Anna rushed off to find her friends, they normally met one level up as that where they all wanted to live. They were already waiting for her as she was late from doing the rituals.
“Hey Anna!” One of he girls called. “We were just about to head off without you.”
“Ha, I bet Claus was holding you all back!”
“Oh Anna, hi. Didn’t know you were coming.” The tall handsome boy hugged her briefly half-heartedly with one arm. “I thought you might be working or something.”
“No silly, we made these plans last week. I said I wanted to get you something nice if the travelling merchant was in!”
He only now turned to her, smiling. “I’m glad you made it before we headed off.” And kissed the top of her head, being one of the few boys tall enough who could. She positively glowed.
They started moving off straight away while she was trying to find a way to tell them her news and the fell into the conversation they were having before she arrived about which mining company was having the most luck.
They moved up another level, there was no way a travelling merchant would go so many levels deep with anything worth having. Anna went along quietly just happy to be holding Claus’s hand.
When they got a level up they stepped off and headed to the market. They walked past all the normal stalls until they got to the centre where they did indeed find the travelling merchant. Everyone was bustling about ignoring the fact he was struggling to lift heavy boxes out of his cart. Anna stepped forward, keen to explore the new strength she felt from her Might essence. She lifted the heavy boxes with ease that he was struggling to shift let alone lift. He thanked her afterwards and gave her a bottle of sweet juice she had never seen before. She turned back to her friends and they were looking at her like they had never seen her before.
“Anna have you been working out or something?” One of the boys said.
“Watch out Claus, she’s stronger than you, she’ll be the one throwing you around the bedroom soon!” One of the other boys joked cruelly joshing Claus.
Claus looked pissed and Anna blushed with embarrassment.
“No! My dad got me essences!”
The girls crowded in to hear the details and Anna bathed in the attention. She didn’t see Claus hang back with the boys looking unsure, the boys all jibed at Claus quietly so the girls wouldn’t hear.
“Ha, if she’s got two essences she’s got one more than you Claus!”
Claus had the common Shovel essence, an outrageous waste of magic considering he was too lazy to get a job in a mining city.
One of the other boys had a rare look of concentration on his face. “So she’s got two, she gets one more and she’s iron rank.”
“Yeh dummy we know how it works.” Another boy said.
“No, think about it. Claus, no idea why you’re with her…”
“Because she’s desperate and she’ll buy him anything he wants!” One of the other cruel boys laughed.
“But.” The boy continued. “If she gets to iron rank she’ll be way hotter…”
It was like a lightbulb went off in Claus’s head. He sauntered over with a huge smile and put an arm around her. “Congrats babe.” When he called her babe Anna felt a little flutter in her chest. “Two essences.”
“Yeh he got me the…”
“You know what you should do? Celebrate, lets do something for you. You’re always so generous. Let’s see what the travelling merchant has got!”
He wheeled her around to the stall with her head in a whirl. She was accepted as one of the girls in the group but they were either prettier or smarter than she was, her height and her poor upbringing put her at the bottom of the pack. Their attention on her felt amazing, or did, until Claus paid her attention then everything else felt unimportant. She nestled into his arm and chest as he moved her to the goods she had helped move and away from the girls.
“Ah! My best helper! A special discount for you I think! Such a sweet girl.” The merchant said with a lilting accent she’d never heard before.
Claus was rapidly scanning the items, not being subtle at all he grabbed a cube off the table. “How about this?! One more essence and you’ve got the set! We could even all chip in and get the ritual room for you. You must have the money for this right?”
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He hadn’t even checked what the essence was. The stall keeper looked bemused. Anna was nervously looking between the essence, Claus and the merchant. “How much?”
“My dear sweet girl would you like to know what it is first? These things are forever, not a fleeting decision to be made.”
“Err yeh sure, what is it?”
“For you today my dear!” The man went into sales personality, grabbing he essence back. “We have for you a special essence, from lands afar, from the magical deeps where tropical sunshine does not reach; the popular Octopus essence! Rare in these parts this is maybe the first ever to reach this far down the wonderful city in the mountain. A versatile essence that benefits the keen eyed would-be adventurer in many ways.” Her heart jumped at the thought of being an adventurer. Not many made it out of the high magic city to strike out on their own. “I would tell you young lady the many wonders this could bring to your life but a smart girl like you surely already can imagine the wonder!” He had drawn a crowd by holding the essence aloft.
“Sure. I’ll take it.” She said, passing him her purse.
The man looked at her then, aware something was going on and had a flash of kindness.
“Come inside young lady, come. We’ll negotiate the price.” He held a hand on Claus’s chest as he tried to come with her into the tent he had set up. He had a privacy screen he used when he wanted to negotiate in private. “Young lady, as much as I would like to sell you this I implore you to think of what you are doing. No one should be coerced into such a thing.”
“I’m not, I want this. You said yourself it’s a good essence.”
“My dear please do not be naive, I am a salesman, I would sell you snow telling you it is a rare purity when you have it by the caravan above. This is a common essence were I am from and only rare here in the mountains where it has limited use.”
“But it will make me an iron ranker, I’ll be more interesting, Claus will like me more and you said I could be adventurer. Please! Let me buy it.”
He looked at her, he was a salesman not a priest of generosity. He felt he had done more than his due diligence and gave her a very generous price and wished her luck.
The group left the marketplace immediately, heading down multiple levels to one of the now abandoned mine shafts that had proved fruitless. The rest of the group had been very grateful when Anna said she knew how to do the rituals herself as none of them wanted to use any of their own money.
The ritual went well. She only needed to adjust it a little from her first one and she loved the praise she got as no one else knew how to do them. She barely had time to register the finality of what she’d done once she’d absorbed the Octopus essence before her confluence essence appeared. None of the group had any idea what they were looking at. Claus was the cool guy because he had one essence and it was only the Shovel essence. None of them had the magical knowledge background to recognise what the floating cube might be. She mistook Claus’s look of greed and jealousy for one of adoration and smiled at him. She’d heard enough to know what to do, to not waste this incredible opportunity. She reached out and took her confluence.
She remained conscious afterwards through the purging but it was the worst thing she had ever been through. She used the wall to help herself to her feet and stood up. She found herself on her own, everyone had abandoned her when she started oozing foulness. Claus was waiting at the end of the corridor, ready to make his exit as far away from her as he could get.
“Hey, well done Anna, once you’ve cleaned yourself up come and see me yeah? Alright bye.” Then he ran of away from the smell.
Anna was dazed and confused, she felt weak but so much potential at the same time. She stumbled down the corridor away from the puddle of filth, trying to scrape the worst of it off herself. She felt inside her for the new power there. She put a hand on the wall and as she did it changed colour to match the wall, blending almost perfectly so she could only just see the outline of her hand and she could feel it there. Pleased with the power she felt for the other one. She felt an emptiness and was flooded with knowledge she had not put there, she was suddenly aware of a ritual, a chant and what resources were needed. She’d heard of familiar powers but never seen them.
She was suddenly overwhelmed and alone and scared. Down in the abandoned mines she realised what she’d done. She’d taken her fathers gift and made light of it. Taking another essence without consulting him, without even telling him what she was doing. The money she’d spent was selfish and she had little left. She realised she was going to go home with nothing more than the ability to change her hand to the colour of rock. Her father only had two essences himself and would think so little of her. Her mother would be bitterly disappointed.
She made a decision then. A bad decision she would later regret but she couldn’t go home as she was. She needed to go home with a useful familiar.
She had attended the city tour when she was a child. She had attended it multiple times, it was free and it got her out of the lower levels. If she had been in a more sensible thinking state she might reminisce that even as a child she had a yearning to get away from the under-city that the merchant had reawakened in her. The tour had taken them through the magic society and she knew where the storerooms were. She got incredibly lucky, she managed to dip herself in a pool of old water someone had used for washing clothes to get rid of most of the smell then she used her new camouflage power to follow a magic society worker into the vault. She looked around amazed at all the wealth in the room. She reasoned that no one would miss what she took as long as it was the bare minimum. She snuck out, going slower now she was carrying a lot of ritual materials. She thought she was going to have a heart attack when someone stopped her on the street. She had put all the material in a scrap sack she found in the bin behind a shop and held it behind her back.
“Hi! Don’t be embarrassed I forget to take bags wherever I go! I wish I had one of those nifty personal space powers sometimes. No judgement on grabbing the sack, very thrifty. I couldn’t help but notice what you put in there, I’m Tony, I work it the ritual rooms, are you doing a familiar summoning?” He looked keenly at her, all the innocence of enthusiastic youth.
“Err yeh, spent all my money in this though, I was going to find some room down below to do the ritual.”
“You mean the summoning of course! Those were some rare materials, must have cost you a few spirit coins! Mind if I tag along? I love these rituals.”
With Tony’s help she managed the much more difficult summoning ritual. Afterwards she was completely exhausted lying on the floor to recover. Tony was looking all around.
“Did it work?”
“It must have done right?” She also looked around, raising her hand to move some of the disgusting matted hair out of her face.
On her forearm she saw it and instantly fell in love with the little Ink Kraken looking back out at her as it bobbed as if in a current in her skin.
Tony and Anna were making there way through one of the lower levels back towards her home and he back to the magic society. He had no powers to find out what it was any more than she did as he was very new. They were stopped by the city guard.
Anna was in tears in front of her father. She had never wanted this to happen, couldn’t imagine that this would ever happen. The city guard had explained they had tracked her down from her aura for the theft of the extremely expensive ritual materials. It was the first her father had known about her now being iron rank and having an iron rank aura with which to track. The guards explained they had options. They could take her to the unaffiliated mines for indenture or he pay the cost of the materials. The unaffiliated mines could be a life, or a death sentence. The mining was dangerous work and with only indentures working in them the unaffiliated mines were unregulated to save cost, with the cost of the materials she stole it would be the rest of her natural life to pay it off.
The guards had left with the promise of payment. He would have to sell everything and take a loan. He had been furious when she told him the truth about what had happened and where her savings had gone.
He stood in front of him, offending him in every way. It felt like she had deliberately scorned his gift. She stank, covered in filth still, he barely recognised the miserable creature and to make it worse the sight of the black tentacle tattoo sent him into a rage. His wife had already slammed the door on their bedroom refusing to come out while Anna was there.
“Get out.” He said quietly.
“Dad…”
“I said get out!” He shouted. He was a hard man but he never shouted. “Get out of this house and never come back. You. Are. Not. Welcome here.” He moved then, to physically push her out of the house and she flinched. There was a moments hesitation before he walked around her and opened the door and wouldn’t look at her.
She fled to Claus’s house and called up to his window. He saw she was still filthy and turned up his nose. She explained everything that had happened up to the window and he looked up and down the street to see if anyone was watching.
“Err, look Anna I don’t think it’s going to work out between you and I, you’re iron rank now and I’m not… you’re too good for me now! So, see you around?” Then he shut the window on her.