Dwergbank

~ Alexis ~

The inside of Dwergbank was more inviting than the outside, without giving up any of the exterior's grandeur. Past the dwarf-guarded double doors was a foyer with a star-shaped mosaic on the floor, and grand stone staircases to either side. They passed through to a large lobby with intricately vaulted ceilings supported by ribs of dark stone and lit by magic chandeliers. One side of the room was blocked off by a counter, manned by uniformed employees and labeled "Cashiers" in large, carved letters. Like all the signage, the word appeared in smaller Orlut letters under larger Demi ones. (Arcaic, she reminded herself.) There were little groupings of furniture at regular intervals in the room, typically a desk and a few chairs, like offices without walls. D'Moune led her to a desk near the front labeled "Appointments".

The legate spoke to the Arc gentleman at the desk in Arcaic. Of course he could speak their language. Why was she even surprised? They were shown down a hallway to a small meeting room where an Arc woman waited for them. Like all her kind, she was tiny, slightly shorter than the legate, and had broad, pointed ears. Her red curly hair and slight crinkles at the corners of her eyes gave her face a happy, inviting prospect. A narrow wooden box sat on the table in front of her. She looked startled to see a waterfall accompanied by a human girl. Then, the legate dropped his illusion.

"Bilius!" She stood suddenly. "It's great to see you again!" She bravely crossed the distance and hugged the legate, unafraid of his curse. "I heard stories when I came back to Estfold. I'm relieved to see you're all right." She released him and looked the boy up and down. "More than all right. You're a legate now. You even look the part. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were a grown arc, and not a human at all. If your mask covered your ears, no one could tell the difference."

"It's good to see you, too. It's been a while." Alexis couldn't believe her ears. The hard, certain tones she was used to from the legate had softened into … was that affection?

"Ophelia, this is Alexis, the girl I wrote about. Alexis, this is Ophelia. She tutored me for a while. I'm hoping she can help us today."

"My family is an old client of Dwergbank. Old as in pre-Gordian. Oh, come in and sit! Pour tea for us, will you Alexis? I want to chat with Bilius before the director gets here."

She did what she was told, while the legate and his tutor put their heads together and spoke in Arcaic. They talked expressively, as if they put every emotion they had into each syllable. The longer Alexis listened, the more convinced she became that d'Mourne, the underage government official and overpowered magician, had a crush on his teacher and was trying hard to hide it. She was less clear on how Ophelia felt about him. The teacher didn't push him away but didn't encourage him. Maybe she didn't want to hurt her former student. Or, maybe she was waiting for him to grow up. An Arc woman could afford to wait ten or twenty years for a human man to mature. Or, just as likely, she didn't want to chance breaking the heart of a deadly magician who could disarm troublesome beastkin and freeze ancient monsters to death.

A knock at the door announced the arrival of an elderly dwarf woman, barely taller than Alexis, but old enough to have mostly gray hair framing her onyx eyes. Judging by the bands of engraved gold on her arms, she was wealthy. Introductions were made again, and they learned her title and name were Maestra Goudsmid, a director of the bank and manager of the Bostkirk branch.

Ophelia sat at the head of the table, with Goudsmid and d'Mourne on either side of her, as if mediating. Alexis sat next to her legate, and a bank employee sat next to Goudsmid to take notes. The three at the head of the table spoke briefly in Arcaic until Ophelia opened the wooden box and removed its contents. A gray statue of an old Arc man stood on the table, face haloed by curly hair, walking briskly with his staff in one hand and a traveling cloak thrown over one shoulder. It didn't seem to be remarkable at all to Alexis, but the demis in the room leaned forward to look at it closely. (Arcaics, she reminded herself.)

"Erstdwerg!" exclaimed the director, and leaned over to peer into the statue's far gaze. She questioned Ophelia and d'Mourne in skeptical tones.

Ophelia held up her hand to stop the conversation. "We should continue this discussion in Orlut, if you don't mind, Maestra. It concerns Alexis, and she doesn't know Arcaic."

"Right then. What does the Legate Mourne want from Dwergbank?"

"Alexis received the Orchardist class recently, but the master we found for her turned out to be wholly unsuitable. I'm looking for the best teaching orchardist possible, within a reasonable traveling distance. So I need a referral and a letter of introduction. I'm not looking for someone to train her class; I want someone who will train her and expose her to as much of the field as possible in the three years she has. We can deal with her class separately."

"And why should we do this for you? You're not a customer here."

"But I could be." He placed two letters on the table and pushed them toward Goudsmid, while Ophelia offered two more. The old dwarf opened them in turn and scanned them. By the time she looked up, the legate was hidden behind his watery cloak. "So," she said at last, "you're the troublemaker who bloodied Reginar."

"I tried to reason with him using words, but he only listens to force."

The maestra laughed at the joke, "That sounds like him! He's been running around causing problems since my grandmother's day. It's about time someone sent him packing. Listen, young man, I'm inclined to help you, just based on that alone. But what you're asking for requires a certain status. We can't connect just anyone with the best teachers: we have to know their quality. A regular account holder wouldn't have this kind of access unless they had a high balance and a long history.

"However, if you applied for a ranked account and provided three works as proof of your ability, three very impressive works, then I could make the introduction you need and facilitate a meeting." The legate tried to say something, but she stopped him. "One of those works must be brand new, made especially for your application."

"I have two with me, and a proposal for a third. If I may …"

"Go on, boy. Show me something."

The legate started to unpack his bag by pouring groups of his belongings onto the floor. A library's worth of books, camping gear, tools, furniture, and multiple wooden chests that organized his crafting materials. "That's most of the first compartment. There's a second compartment where I keep monsters and monster parts. The bag permanently expands in response to mana, and it's bloodbound." He sucked all the stacks of goods into his bag and fastened the flap shut, then laid it down on the table.

"I hunted the wyvern for the leather and did all the engraving myself. I relied on others for leatherworking. Please try to pick it up and open it."

The assistant attempted to lift the satchel, but couldn't. Neither would the flap open for her.

"Not bad, especially for a ten-year-old. It's a top-quality example of its kind."

"Top quality?" Ophelia scoffed. "You make it sound like you can go somewhere and buy one just like it off the shelf. It's top bespoke quality, and you know it."

Stolen novel; please report.

"It'll do for a first work. If you want to impress me, you'll have to show something more original."

"I believe I have just the thing." He reopened his satchel, poured out one of the chests onto the floor, and opened it with a touch. He took a smaller box out of the chest and set it on the table. "Is this meeting confidential?"

"It's rude of you to ask," Goudsmid said with a frown, "but since you're new here, I'll overlook it. Dwergbank takes client privacy seriously. Even the emperor has to jump over legal hurdles if he wants to know about our ranked account holders."

The legate pulled the lid from the square box, then pushed it toward Maestra Goudsmid. Opelia and the bank assistant stood to get a better look. Even Alexis found herself on her feet, standing behind the bank director so she could see.

Inside the box was a stone the size and shape of a goose egg, polished until the colored depths revealed themselves in velvety red with undertones of blue. Goudsmid held a lens to her eye to examine it while shining a light into its depths using a ring on her other hand. Something stirred beneath the stone's surface, something that made Alexis's skin prickle in a thrill of remembered danger.

"It's perfect," said Goudsmid, "absolutely perfect. And the enchantment … it feels like the wyvern is still in there. This is a wyvern's mana stone, correct? It can't be anything else."

"That's from the monstrified one that supplied the leather for my bag. It didn't come that way. I had to work on it."

"I've seen purified stones before. Plenty of times. But precious few can take the technique so far on a stone this large. Who did you learn this from?"

"That's my business. The point is, I can."

The legate put an end to the viewing by dropping the lid back in place and pulling the box away. Goudsmid's voice was a little more than a whisper. "I need to see proof."

"Watch," he held several of the low-quality stones he'd bought earlier in the day in his hand. He closed his hand, then opened it, and the several stones had become a single larger one. It was almost pretty, but its transparent body was shot through with striations of impurities. He closed his hand again, this time for a minute, while the assembled watchers stared, trying to perceive what was happening inside his fist. When he opened it, the stone had undergone a major transformation. It was smaller, almost perfectly transparent, and most of the striations were gone. Dust, the discarded impurities, littered his hand.

"A perfect gem would take longer, but you get the idea."

The dwarf closed her eyes, as if she were storing away her memory of the wyvern's stone for later enjoyment. "I apologize, Legate d'Mourne, for taking offense earlier. You had good reason to be cautious. Rest assured that no one will hear about this from us. What do you propose for your third, new work?"

"It's my understanding that the bank rents out space to the only Arcaic temple in Bostkirk."

"Not the only one, but the most widely used. They have a meeting room in the back of the building."

"I propose to make a divine statue for the temple – if they agree to let me, of course."

Alexis found the so-called temple underwhelming. It was a plain meeting room, near the back entrance to the bank, with simple chairs and several statues she could have found in an open-air market. Not all of the gods were represented. She noticed Knexenk, the most important god, was missing, and almost said something about it. But she was a goddess for humans and classes, and this was a temple for demis.

D'Mourne, Ophelia, and Goudsmid were in conversation with an elvish priest in white vestments while the congregation trickled in. They were mostly older demis (Arcaics) and gave the water-clad human some odd glances as they milled around and greeted each other. Sometimes, one of the demis would go up to the front where the gods were, clap their hands, and say a silent prayer. Earlier in the day, Alexis would have been more interested in all their clothing and customs, but she'd had enough new experiences for one day. She wanted to curl up in bed and not think about anything until she fell asleep.

She felt a hand on her arm and started. She hadn't realized she was nodding off on her feet. "It's been a long day," said the Legate. "I'm going to say a quick prayer, and we'll go back to the inn."

He went to the front like the others, stood before the cheap statues of the deities, and clapped his hands.

~ Taylor ~

He had a lot on his mind when he went to visit the gods. Getting a class for Alexis, how to get a community church to pay for his work without being too mercenary, his teleportation problem, and how he was going to get everything done in time to attend the wedding. What he didn't want to talk about was …

"He was so sure he could catch you, but you blew his arm right off! Poof! Well done, Taylor!" Strife had never looked so happy on his visits. "It was even better than the wyvern. And that fight with Prater! Trees die in the Arctic!"

"His battles are moving," agreed Nokomis, "but they aren't the boy's main concern. Go ahead, ask us what you came here for."

"Is it okay for … "

"Yes, that's fine," interrupted Erstdwerg. "You don't have to ask before making divine statues for people who will use them properly. Ask the other thing."

Taylor felt some trepidation at bothering the gods with his questions, but they were the ones who brought him to Aarden, and they felt perfectly fine about intruding on his consciousness whenever they pleased. At the very least, they were grooming him for something and didn't mind having him in their void. So he took the chance and asked a question, even though they were likely to refuse to answer.

"Does the Spellscript system have some kind of ban on teleportation?"

"You could say that," answered Nokomis, the goddess of magic, "but it would be more accurate to say there is a global ban on what you were trying to do, specifically."

"So it isn't the magic system preventing it. It's you." He was talking to more of them than usual, major and minor alike, ringed around him, gathered to gawk at the mortal in their midst. "Or is it just me that's banned?"

"It's not just you. It would be too much effort just to lock down one mortal. The ban is global and covers everyone. So, if you plan to use dimensional chicanery for fast travel, you'll need to find another method. There are options … ah! I see you're thinking of two of them already."

"The two I'm aware of. You mean there's more?"

Nokomis smiled a little smile. New applications of space magic were exercises for the student, not something the goddess of magic would give away.

"Why shut down point-to-point space swaps, though?"

"That is not a question I will answer."

Meaning there were questions she would answer. She wouldn't answer questions about the magic he could do, but "What else is banned?"

"Chemical and nuclear explosions over a certain velocity. You are welcome to try it, to observe the interdiction at work, but please keep your experiments chemical in nature."

Even gods didn't want to mess with nuclear explosions and radioactive fallout. Divine interdiction explained a few things, like why Aarden had magic firearms but not gunpowder, despite having enough chemistry to discover it. He was definitely going to mix up some explosives the next time he had a free day or two, just to find out what the exact limits were.

"I feel like, even for gods, a global interdiction like that is impressive."

"That might be the highest mortal praise we've received in a while."

Strife nodded. "Yes, yes. Enough of this. Boy, come battle with me. Nobody else will play, and you'll be old and dead soon. We only have so many games left."

"We tire of losing," said Nature. "Please do entertain him, Taylor. He's been insufferable lately."

Strife summoned the special chessboard, the one that allowed moves in the future and the past. From the first move to the last, Taylor lost extravagantly. In spite of that, it was his best game yet against Strife. He cost the god of conflict extra moves and extra time. By the endgame, the other gods had all left.

"Ah! Sweet victory!" sighed Strife.

"Really? Celebrating victory over a mortal child? Isn't that beneath you?"

"No," he laughed, and a million exultant cries rose from a hundred battlefields.

Taylor was back in the temple, and nobody seemed to notice he'd been gone for an hour.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.