Chapter 31: Eager Shadows and Magic Rocks

Chapter 31: Eager Shadows and Magic Rocks

“You wretched thief!” Madam Hurst barked, clutching her finger which I couldn’t tell whether was bleeding or not.

“I didn’t do it,” I cried, trying to hold the effigy out to her. It snapped loudly, wooden teeth clacking with every chomp.

“What did you do then?” She asked while backing away from the hostile relic. “Is this another one of your skills, relic claimage?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never seen a relic before this one. Why did it do that?”

She sighed, digging in her drawer and taking out a bandage which she began wrapping around her finger. “There are some items we know little about. The guild appraiser wanted five hundred gold before he would even look at that thing. He said something about the possibility that it may be cursed. Can you tell what it does?”

“It says it can be used to make a tool or weapon to enhance the user’s mana,” I explained. “Oh, and it gives dragon powers.”

“Interesting,” she said again. “I don’t suppose you can give it back?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, hoping I couldn’t. “I guess I can put it in that box. Do you think it will work for anyone else now that it claimed me?”

She sighed. “No, I don’t suppose it will. Now, the question is, how are you going to compensate me?”

“I have a gold,” I offered with a smile, hoping she couldn’t take it back.

Madam Hurst laughed. “That wouldn’t even work as a downpayment for an item of that quality. After hearing your description of it, I’d say it’s probably worth at least a thousand gold.”

“A t-t-thousand?” I asked, feeling my heart lurch. “That’s five hundred thousand dollars!”

“Who cares about peasant money?” She huffed. “Aside from that, a thousand gold isn’t all that much, though I can see how it feels that way to a child. I’ll tell you what, you are going to be my appraiser until I feel the debt has been paid off.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I replied, realizing this was the same as if I’d broken something. The good news was I got to keep a very expensive item. If only I could figure out how to make it into something useful and not just a snapping head. Confident that I’d be able to pay her back, I put the skull in my bag.

“Excellent,” she replied. “Now, on to the business of fixing my, uh, Pulse Plugger. What do we need to do?”

The moment I thought about it, Analyze repeated its message from before.

Shadow Patch: Harvest liquid void from any void-based entity. Soak overnight into jet-black silk. Apply to an object no thicker than one inch. Dissolves after use.

“You need liquid void,” I explained. “Do you have any?”

“Perhaps,” she said, looking out the door. “We shall see. Come with me.”

I had to jog to keep up as she power-walked to the elevator. When we arrived, she ignored the attendant, unlocked a panel, and clicked a button marked B-3.

The elevator descended for a long time which made me wonder if it was moving slower than it had on the way up. Madam Hurst seemed to notice my confusion.

“Due to the sensitive nature of some of our experiments, we lease a special sub-basement in a bunker under the tower. That way if anything explodes or melts, the damage will be contained.”

The elevator doors slid open and we stepped out…into another world, or so it felt. Gone was the office environment, replaced by a large domed chamber that stretched on for as far as I could see. Hundreds if not thousands of Tinkerers hunched over various projects, including a fifty-foot-tall robot.

“Everything you see here is private, so I’d appreciate you not speaking of it,” she said over her shoulder as she marched up to a man on a raised platform overlooking everything. “Hey, Patrick. Do we have any liquid void?”

“Liquid…what?” He shouted down, holding a hand to his ear to hear better.

“Void!” She yelled back up. “I need liquid void. Do we have any?”

He shrugged, still shouting. “Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t think it’s part of the base stock, so you’re going to have to ask around if you want some.”

Madam Hurst heaved a sigh and gave me a weak smile.“I can’t make an announcement for a personal project, and going around asking everyone will take too long. It looks like I’m going to have to order it from the guild. Would you be willing to come back in a week? I can meet you at the guild if…”

“I might be able to get some,” I cut her off, my eyes drawn to her feet where her shadow was waving vigorously at me.

“Where?” She asked. “If you’re talking about purchasing some at auction, I can do that as well. A week is the soonest…”

“No,” I laughed while watching her shadow do jumping jacks and Madam Hurst get physically winded as a result. “I think your shadow wants to give us some.”

She looked down. “What are you talking about? You can’t get liquid from a shadow.”

I shrugged. “It seems to think you can. Pardon me, she seems to think you can.”

I added the latter half of that statement when her shadow showed off her bust to prove she was female. The Human version of Madam Hurst looked at me like I’d gone crazy before it dawned on her. “You have the monster vision buff right now, don’t you? Are you saying there’s a monster in my shadow?”

I chuckled. “Your shadow is the monster. At least I think that’s how they’re categorized. Yours wants to help you out. She’s been trying to get my attention this whole time.”

“Brilliant,” she replied. “What does she need? How do we get liquid void?”

“The last time I needed something from a shadow, I had to pay for it,” I started, changing tact when the shadow shook her head. “Yours doesn’t want money. She wants…a drink? No? Oh, she wants something to put the liquid in.”

It took a while to figure out what the shadow wanted through a game of charades. Madam Hurst provided me with a beaker she borrowed from one of the workstations and I knelt in front of her as her shadow climbed her legs and began spraying an inky substance into the beaker.

Madam Hurst gasped as the liquid void appeared from between her legs. “Did my shadow make that?”

“Yes,” I replied, suppressing a laugh at the way it looked like she was taking a pee.

“What next?” She asked once it was done and we had a beaker full of liquid void.

Shadow Patch: Harvest liquid void from any void-based entity. Soak overnight into jet-black silk. Apply to an object no thicker than one inch. Dissolves after use.

“We need jet-black silk,” I replied. “Soak it overnight and then apply it to the device you want to use it on.”

“That’s it?” She asked, holding up the beaker to stare at the thick black liquid. I couldn’t see through it as the inky substance absorbed all light.

I nodded. “That’s it.”

“Well, I suppose I can handle that,” she said, clearing her throat. “So, I suppose that about does it for today. I will find you at the guild when we need something appraised.”

“Wait,” I replied. “I don’t want you making a scene whenever you need something. I’ll come here once a week and appraise your items all at once. In return, you will teach me the fundamentals of Tinkering.”

Madam Hurst looked around frantically for a moment before dragging me back into the elevator. She didn’t speak again until the doors closed. “I told you before, that is out of the question. I can’t risk my job even as part of a deal. However, I can point you to a Tinkerer who can teach you but it will be up to you to convince him to take you on.”

“Won’t he get one of those black marks?” I asked, wondering why she couldn’t teach me but someone else could.

For her part, Madam Hurst looked a little pained. “He already has one. That’s why it doesn’t matter if he teaches you. Look for Mr. Yu when you visit the shopping arcade.”

Once again, I didn’t understand black marks at all. An esteemed guild leader referred me to someone who was for all intents and purposes off limits. Would my rejection of the guilds have the same effect on me? I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was make money. With money, all sorts of doors would open. The world revolved around the stuff.

***

I’d missed lunch by the time I left but I wasn’t bothered. Never having enough to eat at the orphanage had that effect on me. I’d learned to ignore the pain that came with hunger, using it to fuel my ambition instead.

I decided to check out the magic shopping district that the receptionist told me about next. The only problem was, the address didn’t exist.

1 Central Park Central

I walked in the general direction of Central Park, trying to figure out what I was going to do once I got there. Over the past few years, the park had taken on a different name, Hooverville. That meant it was crowded with desperate men and women who had nothing. More importantly, they had nothing to lose.

It wasn’t a huge deal for me. I looked like I had nothing too, so I wasn’t much of a target. Still, it was the last place I wanted to be caught after dark.

Giving the shantytown a wide berth, I felt a twinge of pity for the people forced to live in houses made of cardboard and scrap wood. The single gold coin I had in my bag was probably enough to purchase housing for all of them, at least for a little while.

In the meantime, I needed to figure out where the magical shopping district was. Unlike the financial district where everyone had been well dressed, many of the people in the park wore whatever they could find like I did. I looked around for a helpful man in a bathrobe and once again was left disappointed. Where was bathrobe guy when I needed him?

Then I saw it. A pair of well-dressed men strode into the park, ignoring the flimsy dwellings and walking straight over to…the lake. I followed a short distance behind, prepared to run away if I was mistaken. Still, they paid me no mind. That, I was used to.

I watched closely as they got to the water. A lonely bush was right on the shore, not more than three feet tall. From a distance, I thought I was watching a mime show. The first man walked behind the bush and descended, followed by the second man. I ran to catch up but when I got there, I found nothing but water on the other side of the bush.

I pulled the bush apart, looked inside, and down at the water to see if I could figure out where they went. The water was glassy, allowing me to see straight through to the bottom. The shore, at least, was less than a foot deep. Did they somehow swim out to the middle of the lake in the amount of time it took me to run there? They had to have done something magic.

I felt like a dummy for not thinking about it earlier. I examined the area with fresh eyes, Analyzing it as I would an object.

Info: Magic entrance detected. Place your foot on the rock.