Empirical Gnollage: Installment 74 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment074.png]
Some time later, Wikwocket burst into the room and dove urgently under one of the cots.
Al quickly stood up to meet whatever danger was coming. "Hey, what is..."
"SSSSHHH!! He might not know I'm here!" the gnome whispered from her hiding-place.
"Who...?"
Gruntle rushed into the room from the hall and looked around, panting. He turned to look back out into the hall, then his ears twitched and he sniffed the air. He turned back to the room, and it didn't take long for him to find the cot Wikwocket was hiding under. Al heard her exhale and gasp as she stopped holding her breath. She laughed, and crawled back out.
"Just can't hide from those ears and nose, can I?" she asked cheerfully, holding up a fist. The demon of bestial violence that had been chasing her grunted, and lightly bumped her tiny fist with his own.
"You two didn't do anything that's going to get us kicked out, did you?" Al asked, half-seriously.
"No," Wikwocket answered, looking somewhat annoyed at this fact, "We had a lot of fun chasing each other around the streets and alleyways here, but every time we ran close enough to discomfort some pompous noble, my head started hurting, and Gruntle said he felt sick."
"You did swear an oath not to disturb the other guests," Bote reminded her.
"Sure, but that just makes it a challenge! We had to endure some discomfort, but we figured out that if we were far enough away it was like it wasn't our fault if someone was annoyed to see us and we were fine. Also, there were some charming people around the public fountain that thought watching us was a lot of fun and we could get as close to them as we wanted. They even tipped us for the performance!" she explained, reaching into a pocket to pull out a small handful of copper and silver coins. She held them up proudly. Al looked them over.
"Well, at the rate things are going maybe we'll actually leave here with more money than we started despite how expensive everything is. Hopefully the job mister Borge was talking about isn't too dangerous. I would assume it pays well given how rich everyone here seems to be, though."
"Oh, speaking of that, we found the Secret Spring tavern! It's in a basement at the end of an alley, but it looks clean enough on the outside. Sun should be setting in an hour or so, it's almost time for dinner!"
"Lets leave a few minutes early, I want to try something," Al suggested.
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They prepared themselves for dinner. After discussing, they decided to show up fully outfitted for adventuring aside from their packs, since that had seemed to make a favorable impact at the earlier meeting. A passing attendant was able to direct them to Stephen, from whom Al requested information.
"Say, I'd like to do a little magical experiment, is there somewhere here that I could safely do that?" Al asked.
"Is this experiment likely to do harm to a stone building?"
Al actually had to think about this for a moment, but then he shook his head. "No, I very much doubt stone walls will be in any danger."
"Do understand that you will be liable for the costs if you do harm to the structure. However, the dueling hall does have some reinforced spaces that are occasionally used for competitions of magical force. I can tell you how to get there. However since you are here, there is one other matter to settle."
Stephen reached into his vest and took out a piece of paper and a sheet a parchment. He handed to the paper to Wikwocket.
It was a bill for 8 silver coins.
"Public performance requires a permit here. However, the magistrate fully understands this was an unintentional oversight on your part and gave permission to issue the permit retroactively, upon payment of the fee."
He held up the sheet of parchment, which held a neatly-calligraphed missive indicating that Wikwocket D. Flibbendorfer and company were allowed to publicly perform from the previous day to three days hence.
Wikwocket grumbled as she took the tip money from a pocket and counted out the appropriate fee. She glared at the three copper coins left when she was done. "I'll find some way to get my money's worth out of that," she muttered. Stephen wrote PAID on the bill and signed it. He handed the permit over to Wikwocket, explained how to find the dueling hall, and wished them all a pleasant evening before leaving to attend to other customers.
Now familiar with the building, they found their way back outside without any mistakes and followed Stephen's directions to the dueling-hall. The long single-story rectangular building of dark volcanic stone had a large wooden main door, and a smaller secondary door. As Stephen had directed, Al knocked on the larger door. It swung open after a few seconds to reveal a tall dark-haired woman in a neat staff uniform. She looked the four of them over.
"Which of you are fighting today?" she asked, giving Gruntle a second look.
"None of us, I was just told there was a room here where I could do a short magical experiment. They just want to watch," Al replied. Some excited conversation off in the distance distracted him for a moment, and he looked back the way they'd come to see a group of other guests talking and pointing in their direction. "Uh, if not, we can leave," he added, not sure he was comfortable of the attention they seemed to be attracting.
"No need, you were informed correctly. Well, there will be some disappointed spectators, but you're not to blame for that. Will you be needing some victims?" the woman asked.
"Victims? No, no, I'm not planning to hurt anyone, I just want to see if the magic I've come up with works or not."
"Simulated victims," the staff-woman said with a grin. "Made of wood. Rental costs vary from on copper coin each to one gold coin each, depending on how human-like you want them to be. For ten gold coins, we can have our staff wizard animate them, but we need at least one day's notice to arrange it."
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"Well, I might actually damage them if my experiment works," Al said, hesitating as he remembered the warnings they'd gotten about being liable for damages.
"That's permitted, that's what they're for. Hell's Bathtub retains ownership of them, though, so we can repair and re-use them if possible."
"Give us three of the cheap ones!" Wikwocket announced, digging the three remaining copper coins from what they'd gotten earlier and holding them out. The staff-woman nodded and took them, and gestured for the group to follow her inside. Al turned back to look as they went in, and noticed people lining up at the smaller door. The party was led halfway down the long hall. To Al's left, he saw them pass several doors to closed rooms, while to their right a wall only about a quarter of the way up from the floor to the ceiling separated them from tiers of chairs. Al could see people filing in from the smaller door on that side of the building and making their way to the seats. Their guide stopped and indicated an open space to their left. Thick walls of the same black volcanic stone extended from the outer wall to the left and all the way to the hallway, forming an open room.
"Here is a space for your experiment, I'll go fetch your victims," the staff-woman told them, and disappeared through a door in an adjacent room. She re-emerged quickly pushing a small wheeled cart with a man-high section of tree-trunk sticking up from it. A pair of thinner trunks or branches had been nailed to the sides of the trunk at about shoulder height, making a very crude approximation of a person reaching out in front of them. She pushed this into the open space.
"How do you want them arranged?"
"Oh, just next to each other I guess, like they're all attacking I suppose."
"Yeah! Get 'em!" rang out a shout from somewhere among the seats, followed by urgent shooshing sounds. Al tried to ignore the audience.
When all three of the targets were set up, he took a deep breath.
"Okay, stand back a bit. Here's how this works...I think," he explained, though mostly for his own benefit rather than the people listening. "You've seen me do that trick where I conjure up fire from things that are meant to be on fire, and you've seen me conjure showers of sparks from nothing..."
He concentrated and made a complex gesture, launching a brief spurt of silvery sparks into the air from his hand to demonstrate.
"I just need to combine those concepts, and make the world in front of me believe that it's supposed to be on fire."
He focused on the three badly-simulated wooden attackers and intoned the arcane mnemonics that he'd worked out to go with the appropriate gestures, which ended with his hands outstretched. A bright burst of orange-yellow flames erupted through the air in front of Al out to at least five paces, engulfing the targets. Gruntle yelped and took a step further back. The flames disappeared as quickly as they'd appeared, aside from a few that began to grow naturally on the charred wooden targets. Wikwocket cheered and clapped, and to Al's mild embarrassment the people watching from the chairs behind him added polite applause of their own. He shook it off, still pleased that it had worked the first time.
"The next experiment is harder, but I think I've got it. I just need to conjure the abstract magical violence of the spell I learned from Melissa, and just make them on fire."
Wikwocket leaned forward eagerly to watch as Al started the incantation and gestures to manifest the three silvery bolts of abstract harm in the air above him, then squinted with mental effort as he added the words and gestures to transform them from abstractions into shafts of deep-red flame. With a thought, he flung each of them at one of the targets, turning the top of one and the middle of another into a flaming circle of charcoal. The third went slightly off course, skimming past the simulated head and fizzling out of existence as it missed. Al shook his head and blinked as Wikwocket cheered more loudly and the audience once again politely applauded.
"Got it on the first try!" Al said, grinning. "Seems it's harder to aim as the less-abstract concept of fire than it is as pure abstract violence, but it's potent at least. There! Now you can stop nagging me about shooting magical fire from my fingers! Come on, we'd better get going, we don't want to miss our meeting."
Their departure was delayed long enough for Al to demonstrate each work of magical fire once more when the audience seemed disappointed at how quickly everything was over, and Wikwocket insisted it would be poor showmanship to leave without an encore. Al aimed all three bolts of fire at the target he'd missed and reduced it to a pile of smouldering chunks of ash, and left the other two burning after engulfing them in another wide blast of flame. Wikwocket insisted that he bow to the audience afterwards as they clapped for a few moments before getting up from their chairs and making their way back to the exit.
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Wikwocket and Gruntle led the party up, down, and around several alleyways and to a set of stone steps that led below ground level next to one of the two-story buildings. The door in the wall at the bottom of the steps had a stylized waterfall painted on it under the words "Secret Spring". Wikwocket reached up to lift the latch and push the door open. Inside, lit by numerous candles, was a cozy tavern space. A bar along the wall behind the door hosted a cheerful, burly bartender in plain clothes. Round tables surrounded by chairs were lined along the other walls, around an artificial pond in the center of the room. Water trickled from a hole in the stone wall down to the floor and into a channel that kept the pond filled, a fine wire mesh prevented the school of small silvery fish in the pond from being washed down the shallow outlet channel and into a drain at the other end of the room. Well-dressed nobles or merchants were gathered at a few of the tables, but most were empty.
"You're an unusual bunch," the affable bartender said to the group, "Come in, close the door, we're not secret if everyone can see us from outside, you know!" He gave the gnoll a surprised look, but shrugged to himself and persisted as though nothing unusual was happening.
"Feel free to claim any empty table. What brings you to the Secret Spring?"
"We're here to meet with Cyrus Borge," Wikwocket replied. "Dinner meeting!"
Al took a step away from the gnoll to avoid being drooled on.
"Ah, yes," the bartender said, "He mentioned he expected visitors. Come on, I'll show you to his room."
The bartender led them to a door next to the bar and up a set of wooden steps back up to ground level. They emerged into what Al guessed had once been an ordinary residence, judging by the arrangement of the rooms. The bartender led them to what Al thought would have once been a bedroom, and knocked on the door.
"Enter, and be welcome," the voice of Cyrus Borge said from the other side of the door.