Exiting the temple I looked up to the night sky above me, it was far more beautiful than I ever remembered it was. I looked at the little stars in the distance. I recalled that some schoolers theorized that those stars were just like the sun and lighted up other worlds. At first I dismissed that theory, but for that one moment I considered something that might be true, the old gods of the second era did go somewhere after all and many didn’t return.
‘Who knows. I probably won’t ever know the truth, but maybe my children will one day.’ I smiled at the thought of children. I wouldn’t just marry anyone, no it would need to be somebody I know cares a lot about me like Calavia. Though she doesn’t remember me I do know where she works so I could join the clinic as an apprentice and learn a lot about restoration magic as I do.
But just for that night I wanted to enjoy the feeling of being from the influence of whatever that eye was. I returned to the Free Parrot Bar and found myself at a table with a few others that seemed to be having a good time. The one with the biggest smile was a dwarf with a big mug of alcohol in hand with what I assumed were his two human colleagues.
“Do you mind if I join you lot? you all seem rather happy with something and I would like to celebrate a happy occasion of my own.” The dwarf smiled and raised his cup at my question.
“Of course lad, take a seat and a mug. We are celebrating something rather important ourselves aren't we lads!” The two humans next to the dwarf smiled as well and raised their own cups before bumping them all against each other and taking a big drink.
Soon a waitress came by and I ordered a cup of alcohol, the very same that they were drinking, which was beer. “Ah, a good choice. This place has good beer for the common folk, the best stuff in all in the empire. Haven’t been able to get anything from them in a while.” The dwarf said as he took a drink from his cup emptying it.
“A real shame, I think it was the crops they used that gave it the unique taste. But I honestly doubt that anyone here in the kingdom would be able to replicate it, the economy has been spiraling downwards for a while now with the tensions between the kingdom and the empire reaching bigger heights than we all thought possible.” The human sitting to the right of the dwarf said while he looked into his half empty mug.
The dwarf suddenly gave the young human a smack in the arm and an annoyed look. “Don’t go talking about things like that Lyco. What would people think about you saying such things?” The dwarf said with some sort of authority over the young human, like a parental figure or a boss. ‘Perhaps he is a foreman of sorts to these two.’
“But boss, you know it's true. It's been like that for around five years now, since the first war with the empire and the loss of several border towns and cities. They didn't just handle the trade from the empire, they also handled a lot of the stuff from down south too with all their patrolled trade routes.” The dwarf looked rather annoyed by this explanation.
The other human however quickly tried to ease the situation with a few words of his own. “Well you are always telling us to think outside of the box. You can’t really blame us when we start doing exactly that now can you?” The dwarf looked at the second human with a disapproving look before he eventually relented and tried taking a drink from his cup only to find it empty. Instead he placed his cup on the edge of the table and tried waving down the waitress to get it filled again. When that wasn’t working he stood up and with some difficulty walked over to the bar where the bartender was pouring drinks to everyone.
“Sorry about him, he has been like that since the war five years ago now. He lost a lot during that time, we all did really, but he lost all his brothers and sisters.” The second human I was sitting with said the moment the dwarf was out of earshot. “I am Hegio by the way.” Hegio said as he reached out with his hand for a firm shake.
“I am Arthur, sorry if I ruined your celebration.” I said taking Hegio’s hand and shaking it.
“Oh don’t worry about that. Lyco just has a difficult time keeping the war out of any topic we speak about. He should have been one of those people that work for the crown that do all the calculations about how well the economy is doing. At times you would think he was gifted with divination with how accurate he is about certain events.”
“You don’t need divination to see what is happening around us. I don’t think the kingdom will be able to maintain its status as the only rival to the empire for long. At most it will last for another twenty or thirty years depending on what the king does, even then it will likely just be delaying the inevitable with all the corruption right here in the city.” Lyco leaned over the table as was speaking, like he was letting us in on classified information.
Suddenly a cup slammed back onto the table with a dwarf holding onto it. “Here we are, I finally got another cup of beer. That dam waitress is blind as… as something that is blind. I was being rather obvious that I wanted another cup of beer.” The dwarf said with increasing difficulty, he likely had more than just one cup of beer while he was gone.
“Anyways, to celebrate our independence!” The dwarf shouted with his cup raised high, his two human friends followed his example before I did the same. We all followed that up with a big drink and some less disheartening conversation. We talked about all sorts of things, everything from our careers to our plans in life.
“So you three are all blacksmiths?” I asked, a little surprised by the idea of three blacksmiths all being very good friends with each other, though that might have been the alcohol thinking.
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“Oh yes, for a while we were all working for another fool who was barely keeping the business afloat. He wasn’t even a blacksmith himself, he just hired us a few others to do all the work for him. No more of that, now we have a proper job set up for us with me as the master blacksmith.” The dwarf who’s name I learned was Thovus said with lots of pride in his voice, he even straightened himself up as he spoke about it.
“So where abouts is this position? It sounds very lucky for the three of you to find something like that.”
“Oh we certainly are. But as it turns out the kingdom is funding several colonization efforts into old dwarven settlements that have been abandoned for a while, we got some positions in them as blacksmiths. The crown even got a few sections of the military to help with clearing any monsters or goblins that might be in the area after they have mercenaries sweep the area.” Lyco said cutting into the conversation after remaining quiet for a while now, he looked almost like a child happy to share some weird information he uncovered on his own.
“Oh yes, I know about that. I actually know a few people who have taken part in those expeditions. There is this one old dwarven city called Dom Badaher where they ended up fighting a demon that made its home in a cavern connected to the last floor in the city. Apparently it was a powerful geomancer as well as a fighter.” I said while avoiding any significant details, while it wouldn’t be bad for these three to know of my involvement today, I just wanted to have a nice night before I started working hard again.
********
I awoke hours later in my room in the tavern atop the simple bed. I sat up and looked around wondering if I missed anything from the night before, but I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I stood up and put on my overcoat which I found on the floor next to the bed. I recalled I was rather tired after the long conversation with Thovus and his employees and instead of placing it somewhere proper such as the small closet I chose to instead just leave it on the floor where I was certain I would find it.
I walked over to and looked out of the window seeing the sun rising from the east. I didn’t have a clock on hand but I assumed that it was close to eight o’clock in the morning.
‘Well I should get the potion making out of the way as soon as possible so I can focus on selling the remaining jewelry and acquiring the remaining gold coins I need to buy the mana stone. I am just five silver coins shy of two gold so I should definitely get busy as soon as possible. Avoiding the same locations should definitely be a priority, that way I should be able to avoid the eye of Darius, his cult, and the thieves he has hired.’
I picked up my bag and looked through it to be certain that I still had everything inside. When I was certain that was the case I took a seat at the small table and brought out my alchemy apparatuses and started my work for the day. Within half an hour I had my three basic healing potions and I had used up around an eighth of the ingredients I had stored and the last of the bottles. Adding those potions to the ones I had been brewing throughout the week I had a grand total of twenty one healing potions, each would go for around four copper coins for an estimated eighty four copper coins or four silver and four copper.
‘I need to get certified by the guild as an alchemist soon, otherwise these potions will start piling up. I don’t have much use for them as I tend to avoid getting hurt.’ I made a mental note to become certified as soon as possible so I could actually sell my potions and get a good price for them.
But for the time being I didn’t have the time for that, I needed to sell the jewelry and acquire the remaining three and so gold coins for the mana stone.
********
Several hours passed as I searched for any and every store and merchant that was willing to take the rings and necklaces off of my hands. Sometimes I was given a lowball offer by some sketchy looking merchants who I ignored and moved onto those who were actually offering something close to the actual value. I likely didn’t ever get anything that was the true value of the jewlery, but by the end of the morning and into the afternoon I had four gold coins and seven silver from all the sales I made.
I made sure to count up all the money twice just to be certain I didn’t make a mistake but I was quickly shown to be correct, that added to what I already had left me with six gold and two silver coins. More than enough for the mana stone and enough to survive for a while.
Stashing the money within a few pouches which I placed within my bag I made my way to the mages guild to buy myself a petite mana stone for my ritual experiments.
********
I stepped into the magic item hall with a smile on my face and walked right up to the clerk working the counter and asked to purchase a mana stone. He quickly left and returned with a small catalogue for me to look through that listed all of the mana stones that the guild branch was selling and their costs. I only needed to flip open to the very first one when I told the clerk what I wanted to buy while I started counting up the money mostly in silver.
The clerk called someone with a simplified communication orb and an elf wearing simple mage attire brought out the mana stone in a simple wooden case. Before handing it over to me the clerk started counting up the money on his own. When he was done he nodded to the elf and returned the money to the pouch and slipped it behind the counter.
The elf handed me the case and I opened it and picked up the mana stone. I could feel the mana within the stone, it was pure and powerful, a little more powerful than the one I bought from Osvald even though I paid him far more. It wasn’t a significant difference in power, perhaps a unit or two of more mana but it was still noticeable enough to be slightly annoyed. I already decided that I wouldn’t return to that merchant for anything unless I needed something very specific that couldn’t be acquired normally, but I still wanted to give him a piece of my mind.
Instead I just left the guild and returned to the old abandoned warehouse and started conducting my experiments with ritual tier one spells.
The major difference between simple rituals and more complex and powerful ones was the fact that there wasn’t enough mana in the general area to fuel them without having a mage present that was willing to use their own mana, but the intention of a ritual was to do so with as little mana as possible. That was why mana stones were needed, they were an abundant source of mana that were not in any way connected to a mage's reserves.
The one problem I encountered when creating the ritual was that the spell's effects were predetermined based on how I integrated them into the ritual, as such I had no way of changing anything about the spell without restarting the ritual itself.