Chapter 31: Ch. 27: Faustian Bargains

There are a variety of smaller seas that exist. But don’t let them fool you; they are some of the deepest. For example, the Sea of Imus, also known as the Bottom Sea, is not only called so because it lies at the bottom of Eryth. No, its depths are also known to be some of the deepest; this is known because they provide nesting grounds for leviathans and krakens. –Oceans and Land Masses by [Geographical Sage] Keanu Silvertongue.

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“Say what?” Arthur could not believe what the Djy'veli woman was asking of him. Livierre had given him the breakdown of what they were supposed to do. Arthur did not like it one bit.

“ You want me, some rando you just picked up in the desert, to go fiddle with something that you just told me is rumoured to drive people mad?! Because of your so-called [Chief] whatshisname, who, by the way, I've not seen hide nor tail of has a skill that tells people I am the right person for the job?”

“That is so,” Livierre said, herself at a loss. “ If we do not do it, well—this oasis will cease to exist,”

“ That is a lot to ask, don't you think?” Arthur said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“All this time, you've been leading me on for a project that you thought I might be capable of because, let's see, your Mastresse Venera used an inspection skill on me and found out that I am a [Magitech Crafter] which was very rude by the way—” Arthur sneered.

“ We'll do anything—” Nora said, stepping in. “ The clans always keep their word,”

Arthur gave Nora an exasperated sigh, before plopping onto one of the stools. “ I don't know what to trust anymore,” he said. By then, the sisters Dalaia and Pesphis had come in to witness what had happened.

“ The Mastresse said to compensate you handsomely. And also you wouldn’t have to pay for the treatment, which, by the way was—how much to exorcise nightshade and wurmroot Nora?” the [Artificer] asked the Dhampir.

“Wurmroot and nightshade in combination make for a very hard case to treat. Of course with my and Mastresse's Venera skills—”

“ Very expensive I get it—” Arthur forestalled her. “You should have just quoted me the price and I would have paid the first time,”

“I do recall someone running out of the healer's tent,” Dalaia snorted from behind him. The two sisters were sitting on a bench that pulled down from the wagon wall.

“ And whose idea was it to stake me to a peg like an animal?” Arthur sniffed.

“ It's not our fault you did not know this is how we conduct our business,” Dalaia pointed out. “ We do not trust humans—were you any other race, we would have been more forthcoming,”

“ For the love of all that is good— I am not other humans,” Arthur protested.

“ That's the thing that human males say,” Pesphis giggled, “ And then they run without paying before the dew dries,”

“Huh?” Arthur blustered , as it dawned on him, “ This and that are two different things—how did you even think to make such an allusion? Ugh, you know what—never mind.”

“ Hear me out, Master Arthur—we'll give you your hovering board—” Livierre started.

“ Hoverboard,” Arthur scowled.

“ That—we'll give it back to you along with the materials you need to fix,” Livierre commented.

“ You truly are not making any sense, Miss Livierre,” Arthur interrupted. “ If you’d asked nicely the first time, maybe I might have tried to do something instead of cooling my heels and following after you like a lost little puppy. And all in the hopes you might give me my bill and my board and we can forget this farce ever happened.

“ Also, we are willing to give you a guide to wherever you would want to go, I'm sure you wouldn't want to run into a pack of wild skarglith or sand wurms in the desert. Or worse sorts than the sand bandits you wiped out,” Livierre said.

‘That is a low blow,’ Arthur grimaced, he did not want to be reminded about that incident, and neither did he think he had the stomach to look someone in the eye and kill them. Unless he had no other choice, of course, he was not that naive. One incident had shown him that even the most unassuming of people were dangerous, like a certain girl who shot him with nightshade and wurmroot.

As for skarglith's and sand wurms, that was worse; sand wurms even more so. If his hoverboard broke down again because of an extended flight, and he happened to be in sand wurm and skarglith territory—the less said the better

Arthur hemmed and hawed. From the looks of things, Venera that Djy'veli woman was not about and was probably days away. How the clan camp even ran itself spoke to some sort of cohesion. There must've been a few lieutenants out and about.

Just because he couldn't see them did not mean they were not around. He wasn't really an expert on their hierarchical structure either, but he bet the chief must've been one scary bastard. It was always the ones you didn't see coming that got you.

If he could do this one job and get away from the clan then he was all for it. Staying near Venera one more time would drive him up a wall. This was an opportunity he was going to take because another might not come along but he trusted the clan only as far as he could throw them.

 

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“ I need information, then I'll think about it,” Arthur finally said. Livierre shared a look with the pink Djy'veli women who took that as their cue to leave. They went to stand right outside the wagon like guards. Nora made to leave but Livierre told her to stay. The Dhampir took up the other stool that Livierre had freed up as she went to pick up what looked like her personal binder of sorts.

It was made of leather fashioned around sheets of metal to give a stiff cover. Rings held the parchments within together while supplementary notes and other esoteric chicken scratch on loose sheaves peeked from within . Before she got started, she pulled out several polished stones that looked like pebbles and dropped them equidistantly around the table. Arthur recognised them as wardstones.

As the ward went up, Arthur could tell that the magical construct was more powerful than his. The air around the table literally warped and wavered forming a mirage against the air around them.

“What I am about to tell you should never be repeated outside of this wagon,” she said. “ That goes for you too Nora—there is no other way to do what we're about to undertake.”

Nora nodded grimly.

“ Is this that bad?” Arthur asked with an uneasy smile. “ This seems kind of much, don't you think? I am an outsider —how do you trust I won't blab?”

“ Because Dalaia and Pesphis know your face—” Livierre said deadpan. “ Don't you know that most Djy'veli assassins are women?”

‘Frag!—,’ Arthur felt cold sweat trickle down his spine. The sweet-talking, seemingly harmless Djy’veli women were even more dangerous because you never saw them coming from the front.

“Fair enough—” Arthur said, shifting in his seat.

“Good,” Livierre smiled. The smile did not reach her eyes; the aura around her was also something else—like she was about to channel [Mad Wizard]. Was all that facade as a scatterbrained, easygoing artificer also a ruse? It was giving Arthur whiplash.

“Sygnumeric Artificers are a rare breed of artificers that exist among dwarven crafters. About one in every hundred of their artificers has the potential for it—some say it takes a certain kind of madness to become one. But if one succeeds, they're paid well—” Livierre said, patting her binder.

“ That …is ominous,” Arthur said. That was the worst pitch she could have picked.

“ Maybe that is true or maybe not—” Livierre shrugged. “ Getting information from a dwarf is like squeezing water from a rock. They don't get drunk easily, most poisons that could kill a human take a while to take effect. So you can imagine how difficult it is to get information from them the soft way, so we go the hard way.”

The blush on Nora's face was all Arthur needed to see where this was going.

“ Can we please move along,” Arthur said,cringing.“ I get it already.”

“ Ahem,“ Livierre cleared her throat. “ What I have here is decades of research from our networks. There is not much to go on. Maybe it won't even help you—but, all we know is that [Sygnumeric Artificers] possess some skills that make dungeons pliable to some extent.

No one is sure, but dwarves have been around as long as the Illvari. Maybe even around the same time, whichever race that created dungeons existed. To some extent, they know more about dungeons than all the races alive, or so we think. The class [Sygnumeric Artificer] is proof of that—”

There was no way to put it succinctly without context. It must have taken the whole of three quartz to get things down, but in the end, Arthur got more than he bargained for. It was something one would sell their soul for and could potentially get him killed.

The short of it? The Dwarves had unlocked some secrets of the dungeons thanks to their experience with runecraft. After all, they were the forerunners of the subject. They had the basics down, representing magic by using characters they could use to exert their will on the World, which opened up a host of other possibilities.

While the rest of the races were stuck on matrices, the dwarves had already moved into an equivalent of fractal mathematics but for magic. It was like Mandelbrot’s postulations all over again. The dwarves had managed to quantify the unquantifiable; mana. To understand how they did it, you would have to understand why Benoit Mandelbrot said,’ Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.’

The calculations to predict mana storms, the metronic units they introduced for measurements, their tried and tested methods of doing magic like [Sages] who were this world's researchers and scientists. Heck, even the thaum as the unit of measurement for mana was something they must have come up with using fractal mathematics.

They even went as far as to replicate the dungeon shards to make sygnums, their magical computers. It all seemed like a fantasy of another world being described to him, and yet he could not deny what he was hearing.

The contents might have sounded like Greek to the Djy’veli; they got the implications of the information they had but not how far-reaching they were. Contrarily, the contents sure sounded like mathematics to Arthur. They were patchwork accounts from different courtesans, and hearing about it was enough to get Arthur's [Basic Runelore] pinging like crazy.

It was as though the skill was waiting for him to make the connection. There was an epiphany waiting with bated breath on the tip of his tongue; another layer of magic beyond the matrices. The fundamental truth of magic—maybe even the World's workings—he dared not show that even to the hosts right there in the room with him. Too much knowledge was never a good thing.

“ So you understand now, yes?” Livierre said. Nora was right there with them.

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’What do I say? Half-truth? I don't even know how Nora detects lies—she's a Dhampir, so heart rate, can she smell lies? No,’ Arthur couldn't help but chuckle deprecatingly.

“ You make a good case—you want me to fix a freaking dungeon core because the dwarves have proved it can be done. And you have done your homework, including some sort of passphrase they use for their sygnumerators? ” Arthur grinned ruefully.

“ Do you realise that all of this is based on conjecture?”

“The clan [Chief] has never been wrong before,” Livierre said, shutting her binder. “ Besides, I have studied dungeon shards—they always seem to do something, but I don't know what it is. You can have a look at one if you want,”

‘ You don’t understand, a dungeon shard is a mere egg compared to the dungeon core. And the way you’ve put it sounds like there is a fail-safe somewhere that can turn your brain into mush,’ Arthur left unsaid. They couldn’t be convinced otherwise. The fervent light in Livierre reminded Arthur of the mania Nora had told him about.

“ An [Sygnumeric Artificer] came and told us it would cost us a pretty sum to fix the enchantments that make the oasis. They have tamed dungeons to create wonders, predict harvests, the weather, and how much an aership can carry. Can you believe it? “ Nora said, was rather giddy about it.

“ Fine, give me your notes and tell me how you expect me to go about it,” Arthur said.

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“Mastresse Nora,” Arthur nodded to the dhampir as she set down a platter of food. A reed-woven cloche covered it.

“ Please, none of that,” Nora said flusteredly, “ I am hardly at the level that would garner such a form of address,”

He was back on the roof of the fortress keep, and finally reunited with his hoverboard.

It was pretty banged up, but the metal covering the underside had protected most of the foci for the aerofloats.

“ You should not sell yourself short, Mastresse Nora.” Arthur grinned. “ As I understand, the number of healers who can treat poisons like nightshade and wurmroot in the Dust Bowl can be counted on one hand.”

‘ Besides, this world’s Mistress and Miss have different connotations, Mistress, a second wife or a concubine, Miss is used to address an unmarried woman. Then madame was for women in professional classes and the likes, and the contracted form ma'am is used in professional capacity. ’Arthur sighed.’I want a word with whoever thought to come up with so many ways of address.’

“ Is something the matter Master Arthur?” Nora asked with a frown. “ You haven’t eaten since the Xazhu brew. I know it keeps up your energy, but it is no substitute for morn repast,” she added, pointedly looking at the cloche covering his lunch.

“ How am I supposed to eat with someone hovering over my shoulder like that,” Arthur said, thumbing at the large Djy’veli standing guard at the other end of the roof.

“ Ah,” Nora muttered. She got up and, with just a nod, dismissed the hulking brute. Was he dumb? Attempts to chat up the guy were tantamount to talking to a brick wall, a red brick wall. In fact, Arthur would have gone as far as to say the man was a walking pile of brickshithousery.

The hard muscles on his biceps and pectorals could make a rock quail and the black indifferent orbs of his eyes were all violence incarnate. His presence there was stifling even without a weapon. Those big mitts of his were not just for show.

“ Thank you for that,” Arthur said, slumping in his chair. Staying close to such a stifling presence was enough to make the acid in his stomach churn. Arthur had gotten more than a sore eyeful of the man.

“ Mastresse Nora, a question if you don’t mind?” Arthur prompted. He took the hoverboard off his lap, returned the rune scriber to his tool chest, and then disappeared, along with the rag he’d been using as an apron. ‘[Cleanse]’ he thought, casting the cantrip on his hands. After a couple years of using hand sanitizer, one could never quite kick the habit.

“ I don’t mind. Was that a [Cleanse] spell?” Nora asked curiously as the last of the blue motes faded from Arthur’s hands.

“ Yep, a cantrip. Only tier 0 or 1 thereabouts,” Arthur said. “Comes in handy in a pinch,” he added, taking off the cloche to reveal the food within. The aroma hit him like a slap.

“ Whoa―what on Ea…Eryth!” he hastily corrected as he looked at the assortment of food on the platter. Well-cooked cutlets dripped a rich spicy seasoning, garnish was sprinkled on the crusty brown main course alongside cut cyntrants, a bowl of brown dipping sauce sat on the left while a bowl of mash sat on the right. A white spoon made from ivory and a two-tined fork sat on the platter.

“ How’d you even contain all that aroma using a reed-woven cloche?” Arthur gawped.

“ Our women crafters never reveal their secrets,” Nora grinned proudly. Her fangs showed through; it was an endearing expression. It looked cute on her, like a gap toothed smile. Or it was just Arthur’s bias.

“ This is a lot too―” Arthur started. “ Won’t you eat with me?”

“ I do not wish to impose―” Nora said.

“ Food tastes better together,” Arthur wriggled his eyebrows. ‘ Not that I wouldn’t trust your people to put mind -control substances to ensure I don’t bail out or anything. He sweetened the deal, “ I’ll throw in a glass of wine if you do.”

“ Ah―if you insist,” Nora replied. She watched Arthur take out his own utensils, two wine glasses that accompanied the drinks, and another plate, fork, and spoon came from his [Inventory Chest]. Then came the Vysinni wine. Nora couldn't help but squeak when Arthur held the bottle out. ‘ Yep, it looks expensive alright.”

The glass bottle looked as though a live branch had grown around it. There were even fresh leaves at the neck of the bottle with two berries. The liquid sloshing where the glass showed through was a claret shade. Exquisite could not begin to describe sylvani red wine; It did not encapsulate the aroma that came after.

“ So, the question? You were meant to ask?” Nora mumbled, most entranced by the glass in her hand.

“ Oh, yes, that. What are all the tattoos about?” Arthur inquired as they dug into the food. The cutlets tasted like some white meat he couldn’t place, like chicken and lobster. But the crust had to be flour from sun-dried and pounded dwarples. That’s what they called potatoes, a portmanteau of dwarven apples. Apples was the sylvani word for tree fruit.

“ You mean the inscriptions?” Nora murmured, sipping from her glass. Her eyes seemed droopy with bliss. It was amazing how just a couple sips had put the woman at ease and mellowed her out.

Arthur had not yet touched his wine, but Arthur was sure that was not how fast it was supposed to work. He eyed the bottle of Vysinni sceptically.

“ Hmm?”

“You know that, depending on your race, one can only use up to a certain proportion of their mana pool right?”

“ I guess,” Arthur nodded.

“ Inscriptions are meant to bolster one’s attunement to their affinity and make them easier to use,” Nora said. “ For augmenters, it helps them tap into their mana since most lack [Mana Sense] or similar skills and as a result, have to train to gauge their pools by instinct. Also, they cannot really access in the same way mages do,”

“ Ah, that’s interesting,”

“ It is not without its risks. Your body has to be tempered before that,”Nora cautioned. “The process of it is painful and not for the faint-hearted.”

“ So training is meant to increase the threshold of what you can bear huh?” Arthur remarked.

“ Yes, so you do understand,” Nora said,flushed with excitement. Her cheeks were a little pink.

“ Hmm,just the same way we can't use all the air we breathe.” Arthur hummed, looking askance at the bottle to see if the alcohol content was written on it. “ Some of the air comes out unused—just the same way we can't use up all of our muscle strength. There is always an allowance you can always push against, and then push a little further than that.”

“Is this common knowledge where you're from?”

“ I guess it is,” Arthur said, scratching the nape of his neck. ‘ Damn, I forgot [Regeneration] makes it so I don’t get drunk that easily,’

“ I wonder what it is like—” Nora trailed off. “ I never knew my home,”

“ Oh, sorry about that—I can't recall much of it either,” Arthur replied. “ Translocation accident and all that.”

“ Ah, apologies. It must be frustrating. To be a prisoner of your own mind.”

“ Eh,yeah.” Arthur gave her a wobbly wave. “ They'll return when I'm ready.”

“ For your sake, I hope that is so,” Nora said, staring at a nearly empty glass.

“ More?” Arthur offered, tipping the wine bottle towards her glass.

“Please,” Nora said with a smile. Her eyes seemed to twinkle.

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