11. A MAGICAL BANANA
The magical ball of light carried Nanoc down the steep stairwell at great speed, bouncing off the walls. When it reached the bottom, it burst with a ting and dropped him on the ground. The caves were darker than anywhere Nanoc had ever been; even the night sky had stars, but there was no light in the caves, and the very weight of the black nothing was like great weight on the souls of all who stood before it. Or most of them, anyway. Nanoc was not scared of the dark. He was not, to his mother and father’s great embarrassment, scared of much. He was certainly not scared of breaking the rules. He pulled a glass vial from his pocket and placed his index finger inside.
“Summon fire elemental,” Nanoc said.
Red mana gathered at his fingertip, coalescing to form a flame the length of a fingernail that dropped into the vial and danced around, casting a flickering red light. Nanoc pulled a candlestick from his pocket and screwed the vial into it so that, from a distance at least, its light might be mistaken for a candle.
“Are you hungry?” Nanoc asked quietly, dropping a few shreds of dry paper into the vial.
The elemental burnt the paper up quickly and glowed a little brighter to illuminate the maze of shelves that spread out of the bottom of the stairway, reflecting off strangely formed weapons and the silvery teeth of long-dead animals. The elemental jumped and spun eagerly as it saw the great mass of tasty, flammable rubbish.
“Careful now,” Nanoc warned the fire elemental. “Don’t make me put you out.”
Fire elementals were illegal in the empire, regardless of their size. Nanoc had been born with the skill of summon fire elemental, but his father had warned him to never use it for fear of being thrown in prison by the guards of Order. Nanoc had agreed with his father at first, but the elemental was a useful secret, and Nanoc had spent many nights reading by the light of the little elemental. It served a similar purpose in the caves as he bent over the scroll he had been given, trying to make sense of it.
This was not easy.
The storage caves were one of the only places in the empire that were seriously untidy. For centuries, the apprentices who brought the treasure down to the caves had tended to throw it on the first open spot they found on the shelves, and it was a brave clerk who spent much time trying to correct this. In any case, the local ghosts tended to move things around as the whim took them, making a map of the storage impossible. It was a mess, but luckily for Nanoc, clerks had abilities specifically that would allow him to find what he was looking for. The scepter would have been stored with files and forms, and even the ghosts respected the need to keep objects with their paperwork.
“Find paperwork,” he said
Light flowed out of him, forming a spectral pen that hovered in the air. He showed the pen his form; it dipped in acknowledgment, then sped off into the darkness. Nanoc followed it slowly, picking his way over piles of rusting magical weapons and old bones.
“What a bunch of rubbish,” Nanoc muttered to himself. “There is nothing of any value here.
Nanoc was entirely wrong about this; the heroes often failed to understand the true power of what they found, and there were treasures buried beside the dysfunctional artifacts and dented shields. The tooth of a golden dragon lay in the inner pocket of a dark mage’s robes; the robes themselves were dusty and moth-eaten, but the tooth was as powerful as the day it was taken. Nor was it alone: a bottle of the red plague had been stored on a shelf of half-empty potion, the soul of the great demon Retsnom, bound to a branch of the world tree, had been stacked beside a set of witches’ broomsticks. One of the three existing copies of the Neckronominum, the legendary book of tasty dark magic recipes, had been cast into a box of enchanted cookbooks. And so on.
Any god who happened to be watching would have laughed at the little gnome as he walked past a dozen items that could have changed his life forever. They would not have been laughing had they known what Nanoc was about to stumble onto – they would have struck him down at once and without hesitation. But they didn’t know and didn’t act, and Nanoc kept walking in the darkness, searching the shelves.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Scepters, scepters, scepters, I see you on the shelf,” Nanoc sang to himself, raising his glass vial of fire. “Scepters, scepters, scepters, I’ll fetch you for that elf. Hah, that’s quite catchy. Maybe I should be a bard—"
He stopped suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. A quiet rustling filled the air, and a cursed skull whispered threats and promises, but this was normal enough for the caves and nothing to worry about. Nanoc shrugged and took a step forward. The tip of his foot caught on the skeleton of a long-dead chimera, spilling the creature’s bones across the floor and into the shadows. The movement disturbed the dust, which rose in a cloud and made Nanoc sneeze violently. There was a loud bang from the darkness and a crash that suggested that somewhere, just out of sight, something fragile had fallen to the ground.
“Whoops,” Nanoc said cheerfully. “I hope that wasn’t expensive.”
The chimera’s skull rolled back out of the darkness and hit Nanoc in the leg. It split in two, revealing the greatest and most dangerous treasure the warehouse had ever held, a treasure capable of scaring the gods themselves.
“It's… a banana,” Nanoc said, surprised.
It was, but not just any banana: it was large, ripe, and looked as if it had just been picked off a tree.
“But that’s… impossible,” Nanoc said. “How…”
He picked the banana up. It was surprisingly heavy.
“What are you, then?” Nanoc asked it, holding it up to his light so he could have a better look.
Bright letters spilled out of the banana and formed a sentence in the air:
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Magical binding!
The Banana Of Mayhem demands you bind with it or DIE TRYING!
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“Right,” Nanoc said, surprised.
The words began to flash, demanding an answer. The words grew larger and larger until Nanoc thought they might fill the whole cave.
“No thanks,” Nanoc said. “I don’t bind to mysterious magical items on the first date.”
He threw the banana over his shoulder. It wheeled through the air, bounced off a pile of giant skulls, rolled beneath a rack of lances, and landed on a statue that was half-hippo, half-scorpion, and all hideous. The banana fell into the statue’s mouth and was wedged in tightly between huge hippo teeth. This was not a worthy resting place for an artifact so powerful, and if fruit can be said to have a mood, then the banana was annoyed. It glowed with a dull, red light that cast strange shadows through the bones.
Nanoc didn’t notice. He was too busy thinking about what he would have for dinner.
“Soup, again,” he said glumly. “It’s always soup.”
The hippo statue holding the banana melted, spitting the banana into the air. It bounced off a shelf and pinwheeled through the open visor of a full-plate suit of armor, ricocheting around before shooting out a hole in the side. It broke through a row of nearly empty potions in a spray of pink clouds. It flew onward, knocking over swords and shattering skulls with relentless abandon until, inevitably, it shot right back at Nanoc, hitting the candlestick in his hand and shattering the glass vial holding the tiny flame elemental.
The elemental, finally free from its glass prison, leaped onto a shelf of scrolls. It burnt its way through paper and wood, then spread to the next shelf and the next, merrily racing through the caves. The flames were wild and hungry, consuming everything and spitting out a choking smoke. Nanoc cursed as he watched the unfolding disaster, unable to stop it. The Guild would be furious.
“I’m about to get fired,” Nanoc said, then stared at the flames that were coming towards him. “Maybe literally!”
The flames were between him and the stairs; the flames were everywhere. He could feel the heat on his skin, drying his eyes.
There was no escape.
One way or another, he realized, he’d never work as a clerk again.
“Good,” Nanoc decided. “I hated that class. I hated it!”
Such sacrilege would have gotten him arrested had he been heard, for Order did not encourage rebellion in any form. Luckily for Nanoc, he was alone, alone with the fire. He watched as the flames reached a shelf of potions, the fires exploding into blue and green clouds. He could feel the air rushing past him to feed the fire. Nanoc sighed. There was only one way out. He turned his gaze back to the banana that had caused all his troubles. It was still waiting for his reply. He didn’t know if it would save him, but he’d rather try something stupid than just give up.
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Magical binding!
The Banana Of Mayhem demands you bind with it or DIE TRYING!
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“Fine then,” Nanoc said. “Do it.”
Bright yellow light exploded out of the banana, engulfing Nanoc in dancing flames. The gnome stared at them in amazement: they covered his body but didn’t burn. The banana rose upwards, dragging the flaming gnome with him.
"Watch out for the roof!" Nanoc warned,
The banana hit the stone and melted its way through it, burning its way to freedom.
Nanoc’s life as a clerk was over.
His life as the world’s first gnome barbarian was about to begin.