Contrary to expectations, Page and Kalender had to wait in the living room for a while.
Georgie had told them not to touch anything yet, as they had to inform Harmony’s Lord of the discovery. They had, of course, Appraised the letter according to its instructions. If everything went well, the Lord would legally treat the letter as the Hero’s will and grant to them any possessions Kalender and Page would later find.
“Don’t worry! Lord Shal-yen’s easy to talk to!” Amanda said. He was, after all, Stylus House’s patron—and a huge fan of Hero Jonas.
“His name doesn’t sound local,” Kalender remarked.
“Oh, he’s half-elf,” Amanda replied.
“Are there half-elves outside of Harmony?”
Amanda paused for a moment. “Not that I know of. At best, only the immediate villages around here see half-elves. I don’t think they’d feel welcome anywhere else.”
“Huh? Is there some kind of generational bad blood or something?”
“Not at all! In fact, if it’s bad blood you’re talking about, Harmony has the most reason to have it, but, well, here we are. I think it’s really just that no other places see half-elves at all, so everyone’s going to end up staring and start asking questions. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
“Ah, I see.”
At that moment, Georgie walked through the front door. He stepped aside and bowed lightly, as a lithe man in a green parade dress, with gold trimmings and tassels, followed closely behind him with a wide smile. He had long, rich, dark brown hair, tied behind his head, revealing his wingtip ears.
“A good day for discovery!” he announced. “Also, I keep telling you not to do that, George.”
“It’s Georgie, m’Lord.”
Shal-yen shrugged. He spotted Kalender and Page sitting on the couch. Page stood up and lightly bowed. Kalender scrambled to his feet to do the same.
“Yes, yes, let’s dispense with formalities.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Where is it? Show me!”
Georgie led him to the kitchen counter, where the letter was laid over a clean layer of cloth. Shal-yen produced a monocle from an inner pocket, and examined the letter closely. He began muttering.
“Medium-length fibers, unbleached—sourced from Artemian plantations? Wait, no degradation…of course, preservation magic. The ink blots through it quite readily, but does not fray—some sort of clay filler?” He took out something like a jeweler’s eyepiece. A bright light shines from it. "Blue impurities! Ah, that’s why the paper’s color is strange. I see, they omitted careful processing of the filler. This places production between 200 and 180 years ago.
“The ink appears black, but has a gold sheen. Harmony Liquid Gold. Produced 329–401 MA … 177–105 years ago. Indeterminate degradation once again.” He shed a tear. “If only the Monster Wall wasn’t there, we’d still be making it…”
Finally, the last step—Appraise.
***
Item name: Jonas’s Parting Gift
Owner: Jonas
Created: 351 MA, 32 Death
Appraisers (Most recent last): Jonas, Sillena, Kal-yen, Case, Georgie, Kalender, Page Turner, (NEW) Shal-yen.
***
“Goddesses above, it’s…” Shal-yen paused. “No, I must confirm this!”
He sped out of the door—gone, just like that. No one expected it, and they couldn’t have. Everyone looked at each other.
“So, do we just…wait?” Page asked.
“Looks like it,” Kalender replied.
***
Meanwhile, Lord Shal-yen raced through the streets and into the castle, not even bothering to wait for the drawbridge to lower. He scaled up the towering walls with Wall Walk, surprising the gate guards, and dropped back down four entire stories, ending in a combat roll, and still, he did not relent, sprinting through the front door, past his confused attendants, past the guards who, in their confusion, stabbed at the Lord, thinking it some sort of monster attack. Shal-yen simply slid under the thrusted halberds and got back to his feet, leaving behind the guards who were apologizing on the ground so profusely, fully convinced that their heads would be chopped off by the end of the day for attacking their own Lord, even if just by accident.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Shal-yen did not care, for this was more important.
He arrived in front of a circular door. On its frame were carvings of vines and leaves, so life-like that anyone who stood before them would fear being entangled by them.
He pushed the door. It did not open. He slapped himself, because it was a door that rolled away to disappear into the side. He grabbed a few handles and rolled the whole thing away, finally allowing him to burst in.
There, eating breakfast on her bed was a young maiden of white, silken hair, her ears like daggers. She looked up to him, the corners of her eyes squeezing with gladness.
“Oh? Sha-sha? It’s not often you visit me.”
“Mother!” Shal-yen rushed to her side. “Is it true?!”
“Hm? What is?”
“Did father leave a letter in Stylus House? Some visitors found a purported letter of his, and it was signed with his name! It had your appraisal signature recorded on it, too!”
“A letter in Stylus House? …” She paused. “Oh! There was that thing, wasn’t there? Someone actually found it, huh?”
Shal-yen slumped to his knees. Another thing of his father’s had been found, but in it was also his father’s will to give some of his possessions away. He couldn’t refuse it, but it was still such a shame. He would rather hold on to his father’s things a moment longer.
“Don’t worry too much, Sha-sha,” Kal-yen said. “I’m sure you can recover some of his more personal affects. If I remember correctly, he only chose those futures with reasonable gentlemen. I’m sure it is not beyond the visitors to allow you to claim the more sentimental things after some explanation, no?”
“Right. Of course.” Shal-yen stood up. “Why do humans have such short lives, mother?”
“I haven’t lived long enough to have a certain answer for that.” Kal-yen smiled. “I do know that if they lived any longer, they would be far too powerful for this world.”
Shal-yen laughed. “See you soon, mother.”
“You too, Sha-sha. Visit more often, okay?”
***
Shal-yen eventually stepped through the door of Stylus House once more. Page and Kalender were making merry conversation with Amanda and Georgie. Georgie was the first to notice him. He stood with a straighter back, prompting everyone to look to Shal-yen and unconsciously do the same.
“It is genuine,” he said. He approached the counter. Amanda and Georgie tried to bow, but he gestured dismissively. The guy really looked like he ran himself ragged. “I have some things to discuss about it, however.”
Opening with a “Jonas is actually my father,” he eventually broached the subject of claiming some of the more personal affects of the Hero. Page and Kalender were pretty understanding about it, much to his relief.
“May I join you?” Shal-yen asked. “More eyes to help search, after all.”
"“O-of course,”" everyone replied. Shal-yen sighed. This ‘Lord’ thing was an ankle weight, sometimes.
Georgie took Page and Kalender to the second room, while Shal-yen and Amanda scoured the first room for anything else the others may have missed.
The second room was a workshop. There was a rectangular table in the middle, and smaller workbenches to two sides. Instead of a workbench, there were shelves packed with small boxes and wooden cases to the left.
“This one’s the penmaking room,” Georgie explained. “One of Hero Jonas’s harem members, Penmaker Case, used to work here. The shelves on the left have the finished products. On the far end is the barrel-turning station, and here on the right is the ink-making station. Here in the middle is where the finery happens. There’s a bunch of things for etching and fine metalworking.”
Page looked through the shelves. She couldn’t move any of the wooden cases that would’ve contained one pen each.
“What sorts of pens did they make here?” Kalender asked.
“Ah, dip pens and fountain pens, mostly. I think Penmaker Case also used to take orders for mechanical charcoal pencils, but mostly from Artists. Not a lot of those back then.”
Kalender eyed some of the tools on the center table. He cocked an eyebrow. “Some of those look recently used.”
“Ah, that’s just the preservation magic. Honestly, it makes the whole place feel like it’s just been moved out of yesterday. Unsettling at first, but you get used to it.”
Kalender moved to take a closer look at the tools in the center table. There was a sketch on the left—some sort of engraving design that was supposed to go on the face of a nib—and held up by an iron stand was a huge magnifying glass, under which was that same design, incomplete, on a nib securely held by a clip from a smaller iron arm.
True to what Georgie said, he couldn’t move anything. The preservation magic was just too strong. He went around looking for a magic circle holding the whole thing together, but there wasn’t any, at least not in the room. Was it a Skill? At least, he theorized it was a Skill. Ordinary magic, by invocations and circles, needed a constant MP supply. Skills seemed to be an exception, what with passive Skills that didn’t use MP at all.
He looked over to Page, who had taken to examining the mini-lathe on the barrel-turning station. She moved a stool and—
“Wait, how’d you—never mind.” Kalender approached her. She looked at him, confused. He sighed. “Page, there’s preservation magic on everything. You’re not supposed to be able to move anything here.”
It took her a moment, but it dawned on her. She did something supposedly impossible. [+2 Excitement]
Kalender thought for a moment, then he poked at the barrel still loaded in the mini-lathe. It moved.
He picked up the stool and moved it near the center table. He poked at the magnifying glass. It wobbled around, top-heavy as it was.
He looked to Georgie, who took on a look of surprise as he pieced together what was going on. “Do you know how all these things work?” Kalender asked him.
Georgie cocked an eyebrow. “I do—wait, you can’t mean…”
“I think we’re supposed to make a pen. This stool activates the closest station.”