Last Words chapter 66 (Patreon)

I spent the next few hours grinding my new skill. I kept it to brownies, to be safe. Started small. One or two of them at first, then more. The bowls of fresh cream started adding up (not to mention the purple fruits to refill my mana faster), but after a few hours or consistent negotiation, I was still only down ten thousand or so dollars, and I’d amassed a surprisingly hefty little group of brownies willing to go out and explore for me.

My Fae Bargain skill was sitting at a respectable eight though, which wasn’t bad after such a long time. I was almost to my first perk, and I was interested to see what exactly I was going to end up with for that one. I was making quick progress.

Which was good, because when I went down to check on Connie, I found her circling spots on the map like crazy. Ron had already left down the tunnel to do another sweep just in case, leaving her alone to continue her practice. She didn’t seem too worried, so I decided not to mention the lack of security, instead pointing out the obvious issue with her detection process.

“You know,” I said dryly. “Traditionally when tracking something, you want to find ONE result. If the thing you’re looking for is everywhere that's not really tracking. That’s just guessing with a mana cost.”

She snorted, eyeing the map. “I know. But the thing is, I think that more than just one piece broke off that jewel. Only one that was big or magical enough to matter, but I'm getting false positives from tiny fragments that don’t necessarily count. And my skill isn’t high enough for more than a general description yet. I went through the fruits, and they helped, but I think I’m at the limits of what my skill can hit in a short time.”

I grimaced, but nodded. That made sense. These magic skills were convenient and powerful, but they needed time to grow. It had been naive to think that a single skill would be able to make enough progress to magically fix our problems in so short a time.

At least by themselves. Between the two of them, we clearly had a way to narrow it down. Like it made sense that a fragmented gem had particles fly free, and I assumed they’d been carried by wind or creatures to other places, but there was bound to be some overlap, and we had the manpower (faepower?) to make it work.

When I filled her in on my strategy, her eyes went wide. “I still can’t believe it,” she all but cackled with delight. “You can summon fairies.”

“I can summon FAE,” I stressed. “Of which, depending on your definition, fairies as you define them may be A type. I wouldn’t recommend calling them that to their faces. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend calling their faces at all. My Fae Bargain skill does more than let me contact them and spend mana to get them here. It also guides me through the process of interaction. Fae Bargaining is both a magical art and a type of etiquette. Fae are big on etiquette.”

In fact, back before the advent of words from the sky, most people had assumed the fae WERE etiquette. Local folklore about the dangerous consequences of breaking hospitality and being rude to guests to scare people into being good hosts.

Of course, they were also far more. The brownies I’d summoned were the very lowest rung of the Fae hierarchy. I could feel through the skill that I shouldn’t push higher yet. I didn’t know enough. Wasn’t ready.

Still, I had so many big dreams in my head. I’d been planning to create a faction here. Build a holding, develop myself in politics. And there was no one, NO ONE, more suited to teaching me those skills than a fae. I shook that off. That was a future Gus problem. Current Gus had to survive the attention of this lich long enough to HAVE a future. After warning Connie about how to act, I cleared my throat. “Bog Donahue!” I called aloud, lacing my voice with just a hint of mana in a way that I hadn’t been able to do earlier in the day.

There was a slight pop and Bog was sitting on the table where the model was placed, tipping back a big saucer of double cream. “Mmm?” he asked, not even pulling his head out of his drink.

“Time to work,” I informed him with a sigh. “You’ll need to gather the others. I don’t want to waste the mana doing an individual summon for each of them. That’s part of our deal, remember?” I made sure not to get snappish or upset, tone was very important when dealing with fae. He would still do what he promised either way, but the amount of malice in that compliance depended heavily on his mood.

My skill underscored that context heavily. Fae were manifestations of bureaucracy and rigid rule following, but they themselves weren’t a PART of the rigidity, but a CONSEQUENCE of it. You could always tell what a fae would do (whatever suited them best), but how they did it was more up in the air. Their core mandate was to benefit, but whether the concept of that benefit involved your detriment depended on the impression you left when interacting. Fae never acted JUST out of spite, but they were always happy to throw a little in if you gave them an excuse.

Honestly, the whole experience was deeply weird. My other words, buying, selling, and even contracts, were more of a reflection of my progress down a fairly open ended path. I was pretty sure my contract skill DID give me more of an understanding of terms and conditions and how to twist them to my benefit, which I suspected was passively improving my interactions through Fae Bargain even is it grew.

But the Bargain skill itself was different. It was giving me real, concrete knowledge I hadn’t had before as it leveled, filling me in on nuance and context for interactions I’d never even had before. It was unsettling, but also kind of cool in a weird way.

Bog finally finished the saucer, pulling his wrinkled head from the dish and glaring up at me. The glare wasn’t particularly fierce, mostly just the same put out expression as anyone being forced to stop having a good time to do work. “Alright,” he said sourly. “Well, where should we be going?”

I gestured to the model. “Well, Connie has circled a few locations on this thing.” I glanced over it, noting the varying colors of ink used. “Actually, what do these circles mean?” I directed this one to my friend.

“Purple for the gem,” she said immediately. “Red for the big thing that wants to kill us. Blue for the Ten Thousand Doors society. These two,” she pointed at the green circles. “Are just generic treasure areas I think. I’m not sure what’s there, so looking in a ten mile radius probably won’t be much use, but I figured since we’re going to be down there anyway.”

I frowned at her. “What do you mean we? Why would you be going with us?”

Rather than get angry or defensive, she just pointed at the model. “Ten miles is the size of the circle relative to this map. But If you get me closer and make a more detailed map, now that my skill has gone up, I can get in tighter. It’ll make finding the fragment much simpler.”

“You can’t just go tighter on the model?” I asked in annoyance, pointing at the display.

“No,” she said bluntly. “And I don’t know why. Maybe there’s a limit to how close in I can get relative to the map size, I have no idea. Now, you don’t NEED to bring me along, to be clear, you could send me back the maps, but you and I both know it’ll be faster and more accurate if I’m there in real time. And we ALSO know that there’s no time to argue about it.” She pointed at the blue and purple circles, many of which looked awfully close to overlapping.

“I could always just retrieve this…fragment,” Bog said helpfully.

My eyes narrowed. “No,” I said firmly. “Our deal was for investigation. Asking you to retrieve an object is a breach of contract.” Or rather, it was a lopsided exchange, and I would need to compensate him for the upgraded task. Which was what he wanted. Never let yourself get in debt to a fae. The only safe way to bargain with a fae was to rigidly stick to the terms of your deal, even if they tried to change them in your favor. Especially then.

Shrugging nonchalantly, he nodded along. “Very well,” I could sense the disappointment. “A search it will be.” Empathic read was VERY handy for dealing with the fae, because though they might be morally distinct, they did have emotions. While fae were incapable of lying, they were masters of showing you the specific version of the truth they wanted you to see. Rather than being useless, as I’d expected it might be on something as alien as a fae, empathic read (the perk from my contract skill hitting level ten), was priceless when dealing with fae. Knowing what they didn’t want you to focus on was key for coming out ahead.

“We need you to search these areas, and tell us if you find a shard of purple gemstone,” I brought up my hands to make an approximate shape. “About this big. When you find it, do NOT touch it. It’s probably possessed. It is also most likely surrounded by something dangerous, so be careful when you’re down there and come back immediately if you find anything.”

My biggest fear was that one of the other brownies would get curious and try to touch the shard. I wasn’t sure what that lich WAS, or what it could do, but I somehow doubted giving it access to extradimensional magical creatures was a particularly smart plan.

Luckily I had laid out my terms very carefully. None of them were allowed to take anything they found. They were strictly searchers. This had the added benefit of needing to pay them less, since they weren’t engaging in any activities outside their technical skillset. Brownies did chores like cleaning and finding lost items all the time.

That was another key component to dealing with fae. Understanding their true nature was a huge part of knowing how they would behave. Aside from keeping them friendly, knowing their priorities and habits was the best way to bargain and come out ahead.

After confirming the job, Bog vanished again. Connie shook her head with a giggle. “I can’t believe I met a faerie.”

“Fae,” I reminded her. “But thank you for waiting until he left to say that. Anyway, I have one more thing I was hoping you would check for me. I don’t suppose your mana has refilled enough for one more scrying session?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “I might be able to,” she said slowly. “Depends what I’m looking for. I think that I can’t look for things that are too powerful. Searching for that big monster for you was hard. More mana than the others, and I felt a strain. I think something about the process gets harder when I’m looking for higher grades of being.”

Considering my own understanding of my Fae Bargain skill, that sounded likely. I was pretty sure trying to summon a higher form of fae would be impossible for me right now, because of both skill level an mana usage. It made sense Connie’s would work the same. “That’s fine, if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work,” I assured her. “But if you can find the ‘pile of bones’ the Lich mentioned, I bet its location would overlap with the circle we need.”

She seemed intrigued, then settled in to start working on divining the target I’d asked about. Meanwhile, we waited for the fae to return, along with Ron. Soon, we’d have all the information we needed, then it would be time to move. I turned out my walkie, calling out to Alistair, and when he responded, I filled him in on the basics. We identified a specific location along the route of the tunnel where they would meet us and then signed off, after that, all I could do was wait.