"Welcome to the Fulcrum,“ a monotone voice said next to me when I had stepped through the gate. "I am your advisor for today. My name is Able. Are you familiar with the Fulcrum, its layout, and rules?“

I turned around and saw a little man, not much larger than my forearm, floating in the air before me. He wore white flowing cloths, had his hands behind his back, and was lacking a face. No face at all. Just a blank stretch of skin with a pair of dark eyes. No hair either. I collected myself, trying not to show any disturbance.

"It is my first time here. I gathered that there are laws preventing the abuse of agreements, cheating, and such?“

"You are correct, sir. As I cannot determine your level of familiarity, please be so kind as to listen to the complete introduction I have prepared for your benefit.“ He floated over a bit so that I did not have to turn my head anymore and continued in his strange monotone.

"The Fulcrum is a place of free trade and barter, protected by a consortium of entities who prefer to be referred to as the Consortium. They operate multiple trade hubs, like the Fulcrum, with unparalleled efficiency and security. They offer the following terms for the use of their facilities: 1. Every trade agreement is under the protection of the Consortium. If you bring your grievances before them, they will review your individual case and act to ensure the satisfaction of every party involved. 2. If you want to, you can pay a fee and invoke the right to have the Consortium be witness to an agreement. This is useful for more complicated and non-monetary transactions. The Consortium takes much greater interest in the faithfulness of its customers and partners than you would expect from patrons of a vow, for example. 3. Violence is prohibited. 4. Forgery, selling of counterfeits and trades in bad faith are punished with the complete extent of the power of the Consortium.“

There was a moment of silence as if to give me room to ask questions, but I had followed his spiel and said nothing.

"The Fulcrum generates a private room for every visitor. You are in your private room this very moment. You have full authority to open up trade in this quarter. In the middle of the Fulcrum are three areas of interest. The quest board, the marketplace, and the common area. If you wish to open up a business from your private room or the marketplace, an advisor will contact you to negotiate taxes. There are no taxes for visitors without a shop, but do not assume to be able to advertise your wares openly in the commercial areas. The quest board, also a notice board, is linked with every facility of the Consortium and thus has a great reach and variety of notifications and quests available. The common area is home to a number of places suited for social gathering and networking. Do you have any questions?“

"Yes, I do. I have Skills to sell. Where can I sell them, what are the going rates and how can I transfer them.“

"Do you wish to spend 25 Shards for a licensed Consortium trader to assist you with your endeavors for the day?“

"No, no! Just tell me what you can for free.“

"It is custom to sell Skills at the Fulcrum in the form of books, please consider using a common format. If you are not able to create Skill books on your own, consider using the services of a registered Consortium advisor, such as myself. We will create the book for you, and only take a small expense allowance of one Shard per book. You can sell Skills at the marketplace or one of the private shops around. You may even find a suitable buyer in one of the establishments of the common area.“

I sighed. "Thank you, Abel.“ I wanted to keep [Ghost Strike] and the Gift [Unchained Anchestors]. If I had the Essence I would buy them both for myself right now, even if I was quite unsure of the extent of their power. So I would try to sell [Magmabite], [Soul Rend] and the wildcard [Whisperer of Worms]. I figured that I could get a good amount of Shards for the last one, but it would be hard to find a buyer. The first two were nothing special, I reckoned. [Soul Rend] was kind of esoteric though. Who had access to souls to rend in the first place? And why? Well, I did. But I did not want to rend a single soul. I wanted to guide them to a better place. Well, better to keep that one for me as well. You never knew. So, I only had two Skills to sell. I willed them over to Abel, who began to glow. Shortly thereafter he held two books in his hands, both almost bigger than the small man itself. One was bound in red leather with a fiery maw of a worm embroidered on the front, the other was dark grey and had a flutist standing above a couple of dancing worms in silver thread. Well, that was just not good advertising, that whole worm theme.

I sighed again and forked over two Shards of Essence which were swept under the cloth of Abel. He made a little bow.

"Have a good time at the Fulcrum, and please make sure to follow the rules!“ He said and disappeared.

I now had the books in my hand. Rather than carrying them around and risk getting them stolen, I imagined a little courier bag made out of leather that could hold the books and stored them in there. I slung the bag around my back and opened the door to the outside.

I had a rather sterile impression of the place so far. The empty room, the monotone, and business-oriented advisor. But the sight was a spectacle. It was a dome, nay, a sphere with walkways and doors all along the outer hull. My door was one of them. From the walkways up or down, depending on the position of the walkway on the sphere, were stairs to a set of platforms that hung in the middle of the space, seemingly with no other connection or structure to hold them but for the stairs and walkways itself. It was huge. Not as huge as, say, the capital had been. Or even Ravenrock. But there were hundreds of doors, dozens of walkways, and the visitors around me numbered in the hundreds as well. Of course, they did, idiot, because every visitor got his own door. There were exactly as many people as doors here. The majority of them huddled around the platforms in the middle though, which meant that a lot of those rooms around me would be empty.

I walked over to the edge of the platform and looked over the railing. Yep. A lot of space and a lot of doors. I noticed that a couple of them had decorated the doors with signs, lanterns, or what have you. I figured those were the ones open for business.

On to the people. My imagination cowered in shame in its inferiority complex in front of the plethora of weird that paraded around here. I saw floating eyeballs, horses dressed in human cloths, mythical beasts, species long assumed dead or imagined, like sirens or angels, every race I knew, like dwarves, elves, or centaurs. I stared, just stared, for the wonders that moved here so casually. And to no one's surprise, I was far from the only one wearing a mask of some kind and a hooded cloak. It was fashion around these parts.

I could have marveled at the place forever, but in the back of my mind was an hourglass ruthlessly trickling sand ever downwards, for the Wyld would not wait for me to satisfy my curiosity. Still, it was just smart to first take a look around and get a feel for the place before I made any decisions.

So I wandered around, breathing in the astonishing and weird, but keeping to myself. I very much felt like a piece of bread in a pond full of fish and ducks. Everyone, everything really, was far outside of my comfort zone. I tried to represent someone more confident, though. Walk with purpose, say nothing, look as if you belong. 

I slipped into the masses around the area I had identified as the marketplace. Some people simply had a good old stall where items were on display, that I could for the life of me make no sense of. It was like a gathering of peddlers for this and that, bits and bobs. There was a square table where just a couple of items were on display. A tiny lantern on a necklace, a few lengths of rope tied into a hangman's knot, a curved dagger with engravings, a little metal box with a tiny silver clasp...

"Interested in my wares, are you?" behind the stall was a huge lump of cloth. The being that had addressed me was covered over and over with dirty rags, so much that no form of the body underneath could be imagined. It even hid his face behind a veil of thin stripes of cloth that danced with every movement of the head. 

"I try to figure them out. They intrigue me." I took a look around. No one else was with me at the moment, that's why the being had addressed me. All of them busy walking around behind me. I put my hand back on my bag, careful of cutpurses. 

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"And they should, young godling. Or are you a spiritual entity? Apologies in that case." 

"No offense taken. I am ...errr....Raven." As good a nickname as any. No one was alive to connect the dots between the Margrave of Ravenrock and me. Or even that nickname. And even if they could, what did it matter? 

"And I am Belen, the Storysmith. Are you interested in purchasing an artifact?" 

I was of course. Even the word artifact was enough for me to be tickled in all the feel-good spots. But I did not know what those artifacts were, what they did, and most importantly what they would cost me. And another problem was, that I had no idea how to transport physical things through limbo, Demesne, and back to reality. Was that even possible? Obviously it was, seeing that the artifacts were laying here in front of me. 

"What do you have there?" 

The mountain of Rags moved over to where the little metal box was. Belen spoke with a deep and calming voice, very much enthralled in the intricacies of the stories he was telling. 

"This is the Forbidden Pinch. A little story, sure, but powerful in execution and imagination. There was a father, addicted to expensive snuff, and not the recreational stuff either, that the dwarves of Krak Maduum so very much like to use. It is a typical story of indulgence and sin at the cost of the innocent, but this story is not about the father. This story is about a young daughter, fighting for a crumb of bread in the gutter with the broken neck of a glass bottle. The only thing of worth she ever possessed was a little box of snuff with a little silver clasp. The daughter went on to become quite famous. The Midwife they called her in Hebronn and the surrounding countries, the mightiest crime lord of her time and area, with hundreds of buried enemies to her name. At first, she used the Forbidden Pinch to poison lovers and enemies. Then, as she went mad with substance abuse in her later years, she burned her victims to ash. And yes, their remains ended up in richly embroidered handkerchiefs, because she had a habit of snorting them. The little box accompanied the Midwife through every minute of her days. In the end, for the grand finale, being the very thing poisoning and killing her. A complete story rounded out, and with a very particular aftertaste of the macabre." Belen shuddered, as if in pleasure, and smacked its lips behind the curtain of cloth. 

"Even telling the story is as delightful as it was hearing it for the first time. That's what you get when you have a complete story, that does not leave you wanting for more." Based on the deepness of the voice I decided that Belen was male. "I fear that the attributes of the Forbidden Pinch deal with poison and murder, as well as excess and overindulgence. Based on the ashes filled into the box, the Forbidden Pinch transforms them into the most potent poison or drug." 

Well. That. Erm. I was stunned and more than a little bit overwhelmed. Belen did not hesitate a second and just kept on talking. 

"I see. That might be a bit too extravagant for your taste. How about the Old Reliable? The noose over here. It is a story not so grand, but macabre and exciting nonetheless. So many stories involve tragedy, and aren't those just the juiciest ones? Folklore has it, that a series of ruthless and bloodthirsty dukes of a duchy named Riverbend in the eastern isles racked up an impressive record of executions via hanging over a stretch of a hundred years give or take. Thousands breathed their last breath strangled by this very rope. They called it the Old Reliable. So many died those years, it was a common occurrence for the gallows to break under duress or for the rope to tear. And they did. All but Old Reliable. Until the day the last in the line of Dukes, an awfully predictable and cruel little man with the name of Jovin Ragard, got overthrown by the people fed up with the tyranny. They dragged him to Old Reliable in celebration and took him to the knot. In a last act of loyalty, Old Reliable was cut down by the oldest and most trusted executioner of the duke, who then fled on a horse with the hangman's knot still around his neck. And, most delightfully, he was found later, dangling from a random tree in the woods, where the rope had entangled itself in a branch and dragged the Duke off his horse and to his lonely death on his favorite noose. Old Reliable. If put around a neck, the victim will find his death, one way or another."

This time I was determined to cut off the ramblings of Belen, so I almost shouted to interrupt before he could tell me something about the lantern. 

"And what would that cost? And how would I get this artifact out of here?" 

"You see - Raven, was it? - I am interested in Shards as much as the next person. But there are other things I long to trade for. Items of significance. Of weight. Stories with power. I will give up the Old Reliable for ten thousand Shards. Or you let me taste the narrative weight you carry around with you and maybe we can make a deal. It is intimate though, for the darkest secrets make for the best stories, and there is no certainty that it would be worth anything. But I can taste it in the smell of your soul. You have a juicy story to tell me." 

Goosebumps. And no good ones either. "I will have to pass on the Shards and the story, I'm sorry. But I do have an item in my possession that has a story I reckon you might find interesting."

"Yes? You do? Can I see it?" Belen rustled toward me, greed dripping from every word. 

"I don't have it with me." 

"You do not have a [Soulspace] or [Interdimensional Transportation] or any of the sort? Not even an item mimicking the effects? That is sad. But I can make a connection to reality later. Can you think really hard about the details of that item and tell me the corresponding story?" 

That, I had to think about. Where was the harm in talking about Kingsbane? What was the worst that could happen? I knew not much, only that Kingsbane had significance somehow. Lily had mentioned it in one of her notifications, I think. And it had quite an astounding story. I decided to go for it, risks be damned. 

I thought of the overlong and overwide form of the straight blade, the dark metal, and fine engravings, the simple yet elegant hilt, that barely was wider than the blade, and the unadorned pommel, worn and scratched from frequent use, as was only natural for bastardswords, which as frequently were used with both hands as well as one. It was a beautiful sword, but so damn wide and heavy. I willed it to be and felt the tremendous weight of the sword appear in my hand. I just held it a second before setting the tip down on the ground. 

"Ahh yes! Yes, Yes, Yes!" Belen shouted and rustled around his stall, looking the sword up and down. "There a hint of a tragic misunderstanding, escalating most wonderfully into full-on treason but...no, this is not a story about madness or human hubris. No, no no no! It is not complete!. You do not have the full story! The sword brims with narrative weight. But how should I weave its power if I don't know it?" he grew distressed. He touched me. And an awfully long second I stared on the long, thin, haired spider leg touching my shoulder. Belen did not even hesitate. 

"You must find out more. I can help you craft its story. It could be a great artifact, depending on the hidden history. You must find out more!" Belen shook me. 

I swept his...leg away from my shoulder quite impulsively and made a step back. His leg disappeared under the rags again, and he bowed deeply. "I am sorry. Truly. I got excited." 

"No problem. You startled me, is all. So, I do not know enough to make the sword into an artifact? Did I understand that right?" 

"Artifacts are not made. They arise or awaken. Sure, I could spin a little something something out of the sword and the story you know. But it is not the true extent of its glory. Learn more and come back to me, it tastes most delicious." 

"All right, Belen. I will. Hey, can you do me a favor? Where is the best place to sell these?" 

I opened my bag to him and showed him the Skill books. He laughed. 

"For the tasty little surprise you brought me free of charge and the trust you showed, I consider you a friend. Do not worry. These books are quite particular though. Let me make a few inquiries. Come back in an hour and I may have a referral for you." 

"Thank you, Belen. I will not forget about the sword. I may have a lead already." 

Belen clapped under his rags, a strange dry sound, and laughed out mirthfully and loud. 

"Excellent! The day gets better and better! Now shush, scuttle away, I do not want to make you wait later." 

I smiled under my mask and bid my farewells. What a strange being. And way too forthcoming, or was it in honesty that its lies were spun? Some people made friends easily. Some people just were honest. I wasn't going to trust anything or anyone out here, either way. 

I spent the hour on the other platforms. Looking over the quest board and the noticeboard. There were open invitations and notifications like 'brave heroes needed at the Tower of Eternity' or 'inquiring about the whereabouts of the assassin called the Moonlight Jester'. There where open quests like '25 shards for every unicorn horn'. And then there were specific quests, oftentimes only hinted at the kind of quest one could expect, with a method of communicating included, so that more private negotiations might be arranged. 

I looked over the whole thing but did not found anything in the region I was in, and nothing either concerning Wyldlings, the ink-creatures of the deep, or the Empire of the Sun. That made kind of sense, now that I knew that the gods of the Empire were dead and the Wyldlings were protected by spirit animals, which I could not really imagine being here trading and gossiping. But what did I know?

One quest caught my interest. 

[Quest offered: Stop the band of slavers operating out of the Shattered Sea! Take the head of Barak Bloodbraid, Leader of the Shattered Sea Slavers. Interested entities may inquire about details at the 'Nectar and Necessities']

It was interesting to me because I hated slavers, I was an agent of freedom by choice and happenstance. And furthermore, I had heard of the Shattered Sea. Cogar had mentioned that it was a region tainted by the Wyld beyond the heart of the Wyld and even beyond the Broken Lands. I mean, I had no way of doing what was asked of me just yet. But it couldn't hurt to be informed now, could it? I was kind of in the neighborhood anyway.