Chapter 26: Stench, Partners, and Cheats

“Gak! What is that smell,” it was rude, but I couldn’t help it. I clapped a hand to my nose and mouth, fighting the urge to retch. We had just entered the back room of the local parcheminier shop, behind the ubiquitous counter separating the front sales and display room from the workspace of the cookie-cutter buildings along Parchment Lane. As soon as Magali and I crossed an invisible border, the stench of rot and sulfur assailed us with an almost physical force. I literally stumbled at its strike.

“Oh, nothing, Book. Just flesh rotting off of the skins of dead animals in a vat of lime. Why, does it bother you?”

I spun to look at Magali, stunned speechless. How could he say…yeah, right. The blank face of my friend held for a couple of beats, then he had to breathe. His face contorted, laughter wrestling with an involuntary grimace.

“Funny. Ha. Ha.” My face twisted on the last ‘ha’. Wow, it reeked in here. “Why did it hit so suddenly? It wasn’t this bad in the other room. Something this bad should be smelt for blocks!”

“Come on, Book. Surely you’ve come across [barrier]s before? Even in a small town like your Boulder.”

“Uh, yeah,” I thought fast. “But they must have been much weaker.” That should work, for now.

“Yes, ours is top of the line,” said the pretty, middle-aged woman who had led us behind the counter. She had long, chestnut ringlets coursing down her back and past her small waist. “You should know, your Master crafts the scrolls we use. We like to keep our golds within the community.” She walked as she talked, tossing her words over her shoulder. Scrolls and enchanted gemstones were the most common source of [mana] workings available to the common folks, so Alric’s proximity made for an easy choice. It also seemed the neighborhood residents worked to help each other.

She skirted a trio of smelly barrels, and strolled up to a younger version of herself, in shape—the girl’s waist was absolutely tiny!—and hairstyle. The woman gently placed her hand on the small of the back of the figure, which could only be her daughter. The girl turned, a questioning look on her face.

“You have visitors, Paytin,” the older woman said, carefully shaping the words with her mouth.

Paytin set down the scrapper in her hands. She had been methodically cleaning hairs and leftover viscera off a hide fresh from one of the soaking vats, the animal skin stretched taught across a wooden frame. I knew, intellectually, how parchment was made, but seeing it in the process was…disgusting (Amen!). She wiped her hands on the grimy apron she wore first, then coated them in a substance that looked suspiciously like hospital hand sanitizer. She waved them in a classic air-drying move, then removed a narrow cloth band that encircled her head. As she walked over to us, I saw that it was a tiny version of a surgical mask, only big enough to cover her nostrils. That helped explain how she could stand it back here without passing out from the smell. I was already starting to feel woozy, and I’d only been standing in the nasty vapors for a matter of minutes.

“Hello, Magali. It is good to see you.” Paytin talked slowly and at a low volume, with precise enunciation. Then I remembered Magali saying something about her being hard of hearing. She had been born that way, he’d told me, so there wasn’t much a [Healer] could do for her. Healing magic was more focused on repairing newer physical damage than anything congenital: battle wounds and industrial accidents, fresh injuries.

Paytin deliberately faced me, holding out a hand. “Hello.”

“Hi, I’m Book,” I told her. “One of Magali’s friends.”

“Oh good, that gives him two!”

The target of her jab showed mock surprise, clearly used to the teasing at his expense.

“Hey, no fair!” Magali protested to Paytin. “I have friends, you know. What about Tak?”

“Your Masters are friends, not you two,” she said, mischief running rampant in her startling bright blue eyes.

“Well,” Magali stuttered. “How about…”

“Chet.” Paytin must have read my lips, as she burst into laughter. Even Paytin’s mother chuckled as she left us to it and headed back to the front of her store.

“Funny, you two. Real funny. You just met, and you’re conspiring against me.” His words were angry, but his tone and laughter said otherwise. “Anyway,” he said. “We have a business proposition for you.”

Magali went on to tell Paytin of our ambitions, explaining that we wanted her to join our little cabal. He went on about our respective roles, with him as the brains—my word—and procurer, Tak as the face, and me as the hands.

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“Where do I fit in?” she asked. “Aside from…” she gestured to the rack of drying skins to be made into parchments.

“Well, tha's a pretty important par’, essential. But I also thought you coul’ keep us organized.” Magali was off to the races, again. Everybody--and their mother--could tell when he got excited about a topic. “We both know oter ‘prentice’s, but I can be a litta’…”

“Disorganized?” Paytin said.

“Scatterbrained?” I contributed.

“Rambling?”

“Hey!” Magali started to show symptoms of irritation as we went on.

“We love ya, man,” I placated him. “And, after all, Master Alric always tells me distraction is a sign of genius.”

“A caution sign,” Paytin started up again, and I followed.

“Yeah, ‘caution, slow children ahead’,” I guffawed. The two of them gave me a funny look, and I knew I’d done it again so I tried to cut off my laughter. I was partially successful. Now it was my turn to say it. “Anyway, that is our plan. You would get an equal share of the profits.”

That part still felt unbalanced to me, since I was the one actually making the scrolls we’d be selling. We were too far down the path to change it now.

“We won’t cut into your apprentice training time, too much,” I told her.

“No problem,” she waved it off. “I want in.”

Her eagerness took me by surprise, especially after dealing with Tak. Was Paytin looking for something other than her apprenticeship, following in her mother’s footsteps? I was wholeheartedly into my training, being a [Scrivener] was everything I always wanted. Writing plus magic equals a happy Book, my favorite type of book! (Who are these puns even for?) Quiet, brain! If that’s even you. If not, then let me add, an Elven Times bestseller!

“I knew you would be, Paytin,” said Magali. “I told Book he didn’t have to worry. So, it’s official. And speaking of, do you think that you can hook us up with some decent parchments?” He smiled, not wanting her to feel belittled after her earlier comment.

“Sure. Are common quality OK, Book? Where are your scrolls ranking in?”

“So far,” I replied, “I’ve been managing to get common out of poor parchment and good ink.” I’d actually gotten a common rating for the [heat-blast] scrolls, the whole two I’d made, with common ink and poor parchment, but an inordinate amount of [mana] had gone into them. Too much to make them practical, in the long run. What good was a printing press that could only make a pair of copies? Using double commons should fix that.

“That is really good,” Paytin sounded surprised.

It is? “Eh, no biggie.”

Paytin looked confused at my slang, again, so Magali jumped in. “You’ll get used to the way Book talks, eventually. He’s from some small town on the border, so, you know, a country hick.”

“Hey!” Payback is a bitch.

“Ah, I understand. A big city can scare a country mouse.” She said it with a solemn face. I thought Magali had said that she didn’t like to talk much, so I must have a face built for abuse (whan-wa).

Paytin walked over to a cupboard, opened it, and examined the contents, then she pulled out a thick sheaf of finished parchments.

“Will twenty-five be enough to start?”

Seventeen to Rolf, and eight to spare? “Um, yeah, that should do it.”

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One-day came, and it was back to the grind. Master Alric had me working on bumping my [ink; common](V) up to match my other good quality ink, the one already taking its place on my [Skill]s list. Hopefully, this one will soon join it. I crossed my mental fingers. The physical properties of the ink, those I had down pat. It was the [mana] infusing that held me up. The technique varied ever so slightly for the different mixtures, the intent needed to match the formula exactly. They were subtle differences, but important, just as in science-based chemistry. Get the concentrations off, add one too many or one too few drops, and even the simplest formulas could fail.

Magic made things even harder, being intangible. It could not be measured, weighed, or even labeled consistently. A teacher can impart guidelines, wisdom, and experience, along with recipes, formulas, and techniques, but the art of it is wholly individual. Enough lecturing, I got enough of that from Master Alric. Besides, I might have a cheat code in my back pocket--specifically, the [Mark .07].

'OK, if you can hear me, Marky-mark, let’s work the problem together' I thought at, well, my own thoughts. I didn’t receive an answer, not in words or direct information, but there was a vague…something. An impression of an impression, with the texture of an agreement. But not with the name, certainly no agreement on that score. I’d work on it.

This time when I concentrated, I felt some of the burden lifted off my shoulders. My [ink; good](P) started to activate, but then paused with a slight hang-up, before it shifted in time with my new intent.

*Ding!*

*[Folder]->[Skill (2)]->

[Heat-blast; common]

[ink; good](V)

[Open]

[Open]

[Open]*

*Ding!*

*[Folder]->[Title]->

[Experimental Pioneer]

(Congratulations! You were stupid…BOLD…enough to play with fire and create a new, unique scroll. +10% chance to successfully discover new applications of [mana] with intent in regards to magical scroll making.)

[Cheater!]

(Congratulations! You leaned on an !ntelligence superior to your own, bypassing h@rd work and discipline, to skip ahead and craft an item(s) beyond your current capabilitie$.)*

Want to know my new mantra? Eh, whatever.

Why own a Ferrari if you never take it out of the garage? I’m going to drive the thing until its wheels fall off. And after that?

Eh, whatever. To quote one of my favorite characters, that is future Book’s problem, not current Book’s.

I want to say that I am a character in my own Book, but I’ll restrain myself. It’s too cheesy. I am just happy that I no longer get a ‘brain hug’ with every new addition to my [Skill]s or [Spell]s. But, no matter how much I wanted to progress, the thought of the pain involved with leveling up made my bladder go weak, boy howdy! That one was courtesy of the soldier boys during World War I.

I think that I had better call it a day, my exhaustion clearly evident in the dopey internal monologue I couldn’t fight off. I found that these shortcuts used an exponentially greater amount of [mana], especially the first time. But was I going to give them up?

Ha, good sir! I say, HA!