Chapter 43: 44: Branding

Minor Soul Potions: 19 Obols each - 12 sold = +228

Antidotes: 15 Obols each - 5 sold = +75

Bone Daggers: 49 Obols each - 1 sold = +49

Odd and ends: ~40 Obols each - 0 sold = +0

Glass Chickens: 30 Obols each - 0 sold = ~0

Mushroom-caps(Blue): - sold 0, bought 11 (6 each) = -66

Mushroom-caps(Orange): - sold 0, bought 8 (5 each) = -40

Iron-Ingots - sold 0, bought 3 = -60

Magical Talisman(Glass) - sold 1 = +51

Total (Gross) = +237

5% Merchant’s guild deduction = -12

12% Taxes = -28

10% Savings and upkeep = -24

Total (Net) = +173 Obols

Earnings = 86 Obols each

Jubilee sighs, looking at the calculation before throwing a single coin down into the change bowl, down below the counter. “Slow day. Well… that’s fine,” they mutter. “They’ll come back in a few days, once their potions run out.” They look over the sheet of paper once again. “You didn’t get many mushroom-caps today?”

Fresh nods, thinking as she sweeps. “I think we bought most of them, at least until the dungeon resets,” she says. “When is that, by the way?”

Jubilee looks over to her and then back to the ledger. “With the new moon. Everything resets in the dungeon. But you still have your shortcuts, so you can skip the trash at the top, if you have any unlocked.”

“Oh,” says the girl plainly. “So, how was it?” asks Fresh finally. Jubilee hadn’t spoken a word about their day yet, opting to quietly help her with the evening work instead and Fresh didn’t want to pressure them, as they seemed rather stressed.

“You’re going to need to buy more mushroom-caps," they say.

“Huh?” asks Fresh, setting the broom down to start restocking her soul-potions.

“The church wants our soul potions, even if they’re weaker than Donata’s, she isn’t supplying anymore. That means we’re the biggest game in town. And they want to play.”

Fresh turns around, rubbing her arm. “Jubilee…” they look back to her. “What happened to Donata?”

Jubilee stares at her for a moment and then returns their gaze back forward to the piece of paper that they had already finished reading a long time ago. “Don’t worry about it.”

Fresh steps forward, pouting. “I want to know!”

“Drop it,” says Jubilee, waving her off.

Fresh marches forward, grabbing Jubilee and spinning them around to face her with an unusual hardness in her eyes. “It was me she went after! I have a right to know!” Jubilee swipes her off with a hiss, flinching as the hands leave their body. Fresh lowers her gaze, feeling bad about having been so rough just now. “Is she…?”

“You don’t need to know,” says Jubilee plainly, calming themselves with a deep exhalation.

Fresh locks her eyes onto Jubilee’s again. “I want to know! It’s my business!” This time Fresh raises a finger, poking it into Jubilee, who lets out an agitated grunt. “We’re friends, so tell me the truth!”

Something shifts in their eyes, the hardness weakens just a little, but only to seemingly fortify itself elsewhere. Jubilee wraps their hand around her finger, the leather glove clenching tightly, as they pull her hand off of themselves. “Stop. Touching. Me,” they hiss and the two of them glare at each other for a while. After what feels like a minute, Jubilee lets go of Fresh’s finger and walks away to straighten the chickens.

“The merchant’s guild was pissed because she went too far and almost ruined their newest cash-cow,” says Jubilee. “The church was pissed because she summoned a vampire in their city.” Jubilee stands in front of the shelf and grabs a chicken, twisting it a few inches to the side. “Apparently, she had some black-market summoning scroll. That’s just like that old hag, to have creepy shit like that.”

They turn the chicken back again halfway.

“Having one of them mad at you is bad enough, but both?” Jubilee looks back towards her, turning only their head to look over the shoulder. “Let’s just say that they…” they turn back to the chicken. “…They split the difference.”

Fresh rubs her arm uncomfortably at the insinuation. “So… she’s dead?”

“By now? I sure hope so. For her sake.”

Fresh rubs her sleeve and looks down the pile of coins on the table, as both of them stand there quietly for a while. The only audible noise is the rubbing of the feet of the glass-chicken shifting over the wooden shelf. Jubilee walks back to her. “Come on. Let’s make your bed.”

“Huh?” Fresh looks over to the obscured figure.

“We still have some wood left in my room,” says Jubilee, going up the stairs. Fresh watches them ascend, deciding not to push the line of questioning any further. Her glance simply falls down to the pile of coins below her down on the counter. To the eighty-six Obols that were her earnings for the day and she picks one of them up, looking at it.

“It’s all for this, huh?”

“Are you coming?” barks a voice from upstairs. Fresh jumps and runs up after them. In truth, she doesn’t even need Jubilee to help her make the bed. But, she appreciates the gesture and as the two of them sit together quietly in her room, stacking lumber and gathering a few odds and ends from the pantry, she can’t help but feel a warm feeling in her chest, one that she isn’t quite too sure what to do with. As the joy of her friend’s efforts mix in with the darkness that seems to be lurking everywhere else in this world.

Jubilee tells her about their visit to the church, which was apparently less of a meeting on equal footing and more of a lecture on ‘civil responsibility’. The short version is that the merchant’s guild had obligations to the church, which in turn means that they have obligations to the church, at least as far as the cardinal saw it. The end result is that they would be selling a fixed amount of potions to the church directly for their stockpiles. One hundred a week.

The pricing was left open for them to decide.

“Huh? Isn’t that good?” asks Fresh, as they set the sideboard against the rest of the frame that they had constructed. “We’ll just charge them a little bit less than normal and say they’re getting a discount,” suggests Fresh. “We’ll still make a profit because of our low costs,” she says, fastening the plank onto the construct.

“No, dumb-ass. They said we can ‘decide’, which is just them giving us rope to hang ourselves with. If we don’t support them, they’ll ‘discourage’ people from buying from us,” says Jubilee, sighing. “The priests do a lot of good in this city, I won’t lie to you. The day-to-day types are decent folk, they basically hold this whole whatever good is left of this city together. But upper-management?” Jubilee shakes their head. “It’s all politics up there, just like everywhere else.” They let go of the board, seeing if it will hold. “None of those red-robed fucks has laid hands on anything other than gold coins in years. That’s all they care about.”

Between their work, she takes a break to go make a fresh batch of moon-water. Jubilee watches her curiously as she does so.

Soon after, they return to their project. Fresh crafts several thin, springy boards out of the longer planks, lining the inside of the frame with them, as they discuss their plan. Soon the bed is finished and Fresh looks at it with delight, asking Jubilee if she can hug them. The answer of course, is a resounding no and another accusation of her being some odd-ball degenerate.

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She doesn’t have a mattress yet, but two old blankets on top of a box-spring is a luxury compared to sleeping on the floor. She’d figure out the mattress later, when she had time to explore town again.

As for the potions, they agree, much to Jubilee’s anguish, that they’ll ‘sell’ their hundred minor soul-potions a week for a token price of only a single Obol a piece. It isn’t great economics on paper, but they need the sanction of the church and a hundred a week is a bargain for that, as Fresh explains it, much to Jubilee’s shock. Their supply of blue mushroom-caps is running tight though, especially if they want to keep up with the adventurer’s demand as well, but Fresh is optimistic.

“I’ve learned a lot of new stuff with my class so far, but I have a new idea though! Something not witchy!” she says, raising a finger, but then covers her mouth to let out a loud yawn. “But I’ll tell you about my idea tomorrow.”

Jubilee nods, not too interested in any more of her ideas now either and they both go to bed.

Fresh lays there alone in her room, surrounded by glowing potions, as she lays atop of the hard bed-frame. It isn’t ideal, but she smiles, pulling the blanket up higher to cover her shoulders and neck, her eyes gazing one last time at the dark corner of the room, beneath the window as darkness falls around her.

“You aren’t going to get me, demons…”

The morning comes soon enough and the girl, demon-free, rises up to get ready for the day with a bright smile. Time flies, and soon enough, she finds herself sitting downstairs behind the counter, hunched over forward and drawing on a piece of parchment paper.

“So?” asks Jubilee, placing a cup of what apparently is some kind of bone-broth down in front of her, together with a roll of sturdy looking fabric. Fresh takes the cup with a smile, thanking Jubilee and opting not to ask which bones in particular it was made out of. She takes a sip, it has a deeply rich, fatty flavor that is very satisfying. If not a little heavy for these early morning hours.

“Thank you,” she looks down at the paper in front of her. “Wait. I almost got it…” she looks back up. “Can we take a day off, by the way? Sometime, so I can get one or two more levels?” She clasps her hands. “Pleeease?”

Jubilee rolls their eyes. “We can, but let’s just get everything stabilized here. We just opened, so we can’t just stop now.”

“Mm!” nods Fresh, happy with that compromise as she holds her hands above the things laying there. “So, I was thinking. We’re selling a weapon, we have some potions, we have a piece of jewelry. So that means we’re missing one big category!” she exclaims excitedly. “Well… two if you count food.” She taps her chin. “Should we start selling food?”

“No,” says Jubilee plainly. “I saw the bite-marks in that mush-mush. I’m not eating anything you cook.”

Fresh puffs out her cheek. “It was a survival situation!”

“Yeah, yeah.” They wave her off. “So? What are you making?”

Fresh wags her finger and her head from side to side, as she finishes her preparations. “You mean, what are WE making?”

“Huh?” asks Jubilee quite dryly as Fresh unwraps the fabric.

“It’s your house. So I think you should have something in the store too!” The girl smiles. “It’s a good feeling, making things that people like.” She lifts up the fabric, holding it up.

“I’m not a crafter,” says Jubilee, waving her off. “Besides, people bought the stuff I got from the dungeon.”

Fresh purses her lips, narrowing her eyes as she glares at her friend. “That’s not the same! And you are!” She hands the fabric back to Jubilee. “Your sub-class is tailoring!”

“Just to fix my own clothes, I’m not really… I’m not really good at it,” they explain, holding out their tattered sleeves as if to emphasize their point.

Fresh shakes her head. “My potions were low quality too, but people liked them!”

A small hand waves through the air as Jubilee takes a step back. “I don’t know how to make anything really.”

The girl grumbles and pushes the fabric against Jubilee, forcing them to take it. “I told you, that I have an idea, so will you try?” She leans over the counter with wide eyes towards an uneasy Jubilee. “Pleeease~?”

Jubilee groans in annoyance, but then relents. “Fine! What do you want me to make?”

Beaming, Fresh holds out the drawing to her friend. “This!”

“…A bag?”

Fresh sways the drawing from side to side. “Not just any bag!” Jubilee stares over the paper as the girl goes on. “An official Dungeon-Item-Shop tote bag! We can write our name on the side of the fabric and then, whenever somebody buys a lot of stuff, we can put it inside of one of these bags for them to carry easier!” She winks. “For a few extra Obols, of course!”

Jubilee rubs the chin of their mask, as if thinking. “They do tend to buy a lot of potions at once…” But then they shake their head and then rise back up. “But adventurers already have bags most of the time. So nobody will go for it.”

“True! But haven’t you noticed?” she says, leaning in excitedly, giddy about finally having won one over on Jubilee. “Most adventurers don’t carry their bags with them all day!” she explains. “A lot of the time, when they walk around town and stop in to our store, they’re bag-less. Which of course, makes buying a lot of things at once a pain.” She clutches her cheeks. “Isn’t it lucky that we’ll have just the right solution to that problem though?” Fresh smiles brightly. “Plus, it’s free marketing! If every bag has our name on it, then they’ll carry us around the city and pay us to do it!”

Jubilee stares at her, somewhat lost for words and they both stand there in silence for a while. Fresh’s determined expression softens, as she feels her party-member’s wary gaze eying her up and down. The strain of the silence becomes too much, she breaks eye contact and looks down to the side. “Sorry…” Rubbing her arm she goes on. “I thought you’d like the idea.”

The room is quiet.

A bright light shines out and Fresh looks back down just in time to see the small cloth bag being flung into her face.

“You take care of the writing, I always make a mess with ink,” says Jubilee to her.

The bag flops down to the counter. Fresh beams, setting to work.

Razmatazz

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