“For your dreams?”
<…um, yeah. I guess.>
“If they’re so rare, how does he have an entire bookshelf filled with them?”
The next bookshelf was filled with, amazingly, books. I pulled one at random off the shelf. The Tome of Isometric Exercise, volume 2, it said, the title picked out in polished amber set into a heavy leather cover, and Cynric’s Goggles showed pages so saturated with magic power they had to be clasped shut.
Hesitantly, I unfastened the brass clasp and snapped it open. In my hands, the book unfurled as if it had just been waiting for someone to unleash it. On the first page was a picture of a flayed man; a detailed anatomical diagram of the muscular system, complete with identifying names. It made me think of Cynric’s Goggles.
Triceps brachii, biceps brachii, latissimus dorsi… I felt the magic crawling out of the pages and into my spine. On the next page was a set of exercises listing each of the muscles used, and gave advice on proper form. Inspired, I got down on the floor to try one of the push ups. I propped the tome up in front me, kept my back straight, and dipped my chin to the floor.
The magic twisted and surged around my pectorals and triceps and deltoids, imbuing them as the healing potion had, seeping into them, and each push-up felt like it was worth a hundred. After a few, I stood up, flexed my arms, and was pleasantly astonished to see better defined muscles there than I had ever had in my life.
In my ear was the sound of combat, and long, anguished howls.
“..ow ow OW! Ow! Heal me, I said, dang it! OW!”
Wham!
“Then come around the damn corner where I can reach you! I’m not chasing you all over creation!”
“I told you not to draw too much agro, Tasha.” Wham! “Just because you…” Wham! “…have a new sword doesn’t make you tough enough to be a chew toy.”
“Ow! Ok, ok. I didn’t think Cat’s Claw would make him THAT angry.”
Wham! Wham!
“Arooooo!”
“The Hound? Of course, he’s angry, you’d be angry too if you were a nightmare construct of a witch doctor thwarted in your destiny to bring despair to the material plane.”
“Nah, I think he just personally hates that sword. Maybe it was someone he knew.”
“Maybe it’s borked, is what you mean…”
Breathless with excitement, I turned the page. This one had a list of sit ups, so I did those, too, and the magic crawled out of my spine and wrapped my core in a sheath of well-developed muscle. I lost track of time as I eagerly flipped from page to page, devouring each exercise; squats and calf raises and crunches and planks, and watched my flesh fill out as if I had spent a year bodybuilding.
[Consumed: Tome of Isometric Exercise 2]
[Permanent Stat9 increase: Strength10 +2 (6 to 8)]
[Strength: 8]
“Why are they so rare?” I asked, picking up the finished book. As I did so, the magic started to fade, and with it the protective spells embedded in the binding. The ancient paper began crumbling into nothingness. “No no no!” I cried, grasping at the fragments. “Oh no, I broke it!”
I looked in dismay at the pile of mildewed leather and powdered hinges. Nothing was left of the pages that had changed me but a pile of what looked like composted leaf mulch. “But,” I fumbled, feeling absurdly guilty, “maybe I shouldn’t have read it. It should, I don’t know, go in a library or something.”
I looked down at the decayed remains and thought of the potential of the book, the spells bound in the binding, the magic of the words; all of it now humming through me. Alive, indeed.
“Are there any more?”
Voice sniggered.
I pulled another book off the shelf; The Tome of Insight and Understanding, volume 1: Words of Wisdom. With a tingle of anticipation, I undid the clasp and opened it. Inside was a detailed essay of breathing exercises.
First, breathe deep and evenly; everything comes from breath, all energy, all power. The first action we take in this life is to inhale; the last, to exhale. In between is the true breadth of existence…
I took a deep breath, and again, the magic flowed into me, into my lungs. I followed the exercises of the book, breathing from the hips, learning to listen to the stillness between heartbeats. In between the breathing exercises there were comments scribbled in the margins of the pages, giving me something to ponder as I counted my inhalations.
Never do two illegal things at once, advised one comment. Never take dating advice from your single friends, advised another. Anything thought of between midnight and dawn is a bad idea… Remember, most dictators die of heart attacks... If you have to say it, it’s probably not true... Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn…
And the one which made me have to start breathing exercise thirty six all over again: Tarantulas do not make good surprise presents.
[Consumed: Tome of Insight and Understanding 1]
[Permanent Stat increase: Wisdom11 +1 (13 to 14)]
[Wisdom: 14]
I finished the book, blinking, trying to take in everything I had just read, while the covers crumbled and the words of wisdom faded into dust. This too shall pass…
I shook my head to clear it, and the sirenstone bounced gently against my earlobe.
“…alright guys, congratulations on the win! Someone help me gather up Blaze and we’ll see if we got any good loot.”
“I’ve got his arm.”
“I’ve got his… err, I think it’s Blaze. Might be part of the Hound.”
“No, the Hound is a nightmare construct, it discorporates upon death.”
“In that case, I found his head!”
“Ok, bring it here and I’ll begin the Resurrection. And make sure we’ve got all his fingers this time, or I’ll bloody well never hear the end of it…”
Greedily, I reached for another tome, unclasped and opened it. This one was filled with numbers and strange symbols and didn’t make any sense. I flipped it closed and read the title: Logic Theory and Calculation Continued, expansion guide to the 1st edition.
“A what?”
Disappointed, I put it back on the shelf. A lot of the other books had titles with words like “expansion” and “a continuation of”, so I figured those were upgrade tomes too. As I was trying to make out the title to a purple book, a flash from the weirdly green glowing machine caused me to about jump over the bookshelf.
I looked over at the machine, which sat there, humming innocuously to itself, as if quietly plotting world domination. Pushing down my unease, I crept up on it and tried to make sen
se of the gears and levers and scales and knobs.
I gave it a look through Cynric’s Goggles, but I could only see that the lines of magic were so intertwined and convoluted, it would probably take me a year and a dozen careful diagrams to begin making sense of it.
Inspired by that thought, I made sure to get a good shot of it with the illusi-frame
“A what?”
“And, err, how do you kill them?”
“And Keen has a piece of one?”
“Only one way to find out.” I reached out and flipped a likely looking switch, and the machine hummed and came to life. On Voice’s advice, I turned a few more dials and pressed some preparatory buttons, and finally a green gem on the front lit up.
I went back over to the chest and pulled out the components, put them in the funnel on top of the machine, and pulled the lever. The whole thing shuddered and groaned, then something inside it began to whirr, then there was the sound of a pressure valve building, and building; a high pitched whine which went up and up and up into the supersonic realm until I thought my ears were going to start bleeding or the whole thing was going to explode…
…and then, with a whump and a sigh, the blinking lights toned down to normal, and there was the sound of something rattling into the output tray. I reached own and opened it up.
It wasn’t. It was instead fourteen goblin beads, and six waxy cocoons.
In my ear was the sound of the Bladesmen gently bickering.
“…have to bleed on it soon, if you don’t bind it the shield’s going to dissipate back into the nightmare realm.”
“Let’s roll on it, then. Who’s in? Percentile dice, highest wins!”
“Oh, why do you always pick percentiles? I lost one of my d-tens!”
“Because, I’m holding it, so I get to distribute the loot. And there’s less chance of getting the same number in a d-hundred roll off.”
“Here, you can borrow my dice, they’re a nice matched set…”
“And…. roll!”
“Dang it, I got a seventeen.”
“Oooh, I got an eighty-eight!”
“Ha, I got a sixty-nine! That beats an eighty-eight.”
“No it doesn’t. What version of math are you using?”
“Guild rules, darling, a sixty-nine always wins!”
“Blaze, shut up! You can’t even USE the shield…”
I looked back around the lair; at the wardrobes, the potions, the chests full of gold.
“But, this is amazing! Can you duplicate anything?”
I grinned, waiting for it. I could almost hear the rakish smile seeping into Voice’s conspiratorial tone.
<…let’s find out!>
I fed a few items into the machine, and determined that bloodbound items didn’t dupe, and magically imbued items were difficult. I finally found a setting which would do undifferentiated magic stuff in quantity, such as the sparq potions.
“You mean like Cynric’s Goggles?”
I went back over to the wardrobes, and picked up the Face of the Fiend, holding it by my fingertips at arm’s length. The solid bone mask grinned at me with too many teeth in a too-wide mouth; strangely angled eye sockets sat darkly under protruding brows of bone and horn, and affixed to every side were more straps and buckles than were strictly necessary. I tried not thinking of the origins of the stiff, spike-studded leather.
I prepped the duping machine, flicked the mask up and into the essential renderer, and stepped back while the gears and levers and humming pressure valves did their thing. The lights blinked, the pressure valve built, and one of the spinning cog wheels stopped spinning. The pressure valve built some more, the high pitched whine turning into a panicked hum, and the shuddering renderer began to shake.
I stepped back.
One by one, the blinking lights began to blink red, and the shaking machine began to rock back and forth, stomping on its reinforced claw-foot legs. I looked for a place to hide—the wardrobes, full of Keen’s evil items; maybe the armchair, if I could slip it on its side as a blast-break; a floating, stand-alone birdhouse looking thing…
Voice identified.
“Teleport? Why didn’t you say!” I dashed for the box as the duping machine’s noises of indigestion rose to a catastrophe crescendo.
I gritted my teeth on a cry of frustration and changed course, diving into the cylindrical pipe just as the machine went ka-whoomph! and spat out the demon mask at near supersonic speeds into the bookshelf.
I waited a moment, my legs dangling over darkness and rushing water far below me, as the bookshelf shattered into splinters of glass and wood and rustling paper, but, now clear of its obstruction, the duping machine began to wind down. I pulled myself up out of the well, and noticed again how easy it was with my new musculature.
Carefully, I crept over and prodded the mess with my toe. The bone mask had shattered into a hundred different pieces when it hit, and was lying amongst the broken potions and pages. The wooden bookshelf had almost collapsed in on itself, the middle of it a ruined mess of tomes and wounding potions and bits of bone, and the topmost shelf of sparq potions sagged like a broken arm, its glassware crashed together and seeping glitter.
Some of the Cause Wounds12 Potion was clinging to the tip of my sandal; repulsed, I shook my foot to flip it away, but the viscous goop instead splatted back onto my other foot, where it stung like an angry bee and began eating into my flesh.
[-1 Hit Point, Negative Energy13 damage]
[Hit Points: 14/15]
“Ow!” I cried, hopping around. “Ow ow ow!” I reached down to wipe it off with my hand, thought better of it, and before I find something else to scrape it off with, I noticed the purple goo was gone; absorbed and neutralized by my body’s natural life force. I carefully put my foot down, away from the purple goop that almost seemed to be moving of its own accord, towards the bits of bone.
I backed away, bumping into the duping machine. The purple flowed
around, and then into, the bone mask, which began reassembling itself like a very, very, slow explosion in reverse. I ducked down, searching for what I thought I had seen under the machine... There!
[Perception check14: Success]
The glint of one of my hollow-pommeled daggers, lying where Keen had kicked it when it fell from my sleeve. I grabbed it and then scooted back out from under the glowing mechanism just in time to see the upper shelf of the bookcase give, showering bottled nightmares down onto the demon mask.
The glittering liquid smoke and the vile purple goop flowed into each other, mixing together like blood and bile, and out of the resultant miscegenation rose the demon mask, the Face of the Fiend, floating and smirking and horribly animate. The hinged jaw opened, and it laughed, high and loud and exultant, and one hundred percent insane.
Chapter Three
The floating mask turned to face me, and its eyes flared red and unblinking in the shadowed skull sockets.
“Come, child!” it cried, in that same high pitched voice, and I noticed the timing of the words didn’t quite match the movements of the jaw. “Come here, and let us make a deal!”
“I am not,” I told it, shifting my dagger to a throwing grip, “your child.” I threw the dagger in a perfect glittering line, and it hit the mask point first right between the eyes, and then, to my dismay, bounced off and fell away without hardly leaving a mark.
“What does that mean?” I asked, looking around for something else to throw.
I pulled Cynric’s Goggles down over my eyes, and sure enough, the Face of the Fiend was all solid bone and dark, swirling magic, without any fleshy bits to be bled by daggers. As I watched, the swirling magic seemed to be gathering into a vortex centered around the jaw, which slowly opened, revealing a distant red glow, fast approaching.
For A Few Minutes More Page 3