Ch: 7.5
A good slice of the morning was taken up with the business of living in this world, workouts and training to keep himself from spiraling into a coma, lessons at the college, and study.
Their fellow students avoided Ivy and Gary like a bad smell, interacting only to indulge in the kind of shittyness rich kids think is important in any world.
Otho the dog was more than enough to keep Ivy comfortably secure in the company of their “betters” Otho had an egalitarian sensibility when it came to mauling aggressors.
Gary relied on the age old tactic of not caring about them at all. It was only medium effective.
“I said give me that instrument, you dirt scratching waif.”
He sounded bored, as though he were checking an item off a very familiar list. Somewhere there must be a schedule that read; ‘An hour before lunchtime, be a random dickhead.’ Gary was bored too and ignored him and his cronies entirely.
Braden Dunham was a minor baron’s second son, and expected to become a member of clergy. He was not pleased by his vocation and was doing his best to get kicked out. His older brother was a justiciar Knight, and he felt that entitled him to a little extra liberty in addition to not caring if he were expelled.
Gary continued playing quietly in the quad, wondering why it was a square everywhere else… nerds.
In his entire time in town, no one but his friends had even tried to put hands on him. Fighting even in the roughest part of town, would stand out like an outhouse in a graveyard. So it was a shock to everyone when Braden took a vicious kick at Gary’s mandolin.
With a horrid crunch and the rending sound of splintering wood his mandolin split and folded into a sad crumpled mess. Gary, with a boot in his stomach, was doing only marginally better.
Braden was big, muscled like a racehorse and about as clever. His training for knighthood had paid off in a lot of physical ways, but he was really soft between the ears.
He stood crowing in front of his loose assortment of dilettantes, minor nobles and rich layabouts, who were not having nearly as much fun as Braden had promised. A couple looked ready to run, while a girl in the back threw up a little.
Gary was not in the habit of fighting, but in frozen rage he shook free of the shattered instrument and leapt on the laughing man from behind.
Gary was big, but Braden was huge. Gary was slowly learning to fight, Braden had been trained from birth to battle. It was not going well.
The huge man shook him off and punched him in the ribs while still laughing. Gary rolled with it, coming around to hammer a blow into the bigger man’s kidney, only to punch a well placed elbow instead.
Dancing away, shaking his bruised knuckles, Gary tried to trade blows. It was a buyers market and Braden was motivated to sell now.
Gary struggled to block and dodge the barrage of hands and feet flying his way. Skipping around the courtyard, he was thankful that Shai had been dancing him into the dirt most nights.
As his addled brain considered that, he started to pick up on Braden’s rhythm. Dance, that was something he could work with. Gary dialed Entrainment up to eleven and began to dance to Braden's tune, slowly pulling the man into his own dance.
Braden was skilled. But it was the skill of repetitive training, not the passion of an artist. He punched and kicked in patterns, steady as a clock. Once Gary had his hooks in, it was easy to pull the idiot into a pace and timing of Gary's design.
They were both bloodied and ragged at the end, but Braden had lost a number of teeth, had both eyes swollen closed, his nose looked like an exotic mushroom, one ear was completely torn off, leaving a ragged lump, one of his arms was broken almost beyond mending and something was leaking blood into his abdomen dangerously.
When the provosts pulled Gary off of the wreckage of Braden, only the presence of a priest of Healer prevented a crippling outcome.
With nobility involved, a justiciar was sent from the temple of Order. Braden’s own brother arrived to investigate… no one was pleased with the outcome. Witness testimony was only marginally helpful;
“...I thought Braden killed him with that kick, it was horrible, but that monster just flew at him like an animal…”
“...That peasant never stopped singing that awful song, about how his father named him Sue, disgraceful. Braden is a boor, but it was only a commoner's toy.”
“...no one like that should be allowed on campus and a common vagabond orphan…”
In the bath, a still battered and slightly bleeding Gary related the story. “So they determined he was the instigator, but my response was ‘excessive’ so he got off with just the beating I gave him and all I got was my beating and his ear.”
Tawny was already looking pale, or as pale as she could, but when Gary displayed his prize it was too much.
Shadow boxed behind glass and mounted to the wall, illuminated by a lantern of its own, was a small gray lump of meat. The brass plaque read ‘Listen To The Music Braden’.
“Braden got his wish, they kicked him out of college and he's off to the temple of War in… I don't care. He’ll find a nice place in my flower bed eventually.”
Liam tisked. “Gary, you can’t murder and garden your way through life’s troubles.”
“I liked that mandolin. He’s really lucky I left my spear at home. I still have murder on my mind.” Gary grumbled.
He paused to think, in all his troubled life, Gary had done his best to avoid violence. In all the times he had been beaten, attacked or robbed, he had never felt the plain desire to kill someone.
Even when his third foster father burned him with cigars for touching the rusty tools in his shed.
He felt it now, straight edged and sharp as broken glass, he had felt it that night with the perv Irdall too. Pure direct murder was on his mind and in his heart. He could only wonder if that cold, calculating almost passionless desire was from his contract.
Shai slid into his lap and bit his lower lip for him. “We kin make a new one taegether foolish boy, an mayhap ye kin aide me in a thing o me own.” She said, drawing him from the bath.
Gary followed the twin moons of her smooth buttocks into the changing room and downstairs, still hypnotized by those pale globes, even after her workaday trousers covered them. The girl was a dream, even in sawdust covered work clothes.
While Gary and Shai worked and danced in the shop together often, tonight he felt an urgency in her work, an extraordinary focus. Peeking at her project he asked; “Is that a fancy shovel?”
“Pauldron foolish boy, tis an armor I be makin fer Liam. Fer his birthday.” She sighed deeply. “Tis his nineteenth, In a year and a month he goes tae War, an his heart will die a slow death.”
Her face cast in sorrow stabbed Gary almost as much as the thought of Liam, so unhappy in his life’s path. “Is there anything that can be done?”
“Nae, tis a matter of gods and priests, we get no say. An orphan wha comes tae maturity at twenty must be bound in Contracts and serve as an Adventurer fer five years tae pay back the debt of care.”
Dumbstruck, Gary stumbled. “Wait what? Five what now?”
“Tis the law, as most orphanages save this one be held by War, tis tradition almost as strong as law that orphans go to War” She smiled sadly.
“Poor old Otho has held out nigh three hundred years, keeping the last orphanage of Joy. An he passes on, tis War fer all orphans no matter.”
“I, being taken in by blood kin, am free tae choose if an when I take a Contract, and mine is the negotiating of it.”
She swatted Gary on the rump firmly “Otho hae plans and schemes fer ye my foolish boy an your time comes, but poor Liam be bound fer War. Lest summat what never did happen should come to be.”
“You lost me Shai, what does that last part mean?” Gary asked, deeply confused.
“Tis well known that War do be in desperate impossible love wi Dana the Healer, an Healer do find him intolerable, yes?”
“No, that's news to me.” Gary shrugged. “I’m new in town”
She sighed as only a very pretty girl can. “Tis also said that War, he never releases a Contract, but tis known that he would, an Healer did ask.”
Hope sprang in Gary’s eyes, quickly dashed. “Many ‘oer the centuries be like Liam, Contracted tae War by well meaning kin, an doomed tae unhappiness.” She sighed again
“An many did plead wi Healer, never does she hear the prayers of those bound to War.”
Thinking on his first meeting with Liam, Gary asked, “What if someone else asked, like a priest, Tawny? Or Priestess Naomi?”
“Nae, tis many ways and times been tried an many more will try.”
“I heard Liam asking Otho if Joy had answered a request a while back, could Joy help?”
“Joy be most Beloved of all gods and peoples, but fickle, wild an strange. Did Joy ask, mayhap. Otho be high Priest of Joy, beloved of her. An Otho did ask, Mayhap.”
She went back to her work. “Mayhap be thin armor in a land of monsters, better be good steel forged in love, tae guard me brother’s hide.”
Gary didn’t even have the excuse of pumping a bellows for her; his shop was powered by magic. So he stood, just close enough to touch her without getting in her way and waited.
Soon she dropped the armor piece into a bed of dry sand to cool, complaining; “I cannae work an cry, tears do cool me work.” He held her close and schemed in silence.
After a time they got back to work, Gary finishing as much as he could on his new mandolin in short order. “Need anything from me Shai? Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop they say.”
She pitched a clod of borax at him, calling; “Dinnae invoke devils over me workpiece foolish boy, lest I burn ye arse wi a hot tong.”
Gary wiped the chalky residue out of his hair and complained. “That’s gonna be all itchy, now I have to shower! And you like my ass!”
“Aye, ah do like yer arse, but now I’ve need fer yer hands, feckless and clumsy though they be.” She handed him a rough wooden crate about two feet long and eight inches on a side.
Inside was an oilskin wrapped spear head of bronze, chased delicately in silver. Broad and leaf shaped, it ended at three steel hooks facing the point and three facing back. It was fearsome looking and the empty socket for a haft was a clear indication of his part in the job.
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“Meself an Tallum been working that point fer two weeks now, usin yer magic tae give the craft some extra punch. It did turn out fine indeed. Mine was the casting and the forging, twas Tallum designed the wicked thing and he what engraved the blade.”
It was exquisite, two feet of keen edged bronze, hammered at the edges to compact the metal hard as steel. It was the engravings that made a fine gift to a young warrior, into a treasure fit for any hand.
Graceful vines in silver twined naturally up from the collar of the spear, branching and bearing various fruits picked out in gold, brass, copper, bronze and even a tiny bunch of grapes done in a purple metal that almost looked juicy.
Gary touched it and was startled.
Null Item;Incomplete, unique spear. unranked/null/null/null
Magical, No Elemental Affinity. A qualified sorcerer will be required to complete this non sentient item/null/null.
This was going to be a challenge. “I‘ve never really paid attention to what he likes in a spear, I'm usually busy trying to keep him from pounding my head in…”
Shai smiled, reached into her bosom and tossed him a tidy green notebook filled with tidy ladylike letters. The script was delicate, feminine and beautiful.
The book smelled like Shai… warm bergamot and sandalwood with wildflowers and forge smoke, delicious.
“Are ye gonna read it er smell it ye creepy weirdo?” She clapped her hands loudly.
“Aye, were betwix me tits, ye animal. An ye bathe that flux out o yer hair mayhap I’ll let ye do that ‘motor boat’ ye were on about.” Watching her scold him, while laughing was very entertaining.
“Fer now, that be the measurements o Liam’s favorite spear an notes on its wear. Tis me own work an ye kin be sure its right.”
“You can write? And read?” Another wad of borax hit him, puffing into salty dust in his ear.
“Did ye think honest smiths nae kin read? An I should be a barefoot, skirted fool fer yer chasin…?” she miled gently, just for him.
“Well I do be liking that part, but I damn well read, foolish boy!”
“Your penmanship, it's so cute! You should write wedding invitations!” He gushed, Shai was a beautiful forest of wonders and every rock he turned over had charming surprises, rather than wriggling worms.
“Ahh, ye make a point, ah mae well be drawin up the invitations tae the wedding feast. An ye survive tae that day most foolish of boys.”
As Gary slowly recounted that last interchange in his mind he realized that in many ways he might have just…
“Sooo? Ironwood for the shaft? I should have enough. Unless you have a better idea?”
She nodded. “Aye tis Ironwood is best to be had here, not much finer in any place. Blackthorn be splendid, though a blackthorn would be rare indeed in that size.”
“I’ll keep an eye out, when is his birthday?” He got another of those ‘why do I have to explain this?’ looks and she obliged.
“By tradition all Orphans be given their birth day and such rituals on the feast o War. One month hence.”
Gary did some loose thinking. “So its Healer at the end of summer, Order this month and War next?”
“Aye, tis War, following after Healer, and Order standin between fer all the world’s sake, tis Crafts chasing war, for he be hungry fer goods an arms. Joy do chase Crafts fer his works be the secrets of her arts, an Secrets do lurk at midwinter’s door on the darkest day, holding man’s last light.” Gary was rapt, as she almost chanted her singsong catechism.
“An on next full moon night, do the God O Beasts walk the land, lost in hunger and rage fer the secrets he hae forgotten. Goddess water do flow in with spring, an her lover Wind comes soon after. Fire is best pleased to be after Wind, for he lords that oer Earth who is patiently waitin his turn. Ere the blazing sun at midsummer brings Healer back into the Light.”
Gary had used her singsong chant and the tapping of his toes, making a soft and almost physical aura of music in the room. His gouges and chisels sang in harmony with the deep one note thrum of the lathe. He hummed a fierce and mindless tune in strident A major, a call to battle, but not to War.
As he riveted the glorious head onto the almost complete weapon, Gary changed the tune, shifting into Bedlam Boys, manic and fae.
This spirit’s white as lightning
Would On me Travels guide me
The moon would shake and the stars would quake
When-ever they espied me!
Lost in the sounds and work he never even noticed as Tallum handed him a bronze butt cap, wrought on the shape of an uprooted tree, twining brazen roots clinging to a ball of black iron.
The shaft was a rich amber, almost light honey swirled with dark and frozen. It nearly glowed with a red gold liquid shimmer under the shop lights. The butt cap and head’s bronze material joined harmoniously into the swirling grain.
“We had better work on that armor now…” Tallum solemnly said, stepping up to his workbench. Shai and Gary were still lost in wonder.
Huntsman’s Bounty; unenchanted, unique spear. unranked/null/null/null
Magical, Etheric. A qualified sorcerer will be required to complete this non sentient item/null/null.
Gary was stunned. This huge lore dump had landed on him and he didn’t even have a pencil… he conjured a pen and pad and began scribbling furiously. “Could you repeat that, I wanna get it all down!”
“Dinnae they teach aught at yer college o fancies?” Shai asked.
“Band name! College of Fancies. It’s done, Band Name.” Gary called in triumph. “We just named the band.”
“Oooh shuren I’ve picked a mad one… but he has a cute arse at least” She sighed, shaking her head sadly.
#
On a pleasant early autumn third day, Otho the man walked into the workshop where the three craftspeople were working while singing a harmonious cadence together.
Doo Waa Diddy…
He Leaned against the wall tapping his toes and eating a sandwich clearly labeled DO NOT EAT in seven languages.
When they paused he said, “Your sandwich lacks savor Gary.”
“It packs a surprising punch later Otho. Did you not read the label?”
Smugly he replied, “I did not!” as he handwaved any minor issues of sandwich ownership away. “I come not to read the scribblings of some cook, but to tell you deep secrets gained at great cost through intensive study.”
“That my pool is etheric magic, my gifts are overpowered because of a tear in the etheric veil bound to my soul through my gifts?” The old man nodded, smiling blandly and looking mildly put out.
“...and my item Contract lacks the safety rails of a divine Contract, making me a dangerous unknown quantity?” He nodded again, sourly.
“...and you can't put me into a divine contract because I am an orphan?” He nodded, looking downright cross.
“...and you felt guilty because my pool rejuvenated you and you feared you were stealing my life force away by soaking in it, perhaps shortening my life?”
Otho pulled out a pad and began jotting down extensive shorthand notes. “Naturally my boy,” He smiled wanly.
“You seem to have done some snooping.”
“You’re just going to pretend you thought about whether you were giving me the Wilford Brimley, when clearly I just brought the possibility to your attention?” Gary asked, stiffly and a little miffed.
Otho looked uncomfortable and shifty. “A number of theories were proposed…”
“Unbelievable.” He sighed. “Shai, Tallum, someone ate the sandwich.”
They sprang into action, heading upstairs with a whispered exchange of “This is not a drill.”
In need of a distraction, he waved at the old man. “Otho, please I want to show you something.”
Seeing the sundered violin he also sighed. “Can you repair it?”
“I can, but tell her I need to order the lumber from a town called Mistglen village. Two months minimum. She can keep mine until hers is done.”
“Very generous, Joy is indebted to you” Otho said, with a tone that smacked of ritual, leaving a faint vibration in the air. The old man seemed to not notice.
Gary smiled, “let's take a walk in the market and then you can bathe, I bet you miss it, draining my vital essence away like a vampire?”
Gary's pleasant and conversational tone belied his words, as he led them out the front door and into the half circle of waiting Bathers who solemnly chanted:
“Someone ate the sandwich.”
Just as Otho developed a desperate need for a bath, to the polite applause of the Yacht Club members.
While his thunderous discharges echoed through the now eerily silent ward, Otho stumbled back inside for the bath.
Gary looked at his friends and asked “Fer the dance?”
And they were.
#
Early autumn slipped on its winter coat, and Gary’s pool grew an awning to keep mundane rain off. Creating by accident a warm, misty haze that was a delight when he and Shai were alone. Likewise, Gary's gifts and skills kept their slow steady growth.
It was Shai who asked first if anyone else had seen skills growing in interesting ways. She had discovered that even when Gary was nowhere near, she could evoke a slightly similar effect on herself by dancing and either whistling or singing. She still preferred working near her ‘foolish boy’.
Tallum, who was three Contracts in, saw it too. Not in his overt gifts, but in a subtle layer of insight, or maybe Gary was just dumb.
“So you can create any simple object in the precise size and shape you wish, pretty much at will.”
“Yes.”
“In any simple material you wish.”
“Yes”
“So you could have made those parts for your machines in wax, cast them in plaster and made them yourself, or just created molds for them directly.” The big man asked gently, smiling at his mad friend.
“Yes… wait. Yes!” He grabbed the giant smith by the wrist and began futilely tugging to pull him to the edge of the pool.
“It's been nice having you, we enjoyed our time together, but all things must end, we will be taking Ivy back of course…”
“You didn’t have to hit me, big meanie!” He complained.
“Ye dinnae need be so thick skulled, foolish boy!” She made him kiss her bruised knuckle in contrition.
“Ye hae a head of stone.”
He nodded. “It's where I keep all my favorite memories of my sexy pirate girl.”
Tallum groaned, “You two make me sic-… Ivy!” His voice shot up two octaves and made Otho the dog turn his head to the side as they do, by ancient dog tradition.
“Tallumz!” The small girl squealed, tackle hugging him back into the almost water…
“Let's go find trouble elsewhere.” Gary suggested, not wanting answers to some of the size and compatibility problems he would rather not contemplate. In the interest of propriety and cultural taboos, he spent a moment conjuring.
The Bathers Code appeared, enshrined in a hefty and portentous tome on a pedestal just outside the bath. It bore the rules in script and pictograms:
1: Bath time secrets are to be kept to the Bathers
2: “Shenanigans” in private bath time only.
3: Remember the sandwich.
Shai took his arm once they were dressed and they went out into the warm golden sunshine.
Tawny and Liam joined in with a quiet “Remember the sandwich” muttered all around in a familiar rite, repeated when Aisha joined ranks.
Their small party grew as they moved towards the market. Collecting a slender blond harpist from Joy who had hopes of courting Tawny. She seemed on the fence about him, so the Bathers were slowly assaying the boy. Deciding whether he was worthy of their golden girl.
On paper he had the goods, handsome in a graceful delicate way. A dancer, not a wild dervish of joy like Shai was, but a musician and artistic soul. Where Tawny was fiery, Daniel was a tranquil pool frozen in winter. His playing, clean and precise, tightly controlled. When he was not improvising in soaring, windswept flights of musical fancy.
The consensus was he nicely contrasted Tawny’s warmth and passion, but only when Tawny was out of earshot.
He was puzzled by the sandwich chant but wrote it off as a local cult. Daniel prided himself on being a cultured man, widely traveled.
When he met Gary, he had a few questions, on the next encounter he had more. Now it was a regular occurrence, Daniel would pump Gary for specifics as to his birthplace, and Gary would evade.
In a new twist, Gary had been learning the local favorites like ‘Turkey in the Henhouse’, ‘Darbie’s Reel’ and ‘Gone to Buy Sugar’, all simple country tunes. He would switch to his “out of town” music when Daniel came by. Now he was clearly focusing on songs with nonsense names in them.
He constantly dragged out songs of utter madness… ‘I left My Heart In San Francisco’, ‘New York, New York’, and even a fast paced number called ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’, which seemed to be entirely made up of unlikely place names.
They were in a park near the orchard enjoying a lazy afternoon Ivy and Tallum were reclining against an oak that Gary had his eye on as a woodcutter, it looked choice. Liam and Aisha were in the pool, their privacy guaranteed by the Bathers Code.
Shai was danced out for the moment, laying across his lap dreamily, as he softly played his Shamisen. He didn’t quite have the knack yet and Daniel was trying to show him.
Shai mumbled up “Play me a sad song foolish boy.”
He traded out for his latest creation, a twelve string guitar, whose double courses of finest silver strands were heartbreaking. He decided it was time to bring Simon and Garfunkel into this world.
He started ‘The Boxer’, a song so sweet, sad and with such a sense of place it could only please Shai, while infuriating Daniel, just the right blend for the moment.
The twelve string whispered when he needed it to, and thundered on the climax attracting the eyes of the city guard walking a few blocks away.
Daniel was furious, while Tawny enjoyed the show from across a blanket from the slim boy.
“I have never heard the like! Impossible!” He fumed. “Priest Otho says that you are no more than you appear, but I have my doubts!”
Shai curled close in the cooling evening and whispered:
“What's that song ye always whistle but never sing me, foolish boy. Let's hear that one.” She thought for a minute, “Mad World’ ye did say it was.”
He kissed her softly and whispered “As you wish, Dread Pirate Shai.”
Daniel did not take it well. By the time Gary finished her request, he followed right up with the ‘Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald’.
Daniel decided he'd had enough. It was all the places mentioned casually, as though they were real. His confusion was golden, just the way Tawny liked it.
“Gary is a frustrating person Daniel, come I will walk with you to the temple quarter.” She said with a smile.
Shai pulled their abandoned blanket over and draped it over herself eyeing Gary’s mandolin. “That song about the ship, she made me cry.”
Gary leaned over and kissed her again. “Me too.” He said, as he began strumming ‘The Southern Cross’. Crosby Stills and Nash always satisfied her, Shai loved Yacht rock.
With shorter daylight hours of the coming winter, Shai took this as an excuse to stay with Gary more often, sleeping in his arms until almost first bell. Everyone knew, but no one cared, as darkness hid her return home in the morning.
Avoiding the traditional burden of murdering the boy was that simple. “Don't get caught.” Was the commandment.
Shai watched him as he shaved in the bathing room that morning, his summoned razor scraping with precise strokes. “How dae ye do that wi no mirror ye great fool, surely ye will cut yer throat!”
He shrugged. “Its my face, if there's anything new there, I have other problems besides shaving.”
She shook her head. “An why dae ye nae summon a mirror boy? Come now, I would fix me hair.” She swatted him on the rump playfully.
With a moment's concentration a mirror appeared on the wall, a flat gray sheet of frosted glass completely lacking in reflective properties.
“Uhh, sorry.” He tried again, this time a sheet of steel formed on the wall, burnished bright and gleaming, but only shiny, not a mirror at all.
She sighed and coaxed him into helping her with a summoned comb. “Dinnae be making cowlicks foolish boy, and we are headed to a barber this day fer that mop on yer head.” She sighed. “Men, helpless wi out guidance.”
The walk back to the orphanage in the morning was bittersweet after taking her home. Fortunately, Liam was always ready to run and beat the moodiness out of him.
Ivy had been placed directly in charge of his magical education, as a way to inconvenience the two commoners. They were both generally pariahs, as the only orphans and thus the only commoners in the college.
Gary’s education was progressing, but his magical skills were lackluster at best.
His spiritual mana pool was rather embarrassingly below average in size, while his recovery rate was tremendous, making up for some of his deficits. Overall he had little aptitude for the art of the true mage. Like serious smithing, he did not have the temperament.
Gary tried using his gifts for the creation of seals and sigils for ritual magic, but magery was not an Artisan skill. Until He could fill out his Contracts, Gary was unlikely to progress far as a mage.
Enchanting was a different matter entirely, his interface gift provided hints and clues that greatly increased his efficiency and quality.
Soon Gary was putting simple light, warmth and cooling spiritual enchantments on objects just because he could.
Enchanting Shai’s mug to keep her tea warm was easy boyfriend points, and since Gary was good friends with the beekeepers, he always had the honey to satisfy her sweet tooth. For some reason bees loved him. Go figure.
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