Chapter Eight

“Alright, here’s the deal.” Loysa said with a firm gaze at me and then, I winced involuntarily as her hand came out, shutting my eyes as I reflexively thought she was going to slap me, only to feel nothing but air passing my face. I opened my squeezed shut eyes and saw her open palm, “Give me back my ace.”

“Oh.” I said, “I guess I don’t need it now, do I?” I asked and felt suddenly very guilty about snatching it. “Sorry… Ace.” I wasn’t sure if I was apologizing to her or the card or what, and she frowned a little at me as I slipped the thin little pouch back into her waiting hand. She yanked her hand back and stored it.

“Sure you are.” Loysa said with a fair bit of sarcasm, “Listen, the job is simple, so basic that it’s barely a quest. All we have to do,” she held out her slate and, getting the hang of this now, I extended mine as well so that they touched, “is get the materials to repair a damaged Gate. If you don’t know, Gates are special forms of passage for the most important and richest of people. They can take you directly from one city to the next.”

I whistled, “Isn’t that dangerous, like, couldn’t somebody capture one of those and get a whole army in, or use one they’ve got or slip in spies or something?” It seemed absurd to think about something like that being in the capitals of every city.

“It’s technically possible but practically impossible.” Loysa said, she was looking at me all over again, as if reappraising some previously held private opinion. I cocked my head, and asked…

“Say what?”

“You can shut those things down with a blanket. Just throw something over top of it or lay it flat, and it’s useless. Nobody is coming through. Just, anything really.” She shrugged, “Plus you can only pass one person at a time from one end to the other. It’s not very good for moving armies or even companies. On top of that, both ends have to connect, somebody on the other side has to be willing to receive you, and that’s just for starters. We’re not even discussing how hard it is to even get to or how much security is around them. So while you ‘could’ pass from one side to the other with hostility in mind?” She spread her hands and shook her head as she turned to walk away.

I quickly followed.

“It’s just never been done. I’m sure there have been attempts, but nobody would seriously expect that to work.” She replied “Of course, they can be broken, and when they break, repairing them with reasonable speed is important.”

“I see.” I answered, and I mostly did. The concept of folding space or teleportation or what have you, is hardly a new one.

“Good. So we’re going to harvest a few magitite ore fragments, and bring them to the city of Hapralee. Then you are going to install them.” She said, and I stopped dead in my tracks.

“Me?” I asked.

“Was I looking at someone else just then?” She asked and turned around to look at me.

“I’ve never seen one of these things.” I pointed out.

“So? Make sure you put some points into repairing magic items. Sami said you had a special skill, Insightful Inventor, if I remember correctly. You should have no problem learning how to fix that junk.” She replied, and I cleared my throat when she started walking away again.

“I’ve never repaired a magic item before.” I reminded her and reached up to scratch my ears, “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

We’d just stepped out of the alley when she grabbed me by the arm and yanked me back into the shadows. “Listen, I realize you’re the type who won’t stop complaining about what you’re lacking, and I know you won’t shut up about it till you see you can. So here, but if you tell anyone about this…” She stopped.

“Yes, yes, I’m going to show her!” She said to nothing, and I won’t deny I was starting to get concerned about my new partner’s habit of talking to herself as if she were talking to someone else.

But before I could question it, she held up her Ace and ripped it in half in front of me. “Now fix it.” She said, and thrust it against my chest.

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My hands came up defensively to accept the card halves and I looked at the two. ‘Fix it? I don’t-’ I cut off my own train of thought as concepts began to shoot through my brain. The longer I stared down at the two halves of the card, the more I began to see the fine points of what made them work. I raised my head to ask the obvious question.

“What enchantment?”

“Luck.” She said and crossed her arms in front of her small chest as if daring me to criticize her use of it.

I looked back down at the torn Ace. It was a fairly simple design, almost exactly like what we had on Earth. To me, this was evidence that someone from my world had been here before.

But that didn’t matter right at that moment. Instead as I began to stare at the cards I began to see the way the mana flow was cut off by the rip in the card halves, as I drew them closer together, I saw that the mana flow wanted to reconnect, and yet couldn’t. Fixing the rip was only half of the job. I had to realign the mana flow as well to complete the bonding, otherwise I would just be putting two broken parts together and it wouldn’t work anymore. I pulled out my slate and called up my list of skills, then with one hand, tapped the section for magic repair. My point quantity was considerable, but just as a test, I put a dozen points into the skill to ensure successful execution before putting away my slate again.

I then spun around to put my back to Loysa and slapped the two halves against the wall reached into my belt to draw out some bonding sealant and dabbed a bit on the torn edges. I closed the gaps up and counted to thirty in my head, then watched the mana flow to mend the breaks. From there, I brought the card up to my eye, pulled the mana siphon away from my face and ran it along the invisible breaks in the magic flow.

I then released the siphon which snapped back against my face, before looking closer at the card.

You’d have never known it was ripped in the first place.

“Here you go. I guess you were right.” I said, and she looked very smugly self-satisfied, standing there and smirking up at me.

“Get used to that.” She said with a cocky grin.

“Um, yeah… alright. But ah, why do you even have that thing?” I asked. The more I thought about my current circumstances, the more ill at ease I was honestly becoming about the whole matter, though I had a feeling Sami wasn’t going to throw me to the wolves, so far my party member here was both a card cheat and seemingly schizophrenic. Neither of those inspire comfort in someone about to head out into god knows what.

“So I can cheat whoever my goddess tells me to, of course.” She said as if that was supposed to mean anything to me and then she put her playing card away.

She then left the alley and brought us back out into the street. “There’s only one thing we need.” She said and then ignored me completely.

“Yes, we do need a dwarf able to handle this kind of thing, but does it have to be him? Because he’s a drunkard who only cares about mech fighting and gambling, that’s why. You’re telling me that out of all the stumpy bastards in this world, he is the only one that will do? Are you serious? Am I being punished? Oh. I am being punished. Please don’t say ‘naughty priestess’ like that, My Lady. It sends uncomfortable shivers down my spine.”

She wiped sweat from her brow and looked over toward me, “Fine, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. I hear you.”

I felt the need to finally address this and asked, before she could say anything, “Who are you talking to?”

“Oh. I suppose I should have said so earlier,” she chuckled when she saw the way my tails bristled, “My goddess. She gives me directions.”

“Do all priests and priestesses talk to their gods so… familiarly?” I asked, I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about this. I was fairly sure my own world had no gods of any sort, so the prospect of them actually being real was decidedly discomforting. Even if, or perhaps especially if they got involved too closely with people.

“No. As far as I know, I’m the only one so blessed.” She smirked as if she knew she’d said something to annoy her deity but that her deity couldn’t really complain about without appearing petty.

“I see.” I pursed my lips. “So, what are we going to do?”

“We need a dwarf to harvest the magitite. Nobody else can do it but them. My goddess told me where to find one who will go with us, and I’m mildly cross with her because of it.” She answered and approached a lamp that glowed with a luminous yellow hue.

“That makes sense.” I answered. I said that, of course, but I didn’t really mean it. It didn’t make much sense, but I hoped it would eventually, and that would have to do.

“Good.” She crisply said and then sticking her fingers into her mouth, she blew a long, shrill whistle. Overhead, one of those balloon rowboat things began its slow descent toward where we stood.

“Get in.” She said and held on to a rope ladder when it came down from above.

“So where are we going?” I asked as she climbed when I heard the rope groan while it swayed back and forth.

“To take in a mech fight.” She replied.

I’d already forgotten what the quest was before I got into the ‘boat’.