Garrowgreim was a relatively new town, born from a brief but undeniably significant copper rush some hundred years ago. The ore dried up fast, but the boom lasted long enough that by the time it did, a sizable village had cropped up in its wake. Rather than dying out with the mining, the settlement stayed, growing marginally over the years as lumber and agriculture filled the vocational void left by the mines.

The city's architecture betrayed its recent origins. Most of the buildings are wooden, simple and rough-hewn, built quickly and cheaply to meet demand. The larger structures, such as the temple and the local lord's keep, were newer, built from slabs of stone atop the sites of the older wooden predecessors they replaced. Those who can afford it have rebuilt their homes and places of business the same way, though they are few and far between.

The neighbourhoods I passed were mostly of the first type, all wood save for maybe a chimney here or there. Closer to the outskirts of town, most of the houses are residential, belonging to the congregation of farmers, lumberjacks, and teamsters who work primarily in the hinterlands. Here, there was a close mix of homes and businesses, belonging to the sort of middling townsfolk and tradesmen who are the lifeblood of all human settlements.

The first stirrings of these very residents were apparent as I trudged past, and I had to keep to the shadows with my cloak’s hood up to remain unseen. Luckily the streets were still awash with the half-light of dawn, and a dancing array of shadows provided me with all the hiding spots I needed. Shadelings have an affinity for hiding in the darkness, owing largely to the nature of our creation.

All around me, people made ready to start their days, and I found myself gradually gaining back enough energy to return to my standard disguise. See, humans, like most all so-called civilized beings, lack their own innate stores of active magic and instead have to harness other sources. This is often achieved through the use of talismans, crystals, or other trinkets crafted from the remains of creatures that do have magic, such as monsters. Since they lack a natural affinity for magical acts, their use of magic is often horribly inefficient, and they usually end up putting too much magic towards the completion of a task. This overflow of magic can be reduced by practice and training, but for the average commoner folk, it remains considerable.

So, every time a woman used a wind crystal to sweep her floor, or a baker used a talisman made of Firehawk feathers to light his oven, I was able to snatch up the little bits of unused power that remained for my own benefit. It's not actually all that much in the grand sense of things, but when fifty different people are all doing magic at once, it adds up. By the time I turned the corner onto Tarrow Lane, I was fully disguised again.

My standard disguise is remarkably akin to my natural visage. It takes less magic to maintain my disguise when I change fewer aspects of my appearance, so I try not to get too extravagant with it. All I did was make my skin a little less pale, turn my eyes a deep brown instead of pits of black, and soften some edges here and there. I was still short and gangly with deep-set eyes and crooked teeth, but I was a short and gangly human with deep-set eyes and crooked teeth. It took so little magic to get back to ‘normal’ that I actually had a bit more than I’d had that morning before the chase. It felt good, a warm fullness in my stomach not unlike the feeling after a good meal, also it helped counteract the drain the rising sun had on me.

Sunlight isn’t necessarily deadly to Shadelings, as most people seem to think, but it does make it harder to keep up appearances. When you’re a being born of death magic and darkness, sunlight isn’t exactly your best friend. The magic I borrowed from the good people of Garrowgreim got me to my destination without any further hiccups, and I finally found myself at the front stoop of Mae’s Books, my workplace.

I know it's probably a bit odd, a monster with a job. It seems like I should be hiding in a sewer, or under a bridge or something, instead of sitting behind a counter and helping people with things. I mean, what sort of self-respecting monster contributes to society? Well, the kind that’s sick of sleeping under bridges and hiding in sewers, that’s who.

A job gets you money, and money gets you all sorts of wonderful things, like food that you didn’t have to catch yourself, clothes that aren’t stolen off corpses, and a place to sleep that doesn’t smell like old feet and dry rot. I’ve had a few jobs in my decade of mingling with humanity, never for long, as they’re innately risky for me, but the pros always outweigh the cons. Working at Mae’s was the longest I’d ever held down a job, since mostly I get discovered reasonably quickly, but I had been especially cautious the last six months. Also, Mae’s had the client base of a restaurant that only serves offal and weeds, so it's not like there was a lot of folk milling about to notice any inconstancies with my looks.

I kicked the mud off my boots and pushed my way past the heavy hardwood door and into the dark, cool interior of the shop, enjoying the dusty smell of old paper and ink that came with the first breath I drew past the threshold. Then I got hit square in the back of my head by a stick.

I whirled around, clutching my skull and cursing, one arm raised to defend myself. When I saw who it was, I lowered my hand and sighed through clenched teeth, glaring at the tiny woman who emerged from behind the shop’s door, and closed it with a sudden but creaky thud.

“Yer late!” Mae bellowed, returning the business end of her walking stick to the cracked wooden floor. “Thought ya were a burglar!”

Granny Mae, as she’s known up and down Tallow Street, was a shrivelled, hunched figure of a woman with grey, thinning hair and pale blue eyes. I could not tell you her exact age, as I’m terrible at guessing how old humans are and I was too afraid of her to ever ask her directly, but it's safe to say she was older than most of the buildings in Garrowgreim. She stood a full head shorter than I, impressive considering I’m only 5’5”, with a face that reminds people of sour raisins, and a personality to match. She’s also mostly blind, much in the same way that a chicken is mostly flightless. She could see, just not terribly well. That’s what the cane was for, apart from knocking me to the floor and keeping her off of it. When she’s about town, she doddles about, cane extended in front of her. When she bumps something with it, she starts hitting it with her stick until whatever it is moves out of her path, or she realizes she’s reached a wall and moves herself. It is safe to say that Granny Mae is not popular with the neighbours.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

That fact, and her near-total blindness, are two of the main reasons why I took the job at her store. No one comes round to ask the local hag about the newly hired help, and If I slip up around her, she’ll never even notice. The other reason is that on my second day in town she’d picked me out of the crowd of passersby, whacked me in the shins, and demanded I visit her shop. At the time I was convinced she was mad. I still am, but I was then too. She dragged me inside by the ear, and I spent the next few hours browsing the surprisingly vast number of books she kept scattered in piles about the store.

Ok, I spent the next few hours sorting the surprisingly vast number of books she kept scattered in piles about the store. Her organizational system was terrible, what else was I supposed to do! It was impossible to find anything. So, I tidied up a bit. When Mae came back to find me emersed in the task I’d unconsciously embarked upon, she just laughed at me, called me a fool, and told me I might as well just work for her. To my complete surprise, she was serious. I moved into the space above the shop the next evening, and I’d been spending my days in the shop ever since.

“Who would ever rob this place,” I muttered, rubbing the swelling bruise with one hand. “Good morning to you too Mae.”

“What’s so good ‘bout it!” she asked, shaking her head in my general direction, before giving a dramatic sniff. “You smell awful boy! You lose a fight wit’ a pile a’ manure?” she let out a dry, hearty cackle at her own poor excuse of a joke.

I just rolled my eyes and hung my cloak beside the door. Thankfully the rest of my outfit was untouched, so the odour went with it. I gave no explanation for my tardiness, or for the smell. I knew by then that Mae didn’t care about such things, she just liked to have a go at me. A lot of older humans are like that. They get to the end of their lives and just stop caring about what they say to other people. I don't think that's the case for Mae though, I’m pretty sure she’s just always been a bit of a jerk.

To be fair, I think that’s just how she acts towards people she likes. Ok, that’s probably a bit of an overstatement. Tolerates might be more accurate. If she insults you, at the very least she’s taking time out of her day to talk to you, which is more than most people get. As far as I can tell, when she really doesn’t like someone, she just ignores them completely. So, I’ve learned to take her comments with a grain of salt. Most people would probably find it aggravating, spending most of their days around someone who communicates almost entirely through insults, but when you’ve spent your whole life trying to avoid people who outright hate you, being tolerated but insulted is about as good as you can hope for.

“I’m goin’ ta the market, got some errands. Try an’ not wreck the place while I’m gone ya hear?” She fumbled blindly along the wall for her own cloak, at completely the wrong spot, and would have fumbled around for a good long while had I not grabbed the thing and dangled beside her. She snatched at the fabric as it brushed her boney fingers, and quickly fastened it lopsidedly around her neck. “An’ wash yer face Corin, ain’t na’body gonna by books fra’ some muddied-up boy lookin’ like he’s been wrestling pigs aw mornin’!” with that she reached for the door handle, and after getting it on the third try, shuffled off into the street, walking stick swinging wildly before her.

That’s my name, by the way. Corin. Well not really. It’s the name I gave Mae, but it's about as real as the rest of me. I don’t have a real name, because why in the world would a monster have a name? Also, Mae actually had no idea how muddy I was, since she’s, you know, blind as a mole. She’s just always telling me to clean up, regardless of how dirty I am. This time she just happened to be right, much to my ire.

So, I disappeared into the back room of the shop to find a basin, and sourly washed my face and hair, before returning to the front room to start the day's work.

Alright, there’s another reason I took up Mae’s offer that I didn’t mention earlier, and that’s the shop itself. It's perfect. Mae’s Books is perhaps one of the oldest buildings in town, a rundown reminder of the town's first buildings, built from rough-cut stone brought out from the mines way back in the day. Its ground floor is dug partway into the ground, like a sort of half-basement, so that you have to walk down a half-flight of stairs when you enter. The only windows are small and set low on the building’s exterior, facing the street at just the right height so that they’re perpetually coated in dust and dirt from the outside, while their insides are constantly covered in dust. This has the effect of keeping out essentially any sort of natural light and keeps the store bathed in darkness. I couldn’t have made a more perfect hideout to escape the midday sun if I’d tried, and, I’ve tried.

I finished sorting the store's books in my first month -alphabetically, sectioned out by genre- and found that with virtually no customers save for the odd unsuspecting traveller, I really had nothing to do. I also had no one to appreciate my organizational skills, but whatever, who cares. I don’t. Really. Anyway, after maybe a couple of days of sitting around, literally twiddling my thumbs, I started reading anything and everything that caught my eye. What can I say? I like reading.

Currently, I was on a tome regarding Shadelings, funnily enough, written some two hundred or so years ago by a scholar who, if his writing was anything to go on, had never seen one of us in his life. It was terrible, and I’d read farming almanacs with better prose, but it was one of those things where the guy got all his facts so wrong, that to me the work was basically a satire of itself. He actually thought we fed on people’s hatred, and that we were responsible for causing everything from petty disputes to continental warfare! I wish. If that were true, my life would be a lot more interesting. Also, the book was supposed to be his magnum opus, so it's funny on another level, considering he wasted his life writing something that was not only boring as all hell but also mostly wrong. Hilarious, right? I picked it up from its place on the shelf, settled into my usual spot behind the counter, and cracked it open to read.

Despite its amusing contents, it was still pretty damn dry. That, combined with the fact I’m supposed to be nocturnal -One of the only facts in that guy's book he didn’t get completely wrong, by the way- left me pretty tired by noon, and I found myself nodding off. I slipped into that sort of half-awake half-asleep trance you get in when you’re trying your hardest to stay conscious, to no avail. I had just put my forehead down on the middle of the page I was reading -some drivel about how we are weak to citrus? – when I was jolted awake by the sound of knuckles rapping smartly upon the countertop.

I looked up, expecting to see Mae, back from whatever mystery errand she had embarked upon and about to lay into me for falling asleep on the job, and instead came face-to-face -well face-to-stomach, I was still sitting- with two very tall, very not-Mae people. They were dressed simply, in everyday clothes, but I could tell who and what they were in every aspect of their being. Tough, muscled builds, simple short-cut hair, stern, assessing gazes. They were adventurers. And I was screwed.