As it turned out, the sun was still in the sky, showing it was still mid morning, which sounded about right. Still, Ershwal couldn't shake the feeling that something had just fundamentally changed in the world. She stepped into a corner and pulled out Reynoldes, inspecting the metallic gleam in the blade. She pushed her mana through it, watching it flare a dim green. It felt normal to her, nothing to indicate that somebody had overrode the bound item or something crazy like that.
She thought about the man’s comment about neutral mana, but she had trouble even wrapping her head around the concept, much less replicating it. What does that even mean? The way he spoke about it so casually felt vaguely insulting in a professional sense.
Feeling up Reynoldes again, she felt strangely violated as she sheathed it back, like how she imagined it would feel like if another woman had hit on her man while she just stood there….
And all of this, it also completely overshadowed that fact that the man could read and write, a skill many women had not mastered, even more so than men. The crazy dude was an enigma wrapped up in a mystery, sealed away inside a box with red warning labels.
A part of her thought it was best to let the box be and to just walk away. A part of her felt that everything this morning was a trick, a dream, or in some other way unreal. Unfortunately, those two parts of her were dwarfed by the section of her pie that wanted to know what was in the freaking box!
It was there, she realized, standing in the dark corner of the Day’s Rest, that she would do whatever it takes to get that man on their team and to get a peek. At least provisionally.
That was why she spent the rest of the morning following up on any rumors that started circulating about that man.
What she found was not encouraging. Apparently, word about him had traveled fast, along with some infamous exploits, like humiliating a guild officer in a combat test yesterday. Seducing Priestess Olady. Seducing a random peasant. Seducing a lady from house Yilner. Seducing her. Apparently, according to the rumors, the man seduced every woman he came into contact with, like a god damn incubus sex god.
There were rumors swirling around about him being involved with something big at the Yilner estate, but all those reports were contrary and pointless. One wacky rumer had him being some exiled prince from the capital with exagerated tales of court intrige and sex. Lots of sex.
Ershwal hoped the poor lad had a thick skin.
She groaned when she realized that if her team ended up accepting him, there would be rumors about him banging every one of them, like some sort of crazed orgy. Apparently, in everybody’s eyes, sex was the only thing th ex-slave was good for. Which confused her, even though she had initially thought the same, as the man was far from what anybody would call a traditional beauty. He had more freaking muscles than her, for god's sake. What is he supposed to be some sort of sex demon? He’s been here for three days and he, apparently, has slept with half the city.
Eventually she realized she would not get anything of value by prying anymore into public sentiment.
She made it to the delver’s guild a little early for the meeting, feeling exhausted already. She stood near the entrance hoping to intercept her members and prepare them a little for the meeting before they all made fools of themselves, more than they were going to already, at least.
Funny enough, it was Raksha who appeared first.
“Good to see you again,” Ershwal said with as much cheer as she could muster. She pointed to a circular booth in the corner that she had reserved for the meeting. “You can sit down if you want, and go ahead and order yourself something. It's a team meeting, so the expenses will come out of the group budget.”
“You're not coming with me?” He asked as he headed that way.
“Ah, I’m going to have a… word with my teammates before they meet you.”
Giving her a suspicious glance, he headed for the table and sat down. As he moved, Ershwal saw as pretty much the eyes of the entire guild hall tracked his progress. Cursing to herself, she realized she had better develop some thick skin too. And quickly. She wondered briefly if there was a spell for that.
She waited only a few more minutes before Alesby showed up, looking fit and proper. As always the woman was stern and unflappable, only Ershwal’s years of experience with her clued her in that the woman was just shy, especially in a crowd of people. She was married to a nice man who worked at one of the seamstresses in town, the two living comfortably with a couple kids. It had been annoying the two times she had backed out of the group for her pregnancies, taking months off and slowing down the team. Oftentimes, when delvers take off work for kids it naturally turns into permanent retirement from the delver’s guild, but Alesby was one to keep her duty and promises. And, while the pregnancies annoyed Ershwal to know end when they happened, those feelings had slowly given away to envy over the years.
“Table’s over there, Raksha’s already sitting,” She said, pointing at the booth again. “Err, no calling him a whore or anything like that, got it?”
Ershwal realized Alesby was probably the last person she needed to tell that, and the woman just raised a single eyebrow at her and moved to the table, no questions asked.
Ershwal hoped the other two would be just a fraction as polite.
The other two members showed up together, to no surprise. Thankfully, neither of them were drunk, yet. While both were professional enough while on the job, in the off hours the two liked to get into... trouble. Ershwal couldn’t complain though, she joined them more than once in the past.
“Alright, let’s go, we are all here,” Ershwal announced as they came in. She led the trio to the booth. “Okay you two, be polite, I’ve got a good feeling about this guy. DO NOT call him a whore in any way.”
“Holy shit, the rumors are true!?” Irellia, the big one, exclaimed, “He totally seduced you! I knew you were getting a little desperate for a man, Ershwal, but, come on, you can do better than an ex-slave!”
Ershwal paused mid step, stiffening, before whirling on the two. “What the fuck did I just say to you?! We have not slept together and believe it or not, he is a serious contender for our team. I haven’t delved with him yet, but based on what I have seen so far, I am already voting for him. At least to try him out as a provisional member. Got that? This is a serious meeting, so don’t fuck around!”
“You serious, sister?” the other one asked, Vinny, who was skinny as a rail. The two always did make an odd pair. “We’re trying to make it into the top five of the guild, net get laughed out of it.”
“I am serious, I cannot stress this enough. If you two so much as insinuate anything like sexual harassment, I will fine you, and I will keep fining you until you are both broke basterds.”
“Okay, okay,” Irellia said, backing off, “We got it, we’ll play nice with the ex-slave man.”
Eye twitching in irritation, Ershwal gave them both another mean glare. She was glad her authority wasn’t being questioned here, but she was already writing up demerits in her head. As much as they respected her leadership, she knew their self restraint was lacking in this area.
The trio marched up to the booth and Ershwal saw Alesby and Raksha appearing to already be hitting it off, the two talking animatedly to each other. Ershwal felt a warmth in her heart; trust Alesby to be the best of them. She hoped this would mean the start of a nice productive meeting.
Her hopes were shattered when she heard Vinny suddenly exclaim behind her, “Holy mother father almighty god above!”
Ershwal turned to her team, wholly dumbstruck by the idiot.
Vinny, for her part, was staring at Raksha, looking for all the world like a fish out of water.
If they weren’t looking at them before, the entire guild was watching them all now.
“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Irellia asked, smacking Vinny on the back. Ershwal was glad the large woman was having a normal reaction, for once.
“It's ah… ah… “ Vinny looked panicked, looking around the guild. Then she ducked her head down and rushed toward the booth. “Privacy spell, privacy spell.” she whispered frantically to her as she rushed by.
Getting the message, she pulled the annoyed Irellia forward to the booth so they could all be in range of the spell when Vinny activated it.
Not even waiting for them to be seated, Vinny cast the privacy spell and the rest of the guild hall faded away into mumbled obscurity.
“That was subtle,” Alesby stated dryly.
“Captain!,” Vinny whispered urgently to her, for all the good it did. Everybody at the table could hear her. “The man’s got no less than ten enchanted items on him, right now!”
At first Ershwal didn’t understand what Vinny was saying. Then she didn’t believe what she was saying. Then she looked over at Raksha and saw an annoyed scowl on his face.
“You must be Priestess Olady’s former disciple? She spoke highly of you, but I must say your tact leaves me unimpressed. She took the whole thing in stride, mostly.”
“Wait, wait.” Ershwal cut in, her mind reeling under the implications. “You have ten enchanted items on you?”
“Well, twelve if you include the two in my bag. Wait, thirteen, I forgot about that other one.”
“That’s crazy, this is a joke right?” Irellia asked, looking a little scared.
“No, it's not a freaking joke!” Vinny replied, sounding close to hysteria. “Thirteen enchanted items!? Are you insane? Where did you get so many? You realize you could buy half the city with that?”
“Please, they are actually not worth nearly so much,” Raksha replied with a maddeningly calm voice, stirring his drink with a spoon. “They are all custom built for me, and half of them would be ruined if you tried to modify them. I suppose my sword would be worth quite a bit though, as it's not mana bound to me. If anybody was brave enough to try to take it. Mostly I slip by with anonymity. And you’re fucking that up really nicely, thank you.”
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“What do you mean you haven’t mana bound them to yourself?” Ershwal asked, feeling stuck on that point.
Raksha just shook his head. “I’m a man, so no mana signature, remember? I can’t bind them the traditional way. I’ve been looking into an alternative method, but I haven’t had much success yet. Not enough to actually try to bind one yet.”
“But how did you, a freaking slave,” Ershwal raged, trying to find some sense in the world, “manage to get enough gold to buy thirteen custom enchanted items? It took five years of saving every copper I could get to buy a standard set of mana blades-”
She cut herself off as the realization dawned on her like waking up to a horrible nightmare.
“You…. You…” she said, pointing at the seated man and hopping up and down, acting for all the world like she was accusing him of murder most horrible, “You made them yourself didn’t you! It's the only thing that makes sense!”
“That makes sense?” Alesby asked, scratching her head.
“Can you make me one?” Irellia asked hopefully, revealing the entirety of her shamelessness in five short words.
“Got a couple thousand gold?” he replied coolly, shutting the idiot up. Then he sighed and added, “Okay everybody, let's all calm down. We don’t have to make this that big of a deal. Priestess Olady recommended you all to me and I assumed that meant you all could handle this in a professional manner. I had hoped to spoon feed you all this to lessen the shock, but this girl here has all the tact of a bull in an antique shop. Can we just take a pause and try to start over?”
Nobody spoke for a bit as they tried to digest the man’s words. Irellia and Vinny slowly found their seats at the table. Eshwal kept standing though, feeling like she had gotten punched in the gut.
“Well, this meeting is going well I think,” Raksha added, taking a sip of the drink he had ordered.. “Nobody has called me a slave whore yet, that’s a big plus. Thanks for that girls, that got old after the first hundred times.”
It was Vinny who spoke up next. “I don’t like it. Being around somebody with that kind of gear with no protection is just asking for us to get robbed and killed. No offense man, but I like my life.”
“Oh please,” Raksha replied with an eye roll, “When people see me, they see a slave first, and then a man, and that’s as far as their thinking goes. I literally walked into the Yilner estate yesterday with exactly what I have on me right now without even a second look from the guards. They gave Priestess Olady a search, as if she was hiding a dagger in her robes, but I might as well have been carrying a swamp reed at my side for all the attention they gave my sword.”
“Now perhaps if you all break from the privacy barrier and start screaming from the rooftops that I am wearing a bunch of enchanted items I'd get some inquisitive probing. I am aware that sometime in the future, it will become well known. I can keep it hidden for now, but when I start killing high level monsters, people are going to start figuring out something isn’t right. But you all won’t rat me out, right? Not after Priestess Olady recommended your group to me?” He gave them all a shrewd glance as he said those last words.
“No, of course not,” Alesby responded firmly, then glaring at the others when they didn’t respond immediately.
“Of course not, good sir,” Irellia said quickly, already trying to butter the man up.
“Err, yeah, I would never do that.” Vinny replied convincingly, “I owe the Priestess everything, I would never betray her.”
They all looked at Ershwal.
“Who are you?” She asked, incredulous. “How did you learn to enchant? That’s one of the most closely guarded secrets in the empire!”
“I told you last night, Ershwal,” Raksha replied evenly. “I was desperate and got a lucky break. It made up for all the unlucky breaks my shitty life had been throwing at me. I seized that chance, and, honestly? I just figured it out.”
“Huh.” Was all Ershwal could say. She slowly sat herself at the open seat.
“I vote her onto the team,” Irellia said suddenly.
“Oh, get a grip, Irellia!” Ershwal almost shouted, feeling very annoyed and off kilter, “the man’s not going to make you an enchanted item just because you are being nice.”
“Let’s all just calm down” Alesby's soothing voice came in. “Okay? Just calm down, and we can start this meeting over again, and behave like normal people. We're here to meet and greet, not interrogate the poor man, right? I’ll start.”
Irellia grumbled something, but Alesby straightened and introduced herself. “I am Alesby, I specialize in long and medium range damage, I always keep a crossbow on me, but I mostly deal with the longbow or just straight up target spells. I know a few defensive spells, but I try to focus on consistent damage.”
The atmosphere of the table cooled down a bit, and Erhswal once again thanked God that he had managed to snag the girl onto their team all those years ago, if only for her help in these kinds of situations. Alesby was from a religious household, and was raised on very traditional values on how women should conduct themselves. Truth be told, Ershwal felt like Alesby was better leadership material. While Ershwall was good at decision making in the dungeon, she always felt a little lost in these types of circumstances. More so today.
Irellia spoke next, the big girl reaching over the table to shake Raksha’s hand. “Hellooo, I am Irellia. I protect people.” she stated with a big grin. Raksha gave her a polite smile in return, “Um, I specialize in defensive magic, keeping the monsters' attention and pushing them around, making sure they don’t get at Alesby or Vinny.”
“And that’s me, then,” Vinny added in with a shrug, doing her best to appear nonchalant. “I’m Vinny, I was taught by Priestess Olady, almost joined the clergy too for that matter, but that life wasn’t for me. I like the gentleman too much, you see? As you can imagine, I'm similar to her, mostly support magic and buffs. I know a few offensive spells, but again, not my specialty. And this is Ershwal, our brave leader!” Vinny added loudly, ignoring Ershwal scowl. “She likes to get in close and go, ‘stab, stab, stab, stab’. You can probably tell by all the knives on her.”
Annoyed, Ershwal batted Vinny’s hand away. “I also scout, and make camps, and plan, and do the thinking for both Vinny and Irellia here.” Irellia just chuckled at the jab.
“Oooohhhh my god!” Vinny suddenly said, looking as if she just realized something. “We can finally get a decent cook in our group. Assuming you join us, of course!” she added with a smile.
“Actually,” Raksha responded with a flat look, “I never learned to cook properly. I’ve dealt with field rations most of my life.
From Vinny’s expression it was clear she hadn’t even considered that a possibility. Ershwal felt like slapping the fool.
“I guess that leaves me then,” Raksha said. “As a man, I obviously can’t use magic spells. But I am not helpless in the dungeons, besides the passives on my enchanted gear, there are some active ones built in like barriers, phantom strike, or whatnot. And to head off any questions, yes, I can activate them. Not to blow all your minds too much in one day, but the reality is that women and men both have mana, men just a lot lot less. We also have no mana signature, but what I can do is activate the various enchantments on me.”
Ershwal enjoyed seeing the dumbruck look on his team’s faces, feeling completely smug about it. She had already put two and two together earlier.
“I usually act as a part of the frontline, I’m no walking shield like Irellia, but most of my enchantments are defensive in nature. I can also deal out a healthy amount of damage if need be.”
Ershwal snorted internally. With the kind of equipment Raksha was carrying, even a child or incompetent idiot could waltz through the first few layers. Which was how House Yilner’s eldest daughter was able to do it, along with a host of House Mages. When the arrogant house brat fancied a delve, she would always request the Ravenous Jaws to escort her group as they were the highest ranked non-house affiliated group in the guild. Ershwal knew that with the equipment that brat carried, along with what the house mages had, the group would normally have no trouble in the five layer dungeon. Ershwal suspected the Matriarch made her daughter hire escorts because she knew how much of an idiot her daughter was.
“What I specialize in are talismans.” Raksha said, getting Ershwal’s attention back on track. He held up a sheet of paper with some weird drawings on them. “Are any of you familiar with them?”
Everybody shook their heads and Raksha shrugged. “I thought not, it's not a very popular branch of enchanting, proper enchanting pays a lot more, and what kind of enchanter would bother to actually delve for money?”
Ershwal considered the question, despite the rhetorical nature of it.
“You can think of talismans as little temporary enchantments. Push a little mana into them and it activates the spell stored inside immediately with no extra attention required. I’ve inscribed a simple light spell on this one, go ahead and give it a try.”
He pushed the paper over to Irellia who looked around nervously. She eventually took the paper, and after inspecting it for a moment, held it away from her like it was a snake and pushed some mana into it.
The paper lit up like a lamp, not too bright, not too dim. Irellia’s face turned from shock to awe at it, a huge smile spreading across her face.
Then the light faded and the talisman disintegrated into nothing. Irellia’s face paled.
Chuckling, Raksha said, “Don’t worry, that’s supposed to happen. Talismans are temporary things, they burn out after their use. And of course, unless you are using superior materials, they are really weak, when compared to the real spells. But they are relatively cheap to make! I made that one this morning using a fragment of a beast core and a page from my journal. Nothing fancy. I keep a stack of various ready to use talismans with me at all times. It’s not something I’ve made into the foundation of my fighting style, but its utility and support cannot be understated.”
“Anybody can use them?” Alesby questioned, the value dawning on her as she spoke.
Raksha nodded, “No training for new spells, just pull and plug, is what I say. I can inscribe hundreds of different spell signs. In the past I gave a few to my companions for emergencies.”
Silence creeped over the group as they pondered the implications. Ershwal could see the value. There were a lot of useful spells she’d been meaning to learn over the last four years, but she hadn’t had the time, money or focus for other spells. Having a repertoire of ready to go spells would be amazing. She’d always wanted a barrier spell in her back pocket when she got herself in a situation a little too sticky. Vinny was good, but usually she was out of her effective range when things were getting dicy. No pun intended.
“How are these things not more prevalent?” Vinny asked.
“Well, like I said, no enchanter would bother spending the time making these, when she could be making real enchantments instead. I assume some of the disciples in the guild will practice their inscription by drawing talismans, but that is pretty much it. Plus, they are cheap, but not dirt cheap. I’d say each talisman is worth at least half a silver. The paper alone is hard to come by and for higher tiered talismans I need higher tiered beast cores. That’s a lot of money to burn.”
“But still,” Vinny protested, “There would be a huge demand for these if they were available. I don’t see why the disciples wouldn’t just be printing these out for some easy coin.”
“Well…” Raksha said awkwardly, “I said they would be practicing by making talismans, but that’s only because failure is so much cheaper. The truth is, even though the materials are cheap, it generally takes the same skill level as making full enchantments. The skill needed is the same, you are just using different materials.”
Ershwal didn’t know how to respond to that. The man was basically saying that each talisman he wrote was the equivalent of any high value enchanted item, barring the material cost. And he must have made hundreds, if not thousands of them, by the sound of it.
She felt like she was slowly coming to an understanding on how the man made it out of the slave corps.
“Just how skilled are you?” She couldn't help but ask. “In the enchanting field, I mean. And no bullshitting.”
“How would you know?” Irellia asked with a smirk. Ershwal ignored her.
Raksha laughed at the question. “How would I know? It’s not like I get invited to the conventions. Despite everything, I am still an ex-slave, and a man to boot.”
Ershwal wasn’t buying, not any of it. Raksha felt like trouble, he’s been in the city for two days and already he’s stirred up the hornets nest. Everything about him screamed wrong, from his abilities, his mana, his intellect, his enchanted items, and his talismans.
This man was dangerous, Ershwal’s instincts were telling her that this was true. Despite what Raksha was implying, there was no way he accomplished all this without backers, powerful backers who invested a lot into her.
Backers who wouldn’t accept him simply walking away.
Suddenly, Ershwal felt like a very small person in a very large world.