Chapter 95: Chapter 95: The blue of water hides the silhouettes of many froggy things

Rhine stares at him. “…Why are you upside down?” he asks.

 

Hineni crosses his arms, looking down at the boy. He’s standing upside down on the ceiling, his boots firmly attached to the rafters above the restaurant. “Don’t worry about it,” replies Hineni.

 

“Are you sure?” asks Rhine. He rubs his lip with the back of his thumb. “I feel like this is something I should be worrying about.” Rhine turns his head to look at Sockel, who is sitting behind the front desk. She doesn’t bother looking up from her scribbling into a ledger and just shrugs. Rhine turns back towards him.

 

“It’s fine,” replies the man. “How are the plans coming along?”

 

“Good,” says Rhine. “I’m just taking lunch now,” he explains, pointing to the door. “I was gonna snatch some drinks. I’ll be done with the plan in a couple of hours.”

 

Hineni nods. “Thanks.” He digs into his pocket, pulling out a coin and letting it drop out of his hands. Rhine catches it. “Get me one too, please.”

 

Rhine nods. “Okay! Be right back,” he says and walks out of the front door.

 

Some customers walk inside and look up towards Hineni. “Don’t worry about it,” says Hineni, looking at their perplexed faces. He awkwardly climbs over the counter. Sockel opens the door to the library without a word, not looking away from her work and he falls inside. “Seltsam, I’m coming in,” he says.

 

“H- hello! Are you upside down again?”

 

“It's a work hazard,” replies Hineni. “How’s the library business been running?”

 

“Pretty good,” replies Seltsam’s voice from behind a shelf. “We got another transcription order today. It was that same guy from last time,” she explains.

 

“The one who wanted those five pages?” asks Hineni. “Wasn’t that months ago?”

 

“Sure was,” she replies. “Most people just want to borrow books and that’s it. But he wants the pages for his research.” She shrugs. “Sockel says he pays good money. So I just do it.”

 

“Sounds fine to me,” says Hineni, walking the same path towards the upstairs corridor that he had taken last time. “Keep up the good work. Uh - Can I get your help here, please?”

 

An annoyed voice snaps from the side, flying over towards him. “Yeah, yeah,” says Eilig. “If it’ll get you out of here faster,” says the fairy. Hineni hadn’t noticed her before. She must be spending the day with Seltsam again. That’s nice. He’s glad that the two of them have become friends. She flies over to the door and opens it up and then snaps her fingers.

 

A pole, made up out of ice, curves around the inner balcony and then moves through the door to the library.

 

“Thanks,” says Hineni, grabbing hold of it and climbing out of the room and into the hallway. The door behind him slams shut. “Afternoon, folks,” greets Hineni, waving to a group of adventurers who were just returning to their room. “Don’t worry about it.”

 

“Huh…” replies the leader of the party, looking at his comrades. He shrugs and they do too, before simply going into their room.

 

That’s the upside on being in a lower class neighborhood like this. People quickly learn to mind their own business.

 

Hineni makes his way to the attic and then heads upstairs to his family’s old space upstairs. Making an effort to crawl down the wall, despite the owl-god’s magic pulling him back up towards the ceiling, he grabs the hatch to the heating shaft and pulls it open.

 

Clambering his way inside, he pulls himself around and into the heating shaft. It’s a very tight fit. Thankfully, he only has to go to the forge-tower, which is right there. He pulls himself along through the shaft's tunnel and then flops out, landing on the ceiling of the forge tower.

 

Walking around the ceiling, doing his best to not think about what would happen if he took a step out of one of the open windows, or if the spell stopped working now at this height, Hineni walks around to the window where the metal owl usually sits.

 

“Who~” says the owl-god, sitting there next to it. She tilts her head, clicking excitedly with her beak. “Hineni has solved Obscura’s mysterious maze!”

 

“I just walked around the house backwards,” says Hineni, shrugging.

 

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“MYSTERIOUS MAZE!” she hoots, flapping her wings at him.

 

Hineni rolls his eyes. “Can I go back right-side up now?” he asks. “Rhine’s going to be back from lunch soon and then we need to start the forge.”

 

“Hineni had fun, yes?” she asks. “Obscura is great at games and riddles, yes?”

 

He plants his hands on his hips, staring at her. “You know…” he starts. The man considers telling her that, no, actually, she isn’t. Every time she wants to play a game, it’s really just her running him through a labyrinth of sorts, presumably watching him from the shadows. But Hineni decides that there is a healthier middle ground to be found here than the blank truth.

 

“— Fun enough. But I think it would be more fun if we played the next one together,” he suggests. “Instead of just me by myself.”

 

The owl-god clicks excitedly with her beak. “A date-game?” she asks.

 

“Sure,” replies Hineni. “We’ll make a day out of it.”

 

“Very well!” hoots Obscura. “This future date-game will be Hineni’s prize for solving her mysterious maze!”

 

“Great,” says Hineni. “So uh, can you help me get back down from here?” he asks.

 

“Yes,” agrees Obscura. “But first, they will sit here and watch the city, yes?” she asks.

 

Hineni shrugs. It’s still their break. So, he has a little time. “Sure. Just set me back right side up again,” he says.

 

---

 

Rhine rolls out a sheet of paper across the workbench, weighing down the sides of it with some metal bars to stop it from folding in on itself. “So here’s what I got,” says Rhine, running his finger over the depiction of a skull.

 

Hineni takes a sip of the drink that Rhine had brought him from the city. It’s a small, glass potion bottle, full of a light blend of sour juice and water. It’s the newest trend in the city that some adventurers had come up with, after not knowing what to do with all of their empty glass potion bottles.

 

The fabricator’s sketch is a grim picture, depicting a mourning face with eyes that stare up towards them and a howling maw that shows an image of loss.

 

“We’ll make the skull out of the same cobalt-chromium blend we used for my staff,” says Rhine. “For the poison-water elemental bonus,” he says. Rhine points at a second drawing on the side, a depiction of the view of the skull from half-way inside of it. “We’ll fuel the water-magic with a sapphire, which is going to be expensive as hell though.”

 

Hineni shakes his head, looking at the drawing of a gem, nested inside of the skull’s cranium. “We can afford it,” explains the man. “At this point, it’s more about the artistry than the money.”

 

Rhine nods. “I’ll tell Sockel to put in the order. I bet she can get one pretty quickly.”

 

Hineni nods. He’s sure about that too. Though the sourcing of the gemstone might be somewhat unethical. Then again, they’re talking about making massively destructive, murderous weapons here as if they were Sunday art-projects. So, perhaps that’s not worth worrying about.

 

“Go tell her,” says Hineni. “I’ll light up the furnace. We can get the skull ready now,” he says. Rhine nods, heading back out to the front desk.

 

Hineni takes another sip of his drink, staring down at the mourning skull down below himself, howling as if crying for the end of days.

 

“Nope,” he says to himself. It’s definitely not worth worrying about.

 

---

 

The forge glows alight as he and Rhine work, melting down the metal into a usual shape. Setting the glowing mass of metal to the side on a scoop, Hineni holds his hands over it and uses his crafting ability to turn it into several ingots.

 

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