious ball tucking his head to chest as the thumps of the paws came closer. Then he felt a deep, hot, sloppy breath pouring into his right ear.
With the flick of the last piece of sand from his tear duct he looked up through his fingers and saw only a pair of sharp nostrils. Nostrils big enough to fit a fist inside. With a fishy breath the creature took a pace backwards, lowering its beak to focus its huge cockerel eyes onto Jim.
“Ermmm, could I ask a question?” He said as he now cleaned fishy slobber from the side of his head.
“Aye, but it better be how much do I owe ya!” The woman said as she leant on her club, raising a hand to her hip. A growling snap of a jaw followed soon after, making Jim jump back landing on his rear. The creature must have been the size of a small Hippo on closer inspection, though its colour was a mismatch of greys, whites and blues. It was oddly fluffy too. Its huge paws were also home to what Jim could clearly see were incredibly sharp black claws.
“Actually it’s a few questions. What is that? It’s not going to eat me right? It's awesome though. Is it a Rooster or a Dog, or a hybrid? Are those wings? How do you breed those things? What does it eat? Does it lay eggs or give birth to a litter?” With wide eyes Jim tried to assess what he was seeing. His youthful days growing up on the farm gave him a deep love of animals, all kinds, any kinds!
The creature sat on its hind legs, looking at the woman in confusion. She returned the look and with tilted heads they both looked back at Jim.
“It’s, a, Magehound…?”
As Jim asked the question a ding and a message appeared in his vision.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Creature: Hoggle: Magehound
Master: Mae Browncoat
Description: Sometimes known as a “familiar”. Magehounds embody the power of transformation, allowing their bodies to be used as vessels for their masters' needs. Typically Magehounds take the form of creatures such as cats, rats and dogs. Depending upon the rarity of the creature and power of their master, they can partially change size and shape on command along with the holding enhanced mana abilities.
Magehounds are only available to the classes, and subclasses, of; Mage, Wizard.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With a shake of its head, the creature's face began to stretch. Its skin began to shed and feathers drifted to the sandy floor. It’s beak depressed, moulding into a leathery patchwork of two jaws. Its neck grew slowly, slithering towards Jim’s face. As a tickle of a snake’s forked tongue snapped gently in front of him and a huge smile crossed Jim’s face. What should have been fear was replaced by pure amazement.
“WHAT! That is amazing!”
“You’re a little odd aren't you?” She said as she pondered for a moment at Jim’s dumbstruck face. She turned to the creature and with a wave of her club gestured to the doorway.
“Go on inside Hog, it’s harmless. Now on your feet and get in here, I need your details for the contract.”
“Contract?” Jim questioned.
“Aye, for the damages. It’s obvious you’re not worth a copper, not knowing what a Magehound is, somethins’ not right with ya’ obviously. You’ll have to work this damage off.” The woman reached a hand down to Jim and with a crushing grip on his forearm flung him onto his feet.
“Oooooouch.” He rubbed his arm furiously, the woman had the grip of a JCB.
“Erm, how much do I owe?”
“You.. have coins? You? You just dropped out of the sky and it smells like you’ve’ cacked your pants. Do you have a home? A job? Anything?” With a suspicious glance the woman looked Jim up and down.
“Well…. No i don’t think so”
“You don’t think? Well, one thing you might have is a brain injury. Get in here and sit yourself down.”
The woman pushed Jim through a wooden doorway into a room filled with tables, charts, boxes, fabrics and all sorts of other materials all stacked as high as the roof. Jim counted maybe ten or fifteen shelves of large racks packed to the brim. The sound of steam valves whistling echoed throughout the room, passing through metal tubing tied to the walls. Jim instantly recognised the hum and rotation of engines and motors too as she dragged him into a side room and sat him down on a padded wooden bench.
The “Office” Jim assumed, was plastered with pictures of groups of people, many on the decks of ships. The ships were all different, some small fishing vessels, some huge with masts and sails. Nets adorned the ceiling of the room, holding in place hooks, swords and small crates.
As Jim took in his surroundings, trying to piece together what little information he could on the world he’d just been dropped into, the smell of salt and fish crashed into his nostrils. From the open window overlooking a warehouse the head of Hoggle perched through a window. The room was far too small for it to fit in here.
After giving Hoggle a quick scratch under the chin through the window Mae quickly rearranged stacks of notes and binders on her desk. She picked a box up from the floor, removed the lid and started to dance her fingers through the groupings of folder dividers.
“No, no, no, no, no, ahhh here we go” She removed a small stack of paper and flicked through it, reading the front and back page.
“Right, we don’t know the cost of the damage yet but I’ll get one of the lads to draw it up when they’re back from the city. For now, pop your name down here, here and here” She said pointing to several points on the final page.
“Sign with a manaprint as well so if you do run off, we can find ya’ She slapped a pot of ink and a quill next to Jim on the bench.
He took the paper from her outreached hand and began to read the content. When he first looked, the words were in what he could only guess was a Gaelic type of language. He shook his head, thinking the fall from the roof might have really given him an actual brain injury.
A message appeared in the Hololens view in the centre of Jim’s vision.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Translation script rendering….
Translating from Kaldorian (Verastor region) to English.
…..
…..
…..
Render complete.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just like that the images of dashes and squiggles began to rearrange into English.
The title was interesting, and Jim thought it was maybe a miss-translation.
“Contract of crippling debt?” He said tentatively.
“Aye, if you don’t complete it, I’ll cripple yah. Break ya’ legs, take your knee caps out, you know the word cripple right?”
“That seems a bit much.”
“Look we get all sorts through here, being a trading port town n’ all. We get the best and worst o’ people passing through, better to be serious with contractual threats than let people give me their word. I’ve been burnt too many times in the past. Now, either sign it or I’ll have Hoggle peck your knees out now and then you’ll have it sign it anyway.”
“Right… before I do, could we write into this that during the time I’m paying off my debt, I could also, maybe, have somewhere to sleep? And out of curiosity, what type of work would I be doing?”
The woman turned in her chair, leaning forward towards Jim, looking him harshly in the eye and asked “What’s your name?”
Taken aback for a moment from the very quick interdiction of his personal space he blurted a reply in a rush.
“Errrr, Jim.” He said as she edged closer to him in the chair.
“Ok Erjim, and what are you any good at? I imagine nothin’?”
Before he could open his mouth to correct her a finger touched his lips.
“I wasn’t askin’, I know you’re not worth shit, and av’ no skills at anythin’ worth a copper. Level 1, 2 maybe? I can see that from the wince of pain when I grabbed your arm earlier, and not knowing what Hoggle was. Pfffft, you’re lost, and you’re gonna work off your debt doing what I tell you.”
“You are wayyy scarier than Hoggle” Jim said.
“I’ll put yah up, you can sleep in one of the stow hammocks. But you need to earn or catch your own food, and cause no trouble” The woman said as she thrust a finger into Jim’s shoulder.
Jim thought for a moment as he tried to understand how on earth, well… he wasn’t on earth anymore, how in Kaldoria he ended up in this situation. Was his life now just an endless stream of being dropped into a new world, new body, new job and now new debt!
He started to pass his hands through his hair, and scratched his new bushy beard as he came to accept his fate. “Fine, but you have to let me have some free time. I need to… figure some things out about my life right now”.
“I’ll extend your time working here and add on the board as well as the damage to the total amount. I’m Mae by the way, pleasure to have you on the team Erjim.”
“It’s just Jim, no Er”
“Just sign the thing and piss off, your hammock is on the 6th floor, stairs to your right round the corner. Be back here when the ship comes in and you can get to work. And for The Makers sake change into something that doesn’t stink of shite.”
Jim attempted a quick sniff of his armpits, but the smell of salty fish was the only thing he could process. He wondered for a moment how she could smell him from a few feet away, whereas he could only smell fish, and he had his nose in his actual armpit.
“Last question…” Jim said as he started to sign his name on the back page.
“What’s a manaprint?”
Mae dropped her head in defeat, turned her chair back towards him, grabbed his hand and then his thumb.
“You know what mana is right?” She said forcefully.
All Mae could see was a dumbstruck dopey look on Jim’s face.
“By the Makers hand where did you come from? Ok, dip your thumb in the ink, then focus on your thumb and channel your mana into it.”
As Jim went to attempt the manaprint Mae quickly pulled the paper from his hands.
“Practice on these scraps first, no need to ruin the contract”. She said as she thrust a group of papers into Jim’s lap.
Jim tried to do as Mae had said, focus his mana. He had no idea what mana felt like, or if he had any. His inky thumb felt exactly the same. He imagined maybe he’d feel a tingle, or a warmth like the time’s magical things had happened to him throughout the last day. Nothing. The only thing he had achieved was a piece of paper covered in inky stains of his thumbprint. He started to join the dots up into a frowny face. This was not going to work.
As Jim’s mind wandered he remembered the reward chest he got from King Lachlan, he did have coin! He turned his wrist over and nudged his sleeve up his arm, revealing the storage watch.
“How does this thing turn on..” He tapped the watch a few times, until he remembered how when he concentrated on it before it had worked.
He focused on the face of the watch, visualising it coming to life as it did before. He felt a warmth gather around his wrist and In no time at all a visual screen of his inventory popped into view. Three tabs appeared on the display. Equipped items, Local storage and Storage Bay.
He selected Local Storage and the screen became a scrolling list of information.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stored items
Local storage:
Padded Thief's garb: Common
Thief’s pocket pants: Uncommon
Thief’s hood: Common
Sneaky boots: Common
Rope: 30 feet
Lockpicks x 20
Crowbar x 1
Deck of cards x 2
Blank scroll x 5
Quill x 1
Ink x 5
Iron coin: 100
Bronze coin: 50
Silver coin: 10
Select an item to add or remove.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim scrolled through the list, until he saw the amount of coins he had in his possession.
“Erm, will 5 Silver coins be enough for the damage? I’d rather not sign anything if I can just pay for it” Jim said curiously to Mae.
“5 Silver..? Yeah… that should probably just about cover it.” Mae held out a stretching hand.
Surprised by the acceptance Jim looked back to his watch and pressed the “Silver coin: 10” option.
With a pop a bag of clanging coins appeared out of the air and dropped onto the floor in front of him.
“Ahh, sorry, one sec.” Jim said as he retrieved the bag and started to count out 5 coins.
Mae stood up to face Jim, placing both hands on her wide hips as she looked him up and down in closer detail.
“You don’t know what mana is, but you can conjure items? What in The Makers hell happened to you?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. I really have no idea where I am, what I’m doing, what magic, I mean “mana” is or what to do with it. I do have one person who could help me out, but I think I need to die to get in touch with him. Even then I’ll probably have to fall out of the sky again at some point and that really hurt last time so I’d rather not do that again.” Jim ended the ramble with a chuckle of nervous laughter.
He looked up as he drew the string on his coin purse and pressed a finger in the air over his watch. The coin bag zipped with a twist of dust and vanished.
“There you go, 5 silver. Can I still have the bed for the night?”
“Sure…” Mae said with an inquisitive look about her.
“Thanks! 6th floor did you say? I have some reading to do.” Jim said.
Mae gave Jim the thumbs up, and watched as he cautiously stood up and exited the room.
“Hog, keep an eye on him, stay quiet though.” She whispered underneath her breath.
Jim walked out in to the corridor, looking left then right, and then back to Mae. He pointed to a cluster of spiral stairs and to her for approval. She nodded approvingly.
As Jim was half way through climbing the tight rickety stairs, Hoggle began to do a little shimmy. His whole body wiggled and rippled as his skin dropped to the floor. From the flappy pile of fur a small grey and blue lizard, the size of a gecko, crawled out and made its way to the stairway.