The tremors continued, sending vibrations through the floor and into Aaron’s feet. The pace was steady but the intensity swiftly grew, until he could feel them running up through his calves.
A sound accompanied tremors. Faintly. So faintly Aaron thought he was imagining it before its volume increased. The sound was crisp and clean, almost sharp, the rhythmic tinkling of metal, more like jangling spurs than a ringing bell. Its timing and power matched the juddering in the ground.
Ching!
Cha. Ching!
Cha. Ching!
Cha-ching! Cha-ching!
Chaching chaching chaching!
A section of the trading anchor flew open with a tremendous clash, two sections of desk flung wide. The opening was less than ten feet from where Aaron stood and a massive form emerged from the murky shadows within.
Nearly as tall as Aaron and much wider, its flesh was a rich and deep brown that glowed with a muted lustre. From its broad head to its powerful flanks, the entire creature was made of the same bronze. Only its upswept horns — which were coming straight for Aaron! — were different; they were silver at the base and seamlessly transitioned to gleaming gold at the tips.
The great bronze bull burst out of the trading anchor at a full charge. Its powerful stride jangled as metallic hooves crashed into the marble floor and just one was long enough to cover the entire distance between it and Aaron. He hardly had time to think before a great crashing step brought the beast within inches of him.
There was no time to get the hell out of the way and he wasn’t about to test his new drakus strength against a huge, bronze, bull-shaped golem running at him full bore. The thing likely weighed several tons and it had momentum behind it, so even world record-shattering strength probably wouldn’t cut it. Instead, he acted on the first idea that popped into his head — he tried to jump onto the damned thing.
It worked, but it didn’t exactly go well.
Aaron wound up plastered to the bull’s head, folded over its skull like a cartoon damsel thrown over a villain’s shoulder. His jump fell well short of clearing the beast and it drove its thick skull right into his midsection. It left him a bit winded, but otherwise unhurt.
Good enough to be getting on with, I suppose, he thought. Let’s see if I can figure out what the hell this bullshit is all about. Heh. Bullshit.
Even with a passenger, the bull continued to run around the trading pit, threatening to dislodge its passenger with every jangling step. Aaron grabbed onto the beast’s horns and — with no small amount of clumsiness — managed to pull, hoist, and swing himself around until he was straddling the bull’s neck. His butt and thighs bounced on its powerful shoulders with each step as it charged.
Even if he had the most thunderous of thighs, no amount of squeezing his knees together was going to keep Aaron on the bucking statue. He needed to maintain his position some other way. He grabbed the horns as close to their base as he could, making sure to set both an over- and underhand grip on the slick metal in hopes it would provide a better chance of staying on his unwilling mount.
With a bit of extra stability, Aaron could take in his surroundings again. The traders weren’t throwing their lassoes to wrangle the bull, it seemed, but hurling them like a game of ring toss, aiming to land the loops over its horns or massive head but let the rope dangle loose.
It was such an odd thing to do; it left Aaron temporarily stymied. Then he saw little slips of paper were attached to the ropes near the loop, flapping in the breeze of the bull’s movements. Perched on the golem’s neck, he was close enough to make out what the slips of paper were — trading orders, not unlike the ones he’d have shoved into his stomach a few times already. Only these were much more complicated.
They invoked arcane secrets of financial wizardry with words of speculative power, calling for long or short positions, limits and stops, calls and puts. That was all investment jargon Aaron had heard in passing, but it might as well have been gibberish. Still, he could divine some meaning from the chaos of commerce.
The first thing he noted was that every order he got his eyes on had much higher prices than he’d seen trading around this anchor. He’d made his way over in the first place because tickers suggested trading was picking up speed, which meant prices were rising faster than normal. The traders were also frantically chasing the bronze animal around the pit, so desperate to get their orders hooked on its horns they were literally throwing them.
Together, it told Aaron that the charging bull represented a major upswing in the market, a frenzied tide of rising prices and buying.
Oh, of course! It’s a bull market, he realized. I’ve definitely heard that phrase before. The real question is: what the hell am I supposed to do about it?
They said the key to making a profit in the market was to buy low and sell high. With prices shooting up, Aaron had already managed the first half. The second part would be easy, in theory, and difficult to put into practice.
He lacked the knowledge to place a complicated speculative order like the other traders. Even if he hadn’t, he had neither a rope to make a lasso nor blank trading slips to record his bets. What he did have was two trading slips for the aluminum and steel he’d already bought. Reselling them through open call could be the ticket to huge profits, but there was another obstacle he had to consider.
Market booms didn’t last forever — the financial catastrophes that had peppered Aaron’s life were proof enough of that — so he knew the only thing you could count on a bubble to do was burst. Having a feel for when it was coming and getting out before it did were the kinds of instincts traders spent their careers honing. Aaron didn’t have that kind of expertise or the time to develop it. If he held on too long, the market could tank and leave him holding the figurative bag.
As if to illustrate that very point, the huge bronze bull stumbled.
It trod over several traders and dropped to one of its knees. It was so sudden, Aaron was nearly launched over the golem’s broad head. He only kept his position thanks to his preternatural drakus strength.
A small groan rose among the traders as the bull lost its footing, but only a few of them. The rest were milling around nearby, lassoes at the ready and licking their lips. Some were quickly scribbling adjustments on their order slips.
Aaron glanced at the slate board, his eyes sweeping down the list of stocks and goods. Even at only four letters each, there weren’t enough goods being traded around this anchor to make picking out what he needed difficult. Steel was written as STEE and was up to fifteen gold, while aluminum, written as ALUM, was up to twenty.
A three hundred percent increase would be amazing out in the real world, Aaron thought. Compared to the gains in the last trading room, it’s not much, but if this bull doesn’t get back up and start moving again soon, it’s better than I’m likely to get in the end.
If this place was built on metaphor, it had to be exaggerated one way or another. Otherwise, why wouldn’t it be a perfectly accurate recreation? He decided to hold on through this stumble and trust that the bull would keep charging.
He only had to wait a couple seconds — though it felt much longer, anxiously watching prices starting to get marked down on the big slates — before the bull was back on its feet and moving again. He tried not to interfere with the lassoes coming for the bull’s horns as it finished standing, then the golem resumed its mad dash around the anchor with Aaron clinging to its back as best as he could.
It wasn’t the only time the bull stumbled as it careened through the crowd.
There were several more stuttering starts and stops over the next few minutes. Each time, prices up on the big slate boards would dip and some traders would lose their nerve and cash out. They rarely fell enough to scare off most of the speculators, though. Or maybe it was and they were being replaced by new traders showing up to chase the bull market.
Whatever the economics of it, Aaron’s struggle was like theirs — more mental than physical. The bronze bull was physically powerful and it was a balancing act to staying mounted, but it was never enough to dislodge the resolute drakus. No, the problem was judging when to sell to squeeze out as much profit as possible before the market normalized or corrected, or whatever it did.
When prices for both steel and aluminum had climbed to more than fifteen times the prices Aaron had bought at, his nerves started fraying, telling him to take the cash and bail. Another part of his mind argued that there was no indication the market was ready to turn.
If I’m right and this trading floor roughly reflects the years leading to World War II, then this is when the foundation for America becoming a superpower was laid, he thought. And that foundation was made of tanks, boats, and airplanes.
All things, in short, that required tons of steel and aluminum. Literally.
Even if the metals were relatively cheap by weight compared to other goods, so much of it would be needed for the war that turning a profit would be easy. The trick, as he saw it, was finding a good time to sell and cash out that wouldn’t be leaving a pile of lux on the table.
The other three drakus were no help, of course.
Aaron would see them in the crowd now and then, like parents watching a child on a rampaging merry-go-round. They’d smile, wave, even throw the occasional lazy lasso over the bull’s horns. Albert even winked at him once as the bull went bounding by, slipped, and nearly rolled over onto a scrambling Aaron’s leg. But they offered neither help nor insight, only emanating a kind of benign amusement at his antics.
With no warning, the bull lowered its head, pulling Aaron forward hard enough he almost didn’t stop himself from tumbling over the horns. It stamped a foot and charged, right for a cluster of traders.
Some tried to avoid the crushing onslaught, but they were too tightly packed to allow much room to move. The people being bowled over, knocked aside, or trampled was horrific, but Aaron was much more disturbed by how many grinning traders pushed forward, eager to risk being trampled to hang more than one lasso on the bull’s horns in one fell swoop.
A cheer went up as the bronze beast stomped and bucked, more lassoes flying than ever before and from even farther away. Though it wasn’t exactly easy to keep himself mounted, Aaron’s strength was more than enough for the task, allowing him to glance up at the big slate boards. Prices were up. Way up. The value on aluminum and steel had nearly doubled from when he’d last checked. That seemed… extreme.
The passage of time on this trading floor was much faster than the real world events it mimicked, but it wasn’t supposed to be contracted to the same degree as it had been on the last floor. It would be decades before the trading floor was dominated by cocaine and computer code, so the changes he was seeing had to be a reflection of huge market swings happening very quickly.
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The bull grew increasingly vicious and erratic over the next few minutes. It was definitely aiming right for the traders, rather than moving and turning as a threat. It bowled right into, over, and through tightly packed groups and it felt, to Aaron, like it was making an effort to kick and stomp anyone who got near its hooves. Despite the growing violence, there never seemed to be any kind of major injuries among the trampled.
It must be some kind of magic tied into the dungeon’s concept, Aaron guessed. What is it supposed to mean, though? Prices go down with each stumble, but does the aggression towards the traders represent market volatility or something else?
Even as the bull grew more aggressive, it became less surefooted. The stumbles started to come more frequently.
At one point, the great bronze beast’s hooves slipped out from under it in a turn and it skidded along the floor on its side. Aaron barely avoided having his leg mangled once more and had no clear understanding of what he’d done to avoid getting smashed or dislodged while the golem flailed trying to get itself back upright.
The fluctuations in the price of each stock were becoming more extreme, as well. The drops were sharper and deeper while the rebounds were climbing to increasing heights. More traders were groaning and cursing with each stutter, stumble, or slip of the bull’s hooves and the ones coming to the pit this late in the game had a deranged gleam in their eyes more often than not.
This can’t be a good sign, Aaron thought. I should probably cash out before the market does whatever it is the market does that always seems to screw over the people who couldn’t afford to play this little game in the first place.
Lassoes were beginning to slip off the rampaging bull’s horns. The slips of paper — order slips — had acted like knots, or a clip, holding the loop’s shape. Occasionally, they would detach and flutter away, leaving nothing more than a loosely draped rope, free to slide limply to the floor.
More lassoes came to take their place, so the traders hadn’t completely abandoned the enraged — and profitable! — bull just yet, but Aaron obviously wasn’t alone in thinking the good times weren’t going to be rolling much longer.
But how could he get the hell out while the getting was still good? He didn’t have a rope to make a lasso, an order slip to cinch it with, or a good idea of what to put on one if he did.
All he had were the two slips recording his earlier trades, twenty seven shares for steel and forty for aluminum. Maybe they were called options, futures, or something else, but it all boiled down to the same thing — a record of the amount of metal he theoretically owned. Could he do something with that?
He tightened his grips — knees and hands — and straightened his back, craning his neck to look out over the crowd. Further from the bull’s wake, far enough there was little chance of landing a lasso, some traders were still gesticulating and shouting at each other and recording trades on their notepads.
It looks like open call trading is still an option, which gives me a way to sell what I’ve got, he thought. I can’t record the trades myself, but any buyers will probably give me a copy of their order slips.
Staying on the bull might make selling his shares more difficult, but jumping off the thing into a crowd of hapless traders struck Aaron as pure foolishness. Besides, the crowd was motivated and clever. If they wanted his goods, they’d figure something out.
There was nothing for it but to do it. Worrying over whether it was the right call only increased the odds of the bubble bursting. Besides, the stakes here were about as low as they could get. It was a lot of fancy wizard money, but only as Aaron reckoned it. A properly acclimated drakus probably wouldn’t think of this as anything more than pocket change. Probably.
He adjusted his grip with one hand, tightened his knees against the statue's flanks, and took a deep breath.
“Selling forty shares of aluminum at, uh–” He glanced up at the slate to make sure he had the current price and did some quick division in his head. The eyes of several of the traders in the crowd were fixed on him, waiting to hear his price. He cleared his throat and started over. “Selling forty shares of aluminum, going at twenty platinum each! Selling twenty seven shares of steel at sixty gold each!”
There was a rasping flutter and several things flew through the air, headed right for Aaron’s face. He almost flinched away before he recognized that they were lassoes. Just like the ones dangling from the bull’s horns and neck, only angled to fall over his own head.
A couple of the lassoes on the bull actually disentangled themselves and slithered up his body to settle on his shoulders with the others from the crowd, forming a kind of hempen mantle.
Now that’s working smarter, not harder, Aaron thought. Am I gonna have to count all these slips to know when all my shares are sold?
As if in answer to his question, a few of the ropes hanging from the bull flapped their tails towards him tentatively then went limp again. It was as good a sign as any that he wouldn’t be able to fill those orders and that meant it was time for his wild ride to end.
The next time the bull started to stumble, Aaron took the opportunity to jump off. He didn’t quite stick the landing and nearly fell when his feet hit the carpeted floor, but it could have been worse. By the time he came to a full stop and stood up, a small gaggle of traders had gathered around him, notepads in hand and eyes filled with capitalist fervor. Albert, Griffin, and Kiara were there, as well, though they lingered at the back of the scrum.
“Let’s move the edge of the pit,” Griffin called over the clamor. “Less chance of getting trampled away from the heart of the action.”
There were some grumbles from the traders, who wanted their orders filled and noted without delay, but the bull came by on another pass and nearly rolled over the lot of them as they were arguing. That settled the matter and they followed in the wake the delvers made through the crowd.
After some light haranguing and the distribution of guff about preparedness, the traders made copies of their trading slips so Aaron would have a copy. It only took a few minutes to record and fill all the orders, each one accompanied by a lasso releasing its loop and slithering back to its owner.
When the last order was filled, Aaron stepped up out of the trading pit and looked back at the crowd. The bull was truly in its death throes now, going down frequently and lashing out viciously at anyone and anything near it. The prices on the slates were swinging wildly.
“I think I could have made a bigger profit, in theory,” Aaron ventured. “It would’ve been risky, though, so I think I got out at the right time.”
“You did fine,” Griffin reassured him, clapping a meaty hand on his shoulder.
“So is this what each floor of the dungeon is like? Riding a bull was entertaining and all, but if I’d come prepared with trading slips and some of those magic lassoes the whole experience would’ve been pretty lame.”
“Profit-seeking is a major theme of the dungeon,” Albert said. “You don’t have to do any trading, though. We can walk through and pay for a badge on each floor without engaging with… whatever’s going on.”
Kiara cleared her throat. “We can do that, but the Well is more than just commerce and speculative trading; it’s a living history of the City and, thus, the nation. It’s worth paying attention to, especially for your first time.”
“Let’s set aside the fact you just said ‘thus’ unironically,” Aaron said. “When you say it’s a ‘living history,’ do you mean all those traders are real, living people?”
“No, not exactly,” she replied. “Not in the sense that we would think of it, anyways. They’re not necessarily sapient, or even sentient. It’s the dungeon itself that’s the living history. The Well has been active a long time and it can change and grow. The first floor we came through wasn’t always like it is now, for example. It wasn’t even always the first floor!”
“It’s a big complicated shitshow, that’s for sure,” Albert said, poking Aaron in the side. “Anyways! How much lux did you rake in, Mother Courage?”
Aaron flipped through his order slips, trying to keep the numbers straight in his head. “I invested four of the nine-platinum ingots I got in the first floor, minus three gold, so that’s thirty six platinum. Then times nine is, uh, it’s three hundred twenty four gold. Is gold the standard? Anyway, then I bought steel with one ingot and aluminum with another. No, wait, I’m not doing all that math. Hold on.”
He flipped through the slips again. “So I started with thirty six platinum. I sold my steel for, uhm, at sixty gold each, so that’s, uh… eighteen hundred minus one eighty, which is sixteen twenty and that adds up to nine so it’s divisible by nine. That would be, uh, it would be…” He growled in frustration. “Sorry, I can’t keep numbers in my head like this. My brain just won’t hold onto them.”
“That’s alright, I got you,” Albert replied. “You sold steel for twenty times your bid and aluminum was thirty. All told, you cleared a bit under nine hundred plat profit on a thirty six plat investment. Not too shabby, Colonel Mustard.”
“I knew it was a good chunk of change, but I didn’t realize it was that much.”
“You did the bull dance, man,” Albert added. “You were feelin’ the flow, workin’ it. Workin’ it. Let’s get your winnings and crawl deeper down this rabbit hole. Sound good, Daddy Warbucks?”
There were a host of questions fluttering around Aaron’s thoughts — and a not-so-mild urge to respond to Albert’s nicknames; did he think Aaron wouldn’t get the references? — but he set them aside for the time being.
There was more to see in the Well of Greed and things seemed like they were barely starting to get wild. He wanted to see how the dungeon developed and, perhaps more than that, he was burning with curiosity to find out more about the echo dungeons that were supposed to be hidden near the end of the dungeon.
If the Well itself isn’t enough to be considered an echo of the past, the echo dungeons must be something to see, Aaron reasoned.
On their way to the wall that would lead them to the next floor, the four drakus stopped at a cashier’s window where Aaron could turn in his trading slips. The young lady behind the brass bars took them and placed several stacks of gleaming platinum ingots on the counter.
Each ingot was stamped with an eight-pointed star, marking their value at nine platinum. There were ten columns of ingots, stacked ten high. Two more ingots sat atop the pile topped by a single platinum coin. Each was stamped with the same eight-pointed star, though none had a circle around them.
That made for a total of one hundred and two nine-platinum ingots with an additional four-platinum coin, worth nine hundred twenty two platinum all told. That was a good bit more than four times what his Greater Wand of the Elements had cost.
He set the coin aside and scooped up four ingots from the pile, dropping them into his coin purse. He had a plan for the coin, but the ingots put his initial investment for this floor back in his hands, leaving ninety nine ingots shining in the room’s soft light.
Should I exchange some of this for aether? Aaron wondered. Or will that encourage me to be less cautious with the money?
“I’d like to exchange these for something smaller, please,” he said, pushing eight of the stacks forward then adding one more ingot on top of the pile. He slid the remaining fifteen platinum ingots into his coin purse.
The cashier could count and she was obviously more familiar with lux exchanges than Aaron, so it only took a moment for her to pull the platinum back behind the cashier window and replace them with a single new ingot.
This one was stamped with the increasingly familiar eight-pointed star, but it didn’t look like any metal Aaron had ever seen. It was a pale blue, so light it was nearly back to being dull silver, only it had an opalescent sheen and seemed to reflect a light that wasn’t there.
When Aaron’s fingers touched the nine-aether ingot, he thought he could almost feel the mystic energy of the quintessence that currency had been forged from. It hummed, it thrummed, and it roiled against his skin, yet it was so faint it could have easily been his imagination. He dropped into his purse with the rest of his lux rather than dwell on the sensation too long.
“Thank you,” he told the cashier, picking up the coin from the desk and turning back towards the ornate doors that would take them to the next level of the Well of Greed. He rubbed the coin between his fingers as they walked towards the wall.
Griffin patted him on the back. “You walked in with a hundred plat and after only two floors, you’re up to over a thousand. Not too shabby!”
“Thanks,” Aaron said, holding up the coin. “I think I’m getting a feel for the place. I’m guessing this will be enough to cover all of us on the next floor. Right?”
In his peripheral vision, Aaron saw Griffin hesitate and shoot a glance to the other delvers. He knew they didn’t want to give too much away about what he might find in the Well of Greed, but the nagging feeling he’d had about the dungeon was growing. That glance practically confirmed it wasn’t all funny metaphors and whimsical allegories waiting for them ahead.
“You nailed it, dude,” Griffin said, laughing and tapping a finger to his nose. “One silver, one gold, one platinum, and so on. Well spotted, bud.”
“Well, let’s see what more there is to see, then,” Aaron replied as they reached the doors leading to the next floor.
He pushed them open and walked through, determined not to hesitate. The past was what it was. No matter how ugly it might be, you had to be willing to look at it for exactly that: what it was.
Nothing more, nothing less.
I think it’s going to get real fucking ugly, though, he thought as he took another step deeper into the history of New York City and, of course, America.