Underkeeper

Bernt set out for the Mage’s Guild as soon as he woke up the next morning. He’d been scheduled to work in the evening and he was determined to make the most of the time he had. Things were going to be very busy for a while, but that was going to be true for everyone. The city was in shambles.

Right now, though, he needed to get to the guild library. He knew he wasn’t very likely to find useful information on demonology there, but it was somewhere to start. It was time that he learned how to summon demons – specifically Jori. He wasn’t sure why needed to know right now – if he brought her back, the Solicitors would just find and deport her again. That, and they’d probably kill him as a rogue summoner.

Still, he wanted the means to do so. He didn’t have to summon her here after all. He could still become an adventurer, maybe. He was considered a warlock by the Adventurers’ Guild and most of the institutions who bothered to track such things, but attitudes were changing here in Halfbridge, mostly because of the work done by Jori and the Solicitors, ironically. He also had friends, assuming they’d made it through the battle. If he went that route, he wouldn’t have to spend more time here in the city than it took to pick up quests and turn them in.

Or, if the fighting got to be too much, they could move cities and he could just do something else. He was a guild member now, and he wasn’t that famous. Not yet, anyway. He’d set a significant portion of the Duergar army on fire with a single spell last night – that was going to make an impression. But how many people actually knew he’d done that? They wouldn’t know his name, right? They could move to Teres and start over.

But those were all problems for later. For now, he just needed to get to the guild and see what information he could find. One step at a time.

He stepped out into what had been the Crafters’ District, stunned at the scale of the destruction. The small plaza that he should have emerged into was nowhere in evidence, lost in the heaps of rubble that once been homes and businesses. He hoped whoever lived here had been evacuated down into the Undercity – there was no way anyone cowering in one of these buildings would have survived.

Looking around at the destruction he realized that their battle down below had been far more limited in scale than the one above. Once he thought about it, the reason for that was obvious. Large scale force or fire spells were dangerous in enclosed spaces, and just as likely to kill your own troops as the enemy if they weren’t perfectly shielded. He always had to be careful how much fire he threw around in a tunnel to avoid cooking himself and his allies – something he’d received an object lesson in last night. Force spells were even worse – concussive force bottled up in a tight space could liquefy organs in a heartbeat.

That hadn’t been a problem here for either side, and the city had paid the price. The duergar had no reason to hold back, and adventurers were famous for collateral damage to the point where most cities made quest givers responsible for any damages that adventurers caused within city limits. In a situation like this, though, that wouldn’t apply. At least Bernt doubted it would matter – the city was, in effect, issuing their quest, after all.

Carefully Bernt picked his way through the rubble along what he thought was probably the street toward the Lower District. He saw a few soldiers and the occasional civilian digging in the wreckage, but for now the area was relatively empty. They’d already come through to clear out the bodies, but he could still smell them. There would be more under the rubble, he was sure.

It only took a few minutes to escape the zone of total destruction around the gate, but the blackened buildings that soon rose around him weren’t going to be habitable again without the aid of a geomancer to repair the cracked walls, not to mention all of the expensive conventional repairs required. Somehow, Bernt doubted that anyone would be moving back in any time soon.

Fire had gutted the homes along the wallside street, and when he passed through the gate into the Lower District, it didn’t get any better. This was the poorest part of the city, relatively near the docks, and they had gotten the worst of it. Even though most of the houses here still stood, they were far from the secondary stairwell that the Underkeepers had used to evacuate the residents of the Crafters’ District. How many had made it out?

As he continued on, moving westward toward the better-off neighborhoods and the Mages’ Guild, he began to feel nervous. How much of the city had burned? A minute later, he heard the sound of hammering, and then saw a work crew loading rubble into a large, ox-drawn cart. There was noise here – shouting, cursing and the clatter of rocks and lumber being moved. The number of people increased slowly with every building he passed, until it felt like he was looking at a kicked anthill. Workers and local residents dug through burnt out homes, salvaging what was left and clearing damaged beams and brick in anticipation of repairs.

Unlike the residents of the earlier neighborhood, the people here had likely had enough warning to get clear. Still, it would take months to recover, and winter was coming on. Bernt suspected that the Undercity was about to grow considerably.

“Bernt!” someone called his name, and he looked up and around. It was crowded, so it took him a moment to see the man waving at him from across the street. Bernt waved back, doing his best to offer a smile.

“Cal! Glad to see you made it! Where’s your cart?” Seeing the man, Bernt stomach suddenly growled and he remembered that he hadn’t had much in the way of dinner last night. He needed to find some breakfast

Cal grimaced. “It’s gone. My street corner went up in smoke, and I couldn’t haul it by myself. I ended up running down to the river when it got too hot for me – a lot of people did.”

Bernt winced in sympathy. Cal’s cart was an institution in the Lower District. His father had bought it decades ago and passed it down to him when he retired. “Are you going to be alright?”

“Oh, sure. I’ve still got my cabbages, and the sun will grow dark before this city runs out of unidentified meats.” He grinned. “Besides, business has been good for me, and at least my house didn’t burn down. I think I can handle buying a new cart.”

“That’s a relief. Good to see you’re doing alright, then.” Bernt smiled again and started to turn to go, but Cal stopped him.

“Hold on. I heard the Duergar came out of the Undercity. How is it down there?”

Bernt let out a slow breath, suppressing a roiling mess of emotions and images that he wished he could unsee. A Duergar spellcaster, writhing on the ground in terror and pain as fire ate him up from inside. Bodies, pieces of bodies, in gray uniforms. Burning goblin. And the smell. A wave of nausea snuffed out his appetite and shook his head, refocusing on the question. “They broke into the tunnel, the main one from the Undercity Gate. We got pushed down, but stopped them, and they came spilling out of the top. As far as I heard, the army cut them off when they tried to retreat the way they came, so they burst down into the Undercity instead. We survived, most of us. But it was bad.”

Cal nodded, reading the discomfort on Bernt’s face. He clapped him on the shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Take care of yourself, Bernt. See you around.”

***

The Mages’ Guild looked completely undamaged, despite the state of its surroundings. Bernt knew that it was probably the most heavily warded structure in the entire city, but knowing and seeing were different things. The buildings across the street were completely gone. Stone and charred bits of wood lay scattered in the street, except near the epicenter of the blast, where the cobblestones themselves had been slagged and nothing else remained except for a small, perfect circle of undamaged stones right in front of the door.

What had happened here?

He stepped inside. Maybe he could ask the receptionist.

For the first time, Bernt found the reception desk unmanned. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised, all things considered, but he was. The stern, grumpy man and his monkey familiar were a fixture here, a familiar gate guardian to overcome.

Ignoring the odd sense of disappointment he felt, Bernt made his way up the stairs, heading for the second floor, to the back of the massive building where the library was housed.

Even though he’d been a guild member for a while now, Bernt had never actually visited the Guild Library. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it hadn’t been a small wooden door with a simple plaque that simply read “Library”.

It had no latch.

Bernt pushed on the door experimentally, but nothing happened. Was there a spell? He raised his left hand and traced a quick pattern on the door, casting an unlocking cantrip. It, too, did nothing.

He thought about it for a moment, and then, feeling a little silly, reached out and knocked.

A few seconds passed, then he heard steps approaching. The door opened, revealing a skinny, prematurely balding young man in a dusty old robe. Bernt blinked.

“Hallan?”

Thrown by the unexpected meeting, Bernt didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t kept in touch with his friends from the academy – not after joining the Underkeepers. He’d always imagined that he would look them up once he was a proper adventurer and pretend like the intervening years hadn’t happened. In hindsight, the idea was ridiculous. People didn’t just stay where you left them. How could they? He hadn’t remained the same, either.

“Bernt? What are you doing here?”

“I’m just checking the place out. I got my guild membership recently.” Bernt said evasively and stepped inside. Shelves upon shelves of books and scrolls filled the enormous room. Off in one corner, Bernt could even see a section labeled “tablet library” most likely containing pre-Madurian originals recovered from archeological sites.

He grinned and clapped the bookish man on the shoulder. “I had no idea you were working for the guild! How did you get a job at the library?”

“What do you mean?” Hallan asked, looking genuinely puzzled. “I speak four languages and the divination architecture I’ve started on is literally specialized for librarians – finding lost books, tracking down sources for specific kinds of information. That sort of thing.” He turned and gestured all around at the stacks. “They welcomed me with open arms. I’m a junior librarian. Seven years of service and all that. I’ll come out as a magister qualified to work in any guild library in the country. I’m thinking about moving to Teres when I’m done. What happened to you?”

“Underkeeper.” Bernt said simply, gesturing down at his robes and ignoring the way Hallan’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “I was going to go into adventuring, but we’ll see how it works out. There’s been a lot going on.”

“I know. There was fighting right outside yesterday. I heard Magister Pollock got involved and wiped out half an army with a single spell! There aren’t any spells like that, mind you. Not for magisters – I checked. But that’s the rumor.”

“Pollock?” Bernt tried to picture it, but he couldn’t. “How? He can barely walk!”

Hallan shrugged. “He’s a wizard and a pyromancer. Based on that and the street outside, I’m going to guess he used fire.”

Bernt laughed. It felt good, but it didn’t last. Too much had happened, and he had things to do.

“Do you have a section on demonology?” he asked, thinking quickly. “I’m trying to learn more about the Duergar warlocks and some of the things they were doing in the battle yesterday. If we have to fight them again, I want to be prepared.”

“Yeah, we do have a section on that kind of stuff – accounts of different kinds of summoners, a bestiary of interplanar beings. It’s not much, but I think you’ll find something. I heard a lot of them used possession pacts. Some of our historical texts mention that kind of thing, but it’s illegal here. One of those ended up fighting a demon in the middle of the city a few weeks ago. Did you hear about that?”

“Yeah,” Bernt said, smile turning brittle. “I did.”