What was meant to be a simple but beautiful beast grew to be what we now call a dragon. Instead of being distraught by her mistake and loss of power, as small as it was, she was thrilled. For the creatures she had helped create had something that no others save the gods yet possessed. The dragons had intelligence and could speak.

This breakthrough showed the gods the key to the creation of sapient races, and they continued on to create the Illusian races, including humans, dwarves, elves, orcs, halflings, and seafolk—but that is a different story.

-Unnamed Dwarven Text

—

“So, what’s your plan for today?” Zale asked Kole as they walked through the glade back to campus.

“I ran out of spellform ink, I need to go get some. Then back to studying.”

Zale sighed.

“Of course.”

“Well, let me guess. You’re planning on running twelve miles, and then sparring until you’ve broken three practice swords?"

“No, actually. I have nothing to wear to the mixer, so I’m going shopping.”

Kole—who had very recently seen her room and knew her statement to be extremely false—cocked his head slightly.

“Fine,” she admitted, “I have nothing I want to wear. What about you? What are you going to wear?”

Kole hadn’t considered it.

“I have a…”

He trailed off. He’d arrived with three sets of clothes, and all had been damaged at one point or another. The clothes he’d been wearing on Saturday had been his good pair, but they’d gotten a bit singed.

“I think I need to buy an outfit.”

Zale smiled wide and maliciously.

***

“His father is a Stormcaller, so it should evocate thoughts of their garb, but his mother was a Mirage Knight, so the muted tones and broken patterns they used can be incorporated as well.”

Zale spoke animatedly with a tailor with whom she was clearly well acquainted. The elderly woman had dropped everything when Zale entered and given her a hug. Kole realized then that it was the first time he’d seen someone touch Zale aside from Rakin or her mother.

Any feelings of sympathy were quickly squashed as the woman, led by Zale, interrogated him fiercely and began to measure him all over.

Some time later, Kole sat in a chair, mind in the Arcane Realm trying to cast Thunderwave as Zale and Miranda the tailor fretted over what would be his formal clothing.

The training did well to distract him from the matter at hand but had the unintended side effect of making the time stretch out as his mind was extended into the Arcane Realm.

By the time Zale threw a sock at his head, breaking him from his concentration, he’d made no progress on the spell, but he judged at least an hour had passed.

“We can come back in an hour and your clothes will be ready,” Zale said.

“Great. Do I want to know what I owe?”

“Fifteen silver,” Zale said proudly.

“Fifteen!?”

“Yeah! I got you a discount.”

“Discount? What was the full price?” Kole asked stunned.

He hadn’t actually ever had to buy his own clothing, but he could have sworn it wasn’t this expensive.

“Forty-five.”

Fifteen silver was fully one-fourth of the money he’d brought with him to Edgewater. Yes, he’d found ways out of actually having to spend any of it for most of the expenses he’d anticipated, but that was still a large sum.

He wanted to refuse, to ask her to pick something else out, but he found he couldn’t get the words out.

“Alright,” he said sullenly.

“Great,” Zale said, some of her joy gone as she noticed Kole’s attitude. “We can come back in an hour and pick up our orders. We can go look for your ink now.”

As they searched for a suitable store that sold spellform ink, Kole asked

“I’ve been meaning to ask. Why are you going to this mixer? Tigereye’s your mentor, right?”

“I’m going as mom’s representative. She’s supposed to go, but she has no intention of picking anyone, so she just sends me to mingle.”

“Any tips?”

“Be yourself?”

“Great…”

A few wrong turns later, Zale stopped confidently in front of a storefront. The windows were plastered with sheets of paper, many covered in text, giving the shop the appearance of a vacant establishment.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Here!”

“Are you sure?” Kole asked. “It looks closed.”

Zale double-checked the sign.

“Ink and Sundries. This is it.”

Kole backed up and looked at the sign. The words “Ink & Sundries” were written in black on a white background

Wait…

As Kole watched, the black seemed to grow deeper, briefly evoking the emptiness he felt when looking into the void in the Dahn. That feeling quickly vanished, replaced with a subtle Will drain as the ink took on a kaleidoscope pattern of swirling colors.

“What are you staring at?” Zale asked, looking from Kole to the sign and back.

“The sign, it’s magic.”

Zale squinted back at the sign, cocking her head.

“There’s a little Will in it, I guess. What do you see?”

“It’s… I don’t know. I’d say it was an illusion, but I’d sense it if it were. It just looks… magical.”

The pair entered the store, and a bell attached to the door rang.

“One moment!” a deep voice shouted from the back in a not particularly welcoming tone."

Kole and Zale waited, examining the contents. With the paper coating the windows Kole expected the inside to be dark, but Light runes were etched into the ceiling, filling the place with soft white light.

Racks filled the store, filled with ink, and well, sundries.

“The name’s accurate at least,” Kole whispered to Zale.

Rows of empty vials, reams of paper, quills, ink chisels, brushes, and a dozen other types of writing, drafting, and scribing implements Kole had only ever heard of filled the shelves.

“Is that a slide rule?!” Kole asked excitedly, running over to a shelf of the things.

Zale sighed heavily and muttered under her breath.

“Nerd.”

“What?” Kole asked, fixated on the fine print written onto the devices.

“Nothing!”

“Alright,” the gruff voice called, coming out of the back room. “What can I—what in the Wardens are you?”

Kole and Zale both looked to the counter—a very low counter—and the ink-stained dwarf behind it. He wore clothes that may have one time not been black, but were now so an uneven and blotchy black. The dwarves’s hair and beard were gray, save of course where they weren’t stained deep black. The appearance of a dwarf surprised Kole, for the man’s voice lacked any sort of Torcish accent, which was odd for a dwarf as old as this one seemed to be.

“She’s a half voidling,” Kole answered for Zale, before she herself could do so.

She turned to him and gave him a grateful smile.

“Oh, her,” he said, not apologizing for the question or its tone “I heard of you. What do you want?”

“Ink?” Kole suggested.

“I don’t sell just any ‘ink’ here. I sell the medium on which civilization is being built! Go a block down the road for the stationary store if you want to fill up on school supplies. I don’t got time for children.”

“I need spellform ink,” Kole explained. “I’m a wizard.”

The dwarf laughed.

“Drafting spellforms is a costly hobby. Why don’t you come back when you have a few more hairs on your chin.”

Before Kole could think of a response, Zale pulled his bag off his shoulder and walked up to the counter. She slammed his old, and now completely full spellbook, on the counter.

“Stop being a danar," Zale said, "he did all this."

The dwarf reached for glasses hanging on a chain around his neck and perched them on his nose. He turned the book around and flipped through the pages with practiced ease.

“Hmm,” he said, without looking up. "Did you just call me a 'stink hole?'"

“Did I?” Zale asked, confidence gone. “I thought it meant stubborn-headed.”

“Nope, that’s ‘kanar,’” the dwarf answered, still flipping through the pages with genuine interest.

“Head hole?”

“Yeap. So, you did all this?” he asked, looking at Kole.

Kole nodded.

“Good work. You can buy ink.”

“Thanks?” Kole said.

The words had been complimentary, but nothing about the man’s tone or bearing had been.

“I’ll take some spellform ink please—and this slide ruler,” Kole said, putting the ruler on the counter.

“Which point quill do you use?” the so-far-unnamed dwarf asked.

“Excuse me?” Kole asked.

The dwarf sighed and then speaking slower answered, “What is the point size of your quill tip? Eight? Nine? It’s hard to tell from your work.”

“I… um… didn’t know that was a thing.”

The dwarf seemed like he was going to yell, but he caught himself and looked through Kole’s spellbook again. He reached under the counter and pulled out some metal sticks.

“I don’t know how you learned enough to do all this without knowing what a quill point is, and I don’t want to hear your life story. These are nibs, they are a hybrid of the quills you Waatin use and the chisels we use. Try it out.”

Kole grabbed one and examined it closer. The metal tube was larger in diameter than a quill and fit more comfortably in his hand. The tip looked like a quill tip and had a small hole in it. He dipped in in a vial of ink offered to him and drew a few lines on a well-scribbled piece of paper on the countertop.

“Impressed?” the dwarf asked.

“Very!” Kole said finding the nib lasted far longer than any quill would have from a single dip.

“Great. I’ll throw one in with the ink if you buy a vial. That’s an eight-point tip. Judging by the scale of your work, this should be the best fit for you.”

“Thanks!” Kole said, still marveling at the nib. “Why does the point size matter?”

“I tailor the viscosity of the ink to the tip to minimize running.”

Kole nodded appreciatively.

“How much for a vial?”

“Two gold,” the dwarf said as if it were an entirely reasonable cost.

“Excuse me? Two gold? For a vial? Like, a vial, not a vat.”

“Yeap.”

“That’s absurd! It costs like, a quarter that!”

“Look, kid. I don’t have time for this. Buy the ink or don’t, but you’re not going to find a better price. If you bought it for cheaper, it was probably made out of some poor murdered sorcerer’s bones. Deep whale shit ain’t cheap, and it’s a real danar to work with.”

The mention of deep whales revealed the source of Kole’s disconnect on price. Like clarity potions, the primary ingredient of spellform ink was deep whale excrement—something Kole hadn’t actually been aware of until that moment. And, like clarity potions, it seemed that Kole’s sense of value was skewed.

“Oh,” was all Kole could say.

He pulled out his coin purse from inside his shirt, fished out two of his three remaining gold coins, and placed them on the counter.

The dwarf went behind the counter, and pulled down a vial of black ink that drew Kole’s attention as if it were glowing despite it seeming to drink in the light.

“The slider ruler is two silver,” he added.

Kole fished out the coins and placed them woodenly on the counter.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” The dwarf said happily, collecting Kole’s coins.

As Kole gathered his purchases into his pack, the dwarf asked, “Are you by chance a student of Grand Master Lonin?”

Kole shook his head.

“He doesn’t take adventuring track students as apprentices and I haven’t tested into his classes yet.”

The dwarf scoffed.

“Adventuring, such a waste of a wonderful penmanship. Come show me what you can do with that nib in a few weeks, and I might have some work for you. If you haven’t lost a hand by then.”

“What kind of work?” Kole asked.

On coming to Edgewater, he’d been resolved to not work, focusing fully on his studies, and with the finds of Zale’s free meals and the free room in the library, it had looked like that would be possible. But now, after visiting only two stores, he was down to a single gold in silver and copper.

“Testing inks, doing some copy work for customers, sweeping, and things like that. I’m Turwo, Turwo Randin.”

“I’m Kole, this is Zale. I’ll consider it. I could use the money, but I’m not sure I’ll have the time.”

They left the shop. Outside Kole stopped and asked, “Danar?”

“Rakin curses a lot. My Torcish is bad and I mix them up. How about some lunch while we wait for our outfits?”

Kole hesitated, thinking of the fifteen silver he’d have to pay after the meal.

“I’ll pay,” she added.

Kole reddened, embarrassed at his transparency.

“If you insist.”