image [https://i.imgur.com/9JnFmXw.jpg]

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Fig and Rick walked back through Vishrac-Uramis to The Floating Chest.

It must have been almost morning by now. In the depths, neither of them had a way to keep time, but a growing ache behind Fig’s eyes let her know she was long overdue a rest.

Thank goodness she’d found something wonderful to invigorate her a little longer.

Whisper was buckled at her waist. She could hardly tear her hand from it, too enraptured by the enchanted weapon’s strange glory.

Clean lines ran the length of the elegant double-edged blade. It felt solid, beautiful, and dangerous. This was a true warrior's weapon; a versatile tool of battle, one handed, straight, and built for thrusting. It was not quite so thin and long as those civilian rapiers worn by the Heartland middle classes. Whisper was shorter by just a few inches, and broader at the base, thus it retained a shape and balance which allowed it to deliver savage cuts in close quarters, and the leverage to win binding grapples when fights got intimate and savage.

It was perfect, doubly so; perfect in itself, and perfect for her.

For all her time adventuring, Fig had never owned an enchanted blade. That goal had always remained infuriatingly out of reach.

The Hummingbird was as close as she’d ever come to possessing one her own. It was the grand prize at the Solstice Tournament.

She’d held that incredible sword just once, and for a single moment, stolen in the secrecy of night, the Hummingbird blade sang for her alone. It made her feel invincible, like destiny had chosen her to wield it. But that sword was lost to her now. She’d likely never see it again.

These days, even the most mundane enchanted swords, with simple enhancements for sharpness and durability forged into them, were firmly beyond her price range. The greatest enchanted weapons were another matter entirely; priceless didn’t do them justice. Each was capable of devastating magical feats that turned the wielder into a lethal force of nature. Those truly rare magical weapons were coveted by and reserved for the highest nobility, and for the Dynasty military elite.

While they walked, Rick chatted at her about some other curious aspect of the grim temple, reading from his Book, but she couldn’t pay attention to a word he said. Her fingers curled around the sword’s black gemstone pommel, and crept down to rest on the hilt, obsessively caught up in its every intoxicating detail.

Whisper’s swept guard wrapped around her hand in turn, ready to shield it from counterattacks. The edge was wickedly sharp, eager to bite. She loved it already. She couldn’t wait to wield it, to feel it flow and strike. What magical secrets did it hide? Just how powerful would it turn out to be?

Too convenient.

‘I know,’ she said quietly, but at this moment she didn’t care.

At last they arrived back in the ruined Archives, where the Floating Stone Chest hovered before them, unmoved.

‘I’m ready for this to be over,’ Fig said, propping their flaming torch in a pile of rubble and rolling up her sleeves. Rick mumbled his agreement, rubbing his aching knees. They hadn’t yet recovered his walking stick, nor a suitable replacement, and Fig could see how uncomfortable it was getting for him to walk around unassisted.

She kept having to remind herself that Rick, despite his appearance and terrifying magical powers, was just a nineteen year old kid. She couldn’t imagine how overwhelming this all must be for him. All things considered, he was handling it pretty well. He even put up with her irritability like a saint, which was more than she probably deserved.

‘Do you have any idea what to expect inside?’ Rick asked, as they approached the Chest once more.

‘Some sort of treasure trove, according to Mirabelle,’ she replied, coming to a halt beside it and patting the lid, ‘I know it’s supposed to be larger than it looks from the outside, but I don’t have details about the contents. The Chest itself is valuable, even if it does turn out to be empty.’

A wave of exhaustion passed over her at the thought of the journey still to go, ‘I just need to get it back to Saltcrust, and my debt is cleared.’

‘What kind of debt are we talking about?’ Rick asked.

‘Just over 9,000 gold suns,’ she said.

‘What?’ he sucked air loudly through his teeth, ‘Damn, how’d you rack that up; I didn’t take you for a gambler?’

She sighed and leaned on the Chest as she responded, ‘I’m not. It’s embarrassing actually. I got conned on a job.’

‘I’d like to hear that story,’ Rick prompted.

Fig grimaced. She looked over, and Rick’s face was a picture of earnest interest.

No need to recount all of the embarrassing details.

‘There’s not much to tell,’ she finally said, ‘I was supposed to meet someone in Loverlock on Mirabelle’s behalf, to exchange smuggled technology from Garrel. The woman doing the drop off tricked me. She took the payment, then pulled some kind of illusion magic and stole all of the gear back before I even knew what had happened. The sneaky bitch vanished without a trace and left me in the lurch with nothing. Of course, that didn’t go down so well with Mirabelle, and she held me responsible for the entire loss.’

‘Ah, I’m sorry,’ Rick said.

‘Yeah, Fig chuckled darkly, ‘Things haven’t been going so great for me lately, that’s why I had to take this suicidal job all alone to make it up to Mirabelle. It was this, or never work as a mercenary on this side of the continent again.’

‘I didn’t realise one pirate had that much influence?’ Rick said, looking puzzled.

‘Oh, she does,’ Fig said, ‘If you ever make it to Saltcrust, you’ll see what I mean. Mirabelle isn’t just one pirate; she’s a queen in all but name.’

Rick smiled up at her, ‘Sure, I’d like you to show me around the island. I’ve always wondered about it, especially with all the grief those pirates have caused the Dynasty. It’ll be exciting to see firsthand.’

Fig paused, not sure how to respond for a second. At last, she asked, ‘Does that mean you’re planning to come all the way back to Saltcrust with me?’

Rick shifted slightly, his gloved hands scratching at his Book, ‘I mean… If you’d be ok with that?’

His half milky eye twitched around, having trouble meeting her gaze as he continued, ‘I don’t want to get in your way. I know we only just met.’

He trailed off, waiting for her response.

Well, what are you going to tell him?

Fig considered the withered young man. What was she going to say? What did she think about travelling with him, after all that she’d so recently learned? It was a jumble of conflicting impressions and emotions, hard to untangle, and the lack of clarity just made her more uncomfortable.

Rickard Crichét was in the grip of some powerfully sinister and dangerous forces, the kind she tried to avoid wherever possible. Magic, curses, that Book, and the Undying King… A shiver ran through her at the thought. The kid was marked by a Fallen Shepherd for fuck’s sake! That alone should be reason enough for her to part ways with Rick as soon as possible and try to forget they ever crossed paths. It was the smart choice, the choice of the ruthless pragmatist the Outerlands had tried to turn her into.

But the more Fig thought about it, the more she found that she didn’t want that. This kid… He’d saved her life. It meant something to her. For all his power, Rick was young, inexperienced, and desperately treading water far out of his depth.

Looking at him, she couldn’t help but think of herself five years ago, stepping off that awful voyage of exile from Vostrel to Utred’s Rest, alone and afraid, with nowhere to call home and no idea how she was going to survive in the Outerlands. Nobody should have to face that alone. The least she could do was stick with him a little longer.

You’re getting soft, Fig.

‘Oh shut up,’ she muttered.

‘What?’ asked Rick, craning in to hear.

‘Nothing, ignore me…’ Fig sighed, ‘Yes. If that’s what you want, I’d be happy to travel with you to Saltcrust. At the very least, once we’re there, I can help you find your way to a reliable captain who’ll take you wherever that Book points you next.’

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

‘That’s fantastic!’ Rick said, grinning widely.

His lips were burnt down to almost non-existence, so it was a slightly unsettling sight, but Fig still felt like she’d done the right thing for once.

‘Yes, well, the sooner we finish up here, the sooner we can be on our way, so let’s stop wasting time and see what we’re dealing with,’ Fig said, indicating the Chest.

Rick nodded and took out the stone control ring they’d found. He handed it to Fig, who turned it over in her hands and slipped it onto her finger. It resized itself to fit snugly; definitely enchanted.

‘Ok, um, now how do I use it?’ she asked, looking quizzically at the Floating Chest.

‘I’m not sure. Try opening it again,’ Rick encouraged her, so she put her hands on the lid and pulled upwards with all her strength.

Not the best move, as it turned out.

This time, the lid didn’t give her a hint of the resistance she expected. In fact, there was no apparent weight to the stone whatsoever. Fig’s arms flew up with far too much force as she flung it open, causing her to stumble back off balance and fall hard on her arse. The Chest lowered itself to settle on the ground, granting them easy access to the contents.

‘And it’s open! Well done,’ Rick said brightly.

Fig gave him a sour look from the cracked marble floor.

‘Yes, I don’t need quite that much step by step encouragement, thank you. I’m not a child,’ she muttered, brushing herself off as she got back to her feet.

‘I’m just staying focused on the positive,’ he said, stifling a chuckle at Fig’s offended grumbling.

They peered inside the open Chest.

In seeming defiance of the laws of space and physics, a flight of stairs descended from the rim and into the Chest, right through where the floor should be. A rosy glow emanated up the steps. Fig raised her eyebrows and shot a glance at Rick.

‘When they said it was bigger than it looked on the outside, I didn’t realise they meant this,’ she said.

‘It makes sense,’ he responded, ‘Where do you think Lez was keeping his prisoners? We didn’t find any holding cells near that hoarder's junk room.’

‘Good point,’ Fig said, drawing Whisper from its scabbard with a silver sound, ‘Are you ready?’

‘I hope so,’ he said.

They collected their torch, climbed over the rim of the chest, and crept down the stairs.

‘Dawn’s light, there’s an entire house in here!’ Fig blurted at the base of the staircase.

They stood in a wide stone foyer, complete with a footstool, cloak hooks, and a shoe rack. Set to the side of the bottom step there was even a curved metal bar for scraping the mud off your boots.

That shockingly domestic threshold led through to a single large multipurpose room. Gently glowing ether crystal lamps hung from every wall, filling the space with soft, rose tinted light.

Fig and Rick looked around with wariness giving way to wonder.

The diverse living space was cosily furnished with everything a lone person needed for domestic comfort. Bookshelves and display cabinets full of oddities and ornaments lined the walls. Fine quality Dualspire rugs covered the floor, and the furnishings were plush, if a bit old and worn.

A wide Berabrick rosewood writing desk dominated the centre of the room, with floor stacks of books and note-filled paper piled around it on all sides. Even at a distance, Fig recognised the Illisar family crest stamped on some of the documents. Beside it, a wide armchair and crystal heater sat next to a coffee table that was covered in old mug marks.

Along one wall ran a messy dining kitchenette. The counter was covered in discarded and half eaten tins of preserved food, left open to rot. They filled the room with the smell of mould and rancid leftovers. It seemed that Lez hadn’t cleaned the place up in a while.

At the back, a curtain and a bamboo partition enclosed a modest sleeping area, away from everything else. There was even a bath in the far corner that looked plumbed into the wall.

The only thing to remind them that they weren’t in an entirely mundane, if magically lit, dwelling, was the complete lack of windows. What would windows even show in this impossible room? Windows to where? Fig felt sweat break out on her brow and she started feeling a little ill at the thought. They weren’t just inside a Chest, the space didn’t line up, it couldn’t, so where exactly were they? There was something deeply unsettling about not knowing how to answer that question. She tried to force herself not to think about it.

Well, the first thing to become fully apparent was that nobody else was down here, nor were there any doors leading to other rooms. Emboldened by the lack of enemies, Fig and Rick looked around in more detail, splitting up across the room to hunt for anything noteworthy or particularly valuable. There had to be something worthwhile here. Mirabelle had called it a treasure chest, not a floating one bed lodging.

‘No more captives at least,’ she said, mopping her brow, ‘but this isn’t what I was expecting.’

Fig tried to walk over to the desk, hoping to root through the piles of notes, when her ears started whining and the building nausea suddenly advanced into pulsing waves of disorientation that made her legs shake. Shit! Her mind and body weren’t handling the weird change in spatial dynamics. Bile rose in her throat and she stumbled to the desk so she could lean on it for balance.

‘Rick! This Chest is really messing with me,’ she gasped between heavy breaths, ‘I’ve been around enchanted items before, but how does someone even make something like this?’

‘What can I do?’ Rick asked, hovering nearby and looking unsure of how to help.

‘I don’t know… Help me wrap my head around this fucking Chest so I can get my brain to stop screaming that everything is going to implode?’ Fig begged.

‘Uh, ok. So, um. I guess the base concept to start with is that a powerful wizard with enough training in the specifics of superimposed geometry can take a large structure and wedge it inside a smaller one,’ he said.

‘Ok, shit, picturing that might actually be worse,’ Fig said, looking around wildly as her stomach did another turn, ‘It just sounds very unstable.’

‘Not if you know what you’re doing,’ Rick said, talking fast, ‘Fig, don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe. Listen, I’m sure you’ve even been to other places like this in Vostrel. The Magisterium uses this technique for their campus; they always have slightly more rooms than the buildings should allow, and I’ve never heard of any accidents or issues. I even heard the Wine Sea Trading Co spent a fortune on warehouses in Port Vermil that were bigger on the inside. It’s safe, it’s tried and tested, nothing is going to happen.’

Fig nodded and counted her breaths, she was slowly regaining control of her equilibrium and racing heart. She shuffled unsteadily to the armchair and slumped down into it, closing her eyes. ‘Ugh, sometimes I really hate magic. No offence, but it’s just more of a mindfuck than I can handle.’

‘It’s ok, just breath,’ said Rick.

‘Ok. I’m ok,’ she said, and over the course of a couple of minutes the feeling of dizziness and nausea reduced to the point that she could open her eyes again and look around.

‘Damn it. I’m sorry Rick, that really took me by surprise,’ she muttered.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he responded with a smile.

Fig covered her eyes with her hands again and leant back, starting to feel a bit steadier, ‘I always wondered why the corridors at the Magisterium seemed longer than the buildings they were in; they made me feel dizzy whenever I had to visit.’

‘Well now you know,’ Rick said, ‘You might even be a bit sensitive to spatial manipulation, some people are. Their soul thinks something isn’t right with the ethereal environment and it makes them feel sick. I’m sorry, this was a bad way to find that out.’

‘It’s fine, it just threw me for a second. I think I’ll be ok soon,’ Fig said. She gripped the edge of the desk and forced herself back to standing.

‘Honestly, I’m a bit surprised you didn’t already know more about this. Didn’t you receive a magical education?’ Rick asked.

It was a fair question, most of the aristocracy received at least a theoretical education of ethereal manipulation in its most common and useful forms, seeing as access to magic and enchantments was such a vital pillar of imperial politics, trade, and warfare.

‘A bit,’ she said, ‘but I have no aptitude whatsoever so I stopped going, and my parents never pressed the issue. Magical scholarship wasn’t high on their list of priorities for me anyway.’

‘Funny, I couldn’t get enough of it,’ Rick said, ‘but my parents wouldn’t endorse me to pursue further study with the Magisterium. I always wanted to learn more about magic.’

He looked around with an expression of wistful awe and went to run his hands admiringly over the nearest wall.

‘This place is something special, I can tell,’ Rick said, ‘Buildings are relatively static, so they’re comparatively easy to superimpose, but this whole artefact is designed to move around. They anchored a structure of this size into a moving object with only a fraction of the same volume. It’s amazing work…’

Fig shuddered and turned away.

‘Whoever enchanted this chest must have been a formidable arcanist,’ Rick continued behind her.

‘Malvaris Illisar, from what I’ve heard,’ Fig said, walking shakily to the kitchenette, ‘He was, by all accounts, formidable. But he’s dead now.’

‘I wish I could have talked to him,’ Rick whispered.

‘You didn’t miss much. He was a prick, take it from me,’ she muttered.

Come on now, Fig. Don’t take your bad mood out on the kid.

Fig tried the kitchen taps and found them working, so she splashed water on her face. It helped a bit, she just needed to stay focused on something else.

She started rooting through the cupboards for rations.

There was some crockery, empty packs of rice and grain, and, ooh, a half finished bag of stale coffee beans! Fig opened it, breathing in that smell with a longing groan. It even settled her stomach slightly.

Now, if she could only find something to grind them up. She opened the lower cupboards and instead found rows and rows of tinned beans, neatly stacked with a WiSTCo. logo stamped on top of each tin. Fig grabbed one out and examined it; looks like they’d have no shortage of food for the return journey, as long as they didn’t get bored of beans.

Rick called over from where he was looking through the bookcases, ‘Your history with the Illisa–’

‘Hello!’

Rick cut off and Fig spun around.

They looked at each other across the room.

‘Is someone there?’

A very faint voice echoed up from somewhere below the floor.

‘Help!’

Fig followed the sound. It was coming from beneath a fine rug in front of the old armchair, which she pushed aside to reveal a concealed iron banded hatch in the floor with an inset bolt holding it closed.

So this was where the captives were being kept.

[End of Chapter 6]