Underkeeper

Bernt hid the box in one of his sleeves, circling around a few well-dressed teenagers as he made his way downhill toward the river. One of them, wearing academy robes, pointed at him as she talked to her friends. They sneered at him, but he ignored them. He wasn’t going to let the judgment of a bunch of rich half-trained fools intimidate him.

Down the street a young priest stood on a wooden box preaching to a small crowd of passers-by who had stopped to listen. As Bernt passed, he caught a bit of it.

“… to their influence. Demons live among us, tolerated even by the king himself. It is up to each of us, then, to keep our communities pure of their taint. We can never forget what complacency and tolerance of evil have brought to humanity in the past: the fall of the Empire and the desolation of Harrowick. These are but…”

The voice was swallowed up by the noise of traffic. Bernt didn’t disagree with the man on any particular point. History showed that dealing with demons was dangerous—and not just for the warlock. But he also had a hard time seeing Jori as anything other than his rascally little helper. He had a direct line to her thoughts, and he’d never so much as caught an evil impulse from her. Besides, Jori hadn’t made any deals, so far as he knew. People like that priest would see her dead on sight anyway, though.

It just didn’t quite sit right with him.

A few minutes later, he turned off the main street and stepped into a familiar alleyway that led to a small, dingy courtyard. While it wasn’t exactly clean, someone had recently picked up the garbage and swept the place. At the far end stood a rickety two-story building. On the lintel above the door, someone had inexpertly scrawled the words “Halfbridge Orphanage,” though the paint was so faded now that he could barely make it out in the dim light. An old broom, the brushwood nearly worn down to the shaft, leaned against the frame.

He opened the door and stepped inside without knocking—they knew he was coming today. Jori was off doing her own thing in the sewers below, probably terrorizing the local rat population or looking for shiny things. That was for the best. He wasn’t about to risk the kids seeing a demon.

“I’m here!” he called out, taking in the familiar presence of the place. The house smelled of soap and wood, and was always a little too dark.

“Hello, Bernie. I’ve already got them ready for you in the main room,” a reedy voice said right behind him.

He didn’t jump. The orphanage’s elderly matron, Miss Farrin, had always been light on her feet.

“Great! Did they do their homework?” he asked.

“Hmph. A few of them did, sure. With most of them, you’ll just have to hope for the best with what you can drill into them.” She sighed. “Did you finally get your back pay?”

Bernt smiled.

“Not yet. The castellan’s office is never open when I’m off work. The only time I can collect my pay is during my lunch break—and only if the castellan’s secretary happens to not be taking hers at the time.”

“Can’t you get them to deposit it for you at the bank?” she asked. “It’s hardly worth doing the job if you’re not going to get paid for it, you know.”

He did get paid whenever he managed to catch the castellan’s secretary in her office. Only a handful of silver each month, but all of it went directly to his savings. Every little bit counted.

“I know, but it’s important,” Bernt said. “Somebody has to do it. They deserve to be given a chance.”

“Sure, but why you?” Farrin pressed. “This was an opportunity for you when you were a student, but now? You’re a professional with a safe job and a reliable income. You should be spending your evenings meeting young women and making the most of what you have and are.”

Bernt frowned. “They look down on us, the others. They think we’re incompetent or criminals. That we’re less than they are—the dregs. I’m not going to accept that.”

Farrin sighed.

“Who, Bernie?” she asked, voice tinged with exasperation—this wasn’t the first time they’d had this exact conversation. “Who actually thinks that? The magefinders took you out of here and gave you the same education that every other mage in the kingdom gets. And look at you!” She gestured at him proudly. “You made it!”

Bernt didn’t feel like he’d made it anywhere. Not yet.

“I’m an Underkeeper—barely a mage at all, as far as they’re concerned,” he said bitterly. She didn’t understand—couldn’t, really. As far as Farrin was concerned, a mage was a mage. Who cared what their robes looked like if they could do magic. Bernt knew better, though.

Farrin harrumphed at him. “You’re still very young, Bernie. One of these days, you’re going to have to learn to stop looking at yourself through the eyes of people who don’t matter.”

Bernt rolled his eyes.

“These people do matter! Why do you think this place is so underfunded?”

Farrin waved her hand at him dismissively. “Don’t argue with your elders, boy. Go teach the kids your lesson. You can’t expect them to sit in there just waiting for you forever.”

***

Bernt lived down in the lower city, in a former warehouse next to the river docks that had been converted into tenements. It was a bad part of town—even worse than the one the orphanage was in—but that didn’t concern him too much. The gangs didn’t bother people who stayed out of their business, and muggers generally avoided anyone who wore mages’ robes, no matter how shabby they might have been. The only thing that mattered to him was that he could rent a room here for twelve silver a month.

He even had a fairly nice view of the river’s largest dock, one built on a few ancient stone pillars that rose from the waters, cutting through the current. They were all that remained of the ruined bridge that the city of Halfbridge was named for. What happened to the other half, and who had built the original bridge, was lost to history. There was nothing but monsters and a few haunted ruins on the other side of the river. Humans had never lived there at all, as far as Bernt knew.

Unsealing the protective ward on the door to his room, Bernt then entered and settled down on a comfortable cushion before pulling out the box. He could guess what was in it, but he still held his breath as he opened the catch.

A wand rested on soft velvet, wrapped in a scrap of paper. He removed the paper and ran his fingers over the wood, taking it in.

It was fragrant and reddish with a slight charred effect—lightning-struck cedar, most likely. The entire length was carved with runes and channels designed to focus mana smoothly, to improve casting time and mana efficiency while casting. The design was elegant, deceptively simple and incredibly efficient. As he examined the runes more closely, though, his hands trembled. This wasn’t just a general-purpose wand. This was a weapon, made to maximize the destructive potential of the spells cast through it. Specifically, fire spells. It was a military-grade pyromancer’s wand, the type that a war mage would carry—or an adventurer.

Bernt snatched the paper up from the floor. Sure enough, it was a note.

Hi Bernt,

I told Syrah, our healer, what happened. She kept a sample of the slime, and we managed to match it to samples from old Julian’s shop. So, now he’s going to be footing the bill for that Teresian burn specialist! Long story short, you took some real pressure off of our budget.

Anyway, I might have mentioned that you’re looking to get into the adventuring business, and we decided to invest in your future a bit. We issued a quest to find the source of the slimes and turned it in under your name for the reward that we posted for it. Congratulations, you’re a shiny new rank 1 adventurer!

You’re welcome.

- Therion

He’d told him that he didn’t want his charity. That bastard.

But… it was a quest reward—for something that he had actually done. Sure, the quest didn’t exist at the time, and it wasn’t dangerous in the least. But… did that matter? He was a registered adventurer. Technically, anyway.

This was a big step in the right direction.

He eyed the wand critically. He’d have to strap a holster onto his arm so he could store it in his sleeve. There was no way he could leave something so valuable lying around in his room, and carrying it on his belt was just asking for trouble from every pickpocket in town. He’d keep using his old wand for work.

Pushing mana through the wand, he cast a fire shield around himself, marveling at how quickly and easily the spell formed. It was a complex weave that required the caster to generate a double temperature barrier to contain intense heat. Failing to do so correctly could burn the target—himself—or allow the heat to quickly dissipate into his surroundings, which would turn the spell into something closer to a poorly controlled fire nova.

In practical terms, that usually translated to a long cast time. Without using a focus, Bernt could cast a fire shield in about twenty seconds. Once he adjusted to this wand, though, he could see himself having one up in just three or four seconds. That wasn’t necessarily fast enough to cast while some monster was trying to eat your face, but it was good enough to use actively in a party context.

Excitement fluttered in his chest, but Bernt pushed it down. He still had a long way to go. Even relatively modest adventuring robes with basic defensive enchantments cost upwards of eighty gold—he might barely be able to scrape that together with what he’d managed to save over the past four years, but that still didn’t cover consumables, good traveling boots, a bag of holding, or general supplies. He still had another year to go at least, more likely two.

But it was a real start, finally.

His daydreaming was interrupted by a soft scritching sound at his window. Moving quickly, he briefly opened it to let Jori in and cast a cleaning spell on her as she clambered over the sill so she wouldn’t stink up the place. Chirping at him proudly, she hopped down and dropped a headless and slightly chewed-up rat at his feet. Gross.

At least now he could make more imp treats. She would eat them raw, too, but he knew she preferred them dried and extra spicy. She flitted over to the small cast-iron stove and curled up next to it, hissing at him insistently.

Obliging, he packed the stove with a bit of wood and lit it with a quick fire cantrip. Imps didn’t need a hot environment to survive, but he’d found that Jori at least preferred it. Or maybe she just wanted him to get on with making that jerky.