Mana Mutation Menace (Journey to Chaos Book 3)
Page 46
“Besides, I can’t let my little sister down, now can I?”
One hour later, the three of them stood outside a mansion in Ataidar’s northern district. The divinity invested within Kallen’s yellow sphere enabled her to ride on a bolt of lightning and travel great distances instantaneously. It was basically teleporting but didn’t make Eric nauseous. However, it couldn’t be done within Dnnac Ledo because the Chaotic Curtain interfered with it. Thus, it took them fifty-nine minutes to arrange things with Ponix and get out of Roalt castle and less than one minute to jump from the capital to the countryside.
The estate was old and somewhat dilapidated. Paint was peeling off on the upper floors but it was pristine on the first floor. There were flowers on the porch and in the windows, but most of the lawn was unkempt. The trio walked through an honor guard of statues that had been worn away by time and weather. The Noble House of Darwoss couldn’t afford to keep it pristine since their second demotion.
Eric stepped up to announce their presence. The doorknocker was polished to a high shine and the door itself was professionally stained. This did nothing but highlight the poor appearance of everything around them. He waited about a minute until the door opened. A cat woman in a maid outfit greeted him.
“This is the residence of the Noble House of Darwoss. How may I help you?”
“This is Eric Watley speaking. I’d like to speak with the young master of the house.”
This clearly delighted the woman. Eric could practically hear her think, “The young master has friends and they have come to visit him!” Aloud, she said, “On what matters?”
“It concerns the school group he’s the co-founder of.”
“One moment, please.”
The door closed.
“Do you think his dad is screwing his maid?”
“Kallen!”
“What? If he’s so desperate to emulate his ancestors, it’s a reasonable assumption. At their prime, they sired so many bastards, they filled up a sub-section of the house’s guard.”
The cat maid returned and said, “The young master will see you.”
She led the trio into the large and empty main hall. Its sheer size told of the once great riches its master commanded, but its decoration was sparse. There was also a layer of grime on everything. One maid couldn’t keep such a place clean by herself. Every other employee looked more like a writer for the Darwoss Herald than a household servant. After three flights of stairs and too many hallways, the maid announced Eric’s presence. Norej opened the door himself.
“Hi, Eric. Do you want to join my club?”
“Yes, but that’s not why I’m here. May we come in?”
“Sure.” Norej stepped aside and made an exaggerated welcome gesture. “Welcome to the illustrious throne room of the great and mighty heir of the barony!”
Emily giggled. Eric and Kallen did not. Once inside, he closed the door and she cast the Lupine Baffler. A gust of wind arose from nothing and whirled into every corner of the room, sealing all sounds and smells within its borders. Norej plopped back into his desk chair and said,
“If you want cloak and dagger stuff, my usual rate is five hundred gold up front and then another five hundred after the job has been completed.”
“What!? Really?” Eric asked.
Norej spun about to the Country of Conflict game on his computer.
“No. My family doesn’t do that anymore, but try telling that to the media. They think my dad’s newspaper is a front business for a spy network of underground necrocrafters.”
“That’s a pity,” Kallen said. “If you weren’t joking, then this would be simpler.”
Norej paused the game and spun back around.
“Okay, I’m listening.”
Eric cleared his throat. “I want you to sneak into Dnnac Ledo and cheer up Annala.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Hahahahahaha no.”
Norej swiveled back to his computer and unpaused the game.
“I know it’s dangerous—”
“If I had a bodyguard, then I’d tell him to throw you out.”
“There are five reasons you should help me.”
Norej opened his desk drawer, withdrew a pair of headphones, slotted them in, and pressed play on his computer.
“I’m listening to Three Windows Up so I can’t hear your insanity.”
Eric’s eyes slitted. He yanked the headphones off Norej’s head and crushed them with the right hand of the grendel. Transforming further, he loomed over the human boy and growled. Norej was unimpressed.
“You know, you’re only proving my dad right about ‘reformed’ monsters.”
“Listen to me while I speak. When I am finished, I will leave and buy you a new pair of headphones. When I return, I want your answer. Is this agreeable?”
“Sure.”
Eric took a deep breath and recited Nunnal’s’ poem. He returned to human form and took a second breath. Then he outlined his proposal. “1) I could smuggle out elven tech for you to use or sell. Weapons, domestic appliances, production technology, or something else you want. 2) The Mana Mutation Summit will reconvene in Dnnac Ledo and I can provide exclusive information for your newspaper. 3) I know how much you despise elves and you know how much elves value their security measures, so think of how gratifying it will be to sneak in under their noses. 4) I hear that the House of Darwoss has endured hard times since they were demoted from Marquis to Baron. If you do me this favor, then I will put in a good word for your family with Queen Kasile. She might consider bumping you back up if she hears about your courageous act to bridge racial gaps and aid victims of mana mutation. 5) You can help a friend. You can hardly start a school club together and not become friends.”
“I think he wants to be more than friends,” Kallen remarked.
This so flustered Norej that he slipped out of his chair. “R-ridiculous! Wh-whyy would I fall for a non-human like her? It’s appalling and I’m deeply insulted that you…”
Kallen smirked.
“….are not buying this, are you?”
“Not a word.”
Norej stood up and wiped pretend dust of himself. “Okay, maybe I have slight infatuation with her. She’s pretty, smart and shares my prejudice towards demons. She calls Revas and Oito ‘buffoons that require my tutoring’ and refers to orcs as ‘violent, law-obsessed brutes.’ All of this is in line with my father’s ideology. Of course I’d find her attractive.”
Eric refrained from pointing out that Revas and Oito were not the only people Annala tutored or that everyone called orcs "violent, law-obsessed brutes," including the orcs themselves.
“However, I’m sure it’s just a mere high school crush. It will pass and I can focus my poetry on a purely human subject.”
“You write poetry about her?” Emily asked.
Norej's blush covered his entire face. “That’s not the point!”
“It’s sweet.”
“T-thank you.”
“If you do this, then I think she’ll give you a kiss on the cheek.”
Norej crossed his arms and looked away. “I don’t care about that, but the other things Eric mentioned sound interesting. I’ll think about it while you replace my headphones.”
The three of them left the manor and Kallen teleported them back to Roalt. At the local electronics store, Eric looked for the cheapest variety, but Emily said they should get one of the more expensive models to show their appreciation. Kallen argued that would offend him more than the cheap ones. In the end, they settled for middle-grade.
Back at House Darwoss, Norej handed Eric a list of his demands. It included several varieties of elven weaponry, a couple of elven appliances, arranging for his personal safety during the Summit, exclusive media rights to the Ataidar coverage of the event, and a script for what Eric should say to Kasile on behalf of his family.
“This is a steep list.”
“Touché.” Eric pocketed the list. “In accordance with your cloak and dagger policy, I’ll do half of these now and then the second half after your mission is completed.”
Norej grinned and nodded.
Dnnac Ledo’s blacksmith was the trio's first target. Norej demanded three daggers, two swords, and an axe along with two suits of body armor. Kallen, Emily, and Eric put their heads together to decide how they were going to steal it. While Emily was horrified at the notion, she admitted that all of them together couldn't purchase even one thing on the list.
The smith’s tree was hard, dark wood. It breathed in the smoke from the furnaces and returned oxygen to keep the flames burning bright. Once again, this tree was bigger on the inside. There were twenty-two furnaces inside, and these were just the ones they could see from the entrance. This was beside the storefront, storage area, living space, and sleeping quarters. The workshop was loud and foul smelling, but no one could deny that there were beautiful things to look at.
Immortality and chaotic insight raised the elven metalworkers above their mortal counterparts. There were products here that human stores simply didn't have, and couldn’t make. From the exquisite metal blades with their magical runes, to a staff with shapeshifting heads, to armor that could make its wearer immune to fatigue via mana stimmulation, they were the finest works Eric had ever seen. Mounted on a wall was a blade made of pure fire; a curved blade of red flame that sprouted from a metal handle without heating it up.
That’s one of the things Norej wants.
The smith was right there working on another blade. He was a well-built man by any definition. While he had the same golden-brown hair as every other elf, his was blackened by soot and hardened by fire. Kallen remarked that he was nicknamed “Sonic the Fire Hair.”
"How do you make this stuff?" Eric wondered aloud.
Sonic paused, turned, and stared at Eric. "Would you like to see?"
"Sure! Is it okay?"
“Of course. Not everyone in this village is a paranoid human hater.”
Naturally, this made Eric’s stomach twist into knots.
Together, the three of them watched the smith hold a sheet of water and bang it with a hammer. All the while, he sang verses about the ocean, sailing, and chaos. Smith magic...Just like Forge said. Once his song was finished and the sword was in the form he wanted, Sonic stuck the blade of water into the forge. It retained its shape despite the heat. Only the coals touched by the blade's point or edge were extinguished. Sonic nodded in approval and placed it in a rack with swords of seven other classical elements.
“Say, you’re a grendel, aren’t you?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Don’t tell the Eternal Pest that I know this, but do you also have a Seed of Chaos?”
“What’s your point?”
Sonic palmed a piece of ore and held it up to the light.
“This stuff is common iron. As good as it is, it gets boring to use the same old stuff. I’ve heard rumors that a grendel’s hide is made of a unique metal and I’ve wanted to use some of that stuff for six hundred and eighty years, but they’re rare creatures. By the time I catch news of one, someone else has stripped it clean! If you have a Seed of Chaos, then I could harvest it without doing you any permanent harm.”
“You want to skin me alive?”
Sonic frantically waved his hands. “I’ll pay you, of course! I’ve accumulated plenty of human money over the centuries and it’s not like I have many opportunities to use it.”
“How much are we talking?”
“How much do you want?”
Memories of the pawnshop came back to Eric and gave him pause. Discussing how much Pilaocv would pay him for Lunas’ influence choker came out gibberish to him. He settled on a trade because he couldn’t comprehend the economics. He’d rather not go through that again.
“How about a trade: three daggers, two swords, an axe, and two suits of body armor.”
“That’s oddly specific.”
Eric thought so too, but a lie came naturally.
“I want three daggers for myself and my two teammates, two swords for Tiza so she can dual wield them, an axe for domestic labor jobs, and the armor for Tiza and Nolien as well because they lack my and my mentor’s physical advantages.”
“Alright, that makes sense. Okay, first show me your true form.”
Eric reached for his grendel identity and allowed it to shift his human body into its true stature. It occupied substantially more space and this delighted Sonic. He fingered his way from Eric’s knuckles, up his arm, and down his back.
“Fascinating! The stuff I could make with this...” He grew an abacus in his stomach and set about making the calculations. “Now let’s see….considering your size…..” He moved several rings to the right. “Then balance that against the equipment you asked for.” He moved other rings to the left. After a couple permutations of this, the abacus dissolved into his stomach. “If I took four complete hides, then we would have a fair trade.”
“Deal!”
“What!?” Emily asked. “He wants to take every inch of flesh off your body! Four times! Even if you can grow it back, how is that okay?”
“Smithery is my Eternal Hobby,” Sonic said seriously. “It’s what I do to stave off chaotic madness and create meaning in my life. Opportunities like this are what I live for. Besides, it’s just skin. It’ll grow right back.”
“I don’t think you grasp how painful this is going to be for Eric,” Emily said.
“Emily...”
“Shut it, Eric! You don’t understand this either. You may have an elven girlfriend, but I’ve spent a lot more time around elves than you have. They think differently, and not because they literally have chaos in their brains. Their Seed of Chaos makes them apathetic. They think nothing of ripping arms off because they grow back. They can’t understand a human’s need for food because starvation can’t kill them. They think we’re stupid barbarians because we can’t spend our lives doing mad science for shits and giggles. Just because you have a Seed of Chaos, it doesn’t make you an elf.”
Someone clapped. Everyone looked up and saw that it was Tasio.
“Well said! I’m glad I dragged you here. You’re fun.”
“Go to the abyss. You’re worse than they are.”
Tasio shrugged and said, “Guilty.” Then he disappeared again.
The smith looked shocked and immediately bowed his head in apology.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give the impression that I wanted to avoid pain by pushing it on someone else. I assure you that elves still comprehend pain even if we do heal quickly from it. If I could transform myself into a grendel, I would, but I have no idea how to do so. I don’t know what they look like and I don’t know how their skin works. How about this? Three hides.”
Emily threw up her hands. “It’s like talking to a wall. I don’t think you’ve ever had your skin peeled off before.”
“You have?”
“Eight weeks ago; Bog of Poisoned Glory. I was helping Kallen find Forol so she could ask the goddess for a blessing. I was infected by a parasite that ate my skin before my eyes, then moved into my internal organs. Kallen had to give me two years off her life just to keep me stable enough to get to the ER. I was in intensive care for seventy-two hours.”
“Okay, two hides.”
“Emily, it’s all right,” Eric said. “If I didn’t believe in the idiom ‘no pain, no gain,’ I wouldn’t make it through Basilard’s training sessions.”
“One hide or Eric walks out and you’ll lose this opportunity forever.” Emily leaned in closer. Her stare was sharp and piercing. Her Evil Eye filled him with despair for lost time and crushed dreams. “For the rest of eternity, you’ll curse your greed overcoming your creativity.”
“Fine. One full hide for everything.”
Emily blinked and leaned back. “I’m glad we could come to terms.”
Kallen slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close.
“You drive a hard bargain, as usual.”
“It was nothing, Boss. Just practice.”
A standard human will replace their entire body’s worth of skin in seven years. It will come off in tiny pieces and replace itself so slowly and subtly that the human will neither feel nor notice. It was a different matter to do the same thing within seven hours.
The pain was atrocious. Anesthetics weren’t an option; the Seed of Chaos would dissolve it be it chemical or magical. More than once, Eric’s core grendel instincts designated the smith as a “threat” and his demon personality had to suppress it. Each time was harder than the one before it, but he reminded himself of Annala’s depression and Kasile’s ambition.
Other sufferers of mana mutation registered, but they provided little motivation. They were neutrals in his view and thus they didn’t matter. It was his mate-to-be and little sister that inspired him. Then he remembered how much they cared for neutrals, and these in particular had their own families. This inspired him further.
In the end, there was an empty grendel hide stretched out on the wall next to Grendel Eric, which Emily found to be creepy. Eric himself was in a significant amount of after-pain such as nerve endings and phantom sensations. The Seed of Chaos was still repairing damage; the muscles on his arms showed, his eyeballs stood out in their sockets, and one could glimpse his organs. He looked like a chaotic ghoul. Every square inch of him ached.
In exchange, the smith handed Eric a bag. It was quite plain to behold, not even much in the way of runes. There was only the Flower of Chaos and Sonic’s own brand for his business.
“It’s a zerofinite bag. Consider it a bonus.”
Eric stuck his head inside the bag and saw everything that he was promised. He also saw enough room to put one hundred and eight duplicates of those items and comfortably house enough people to wear them.