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(Three) ◀◀◀◀◀ Chapter Four ▶▶▶▶▶ (Five)
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Negotiations with Torrissio were not going any better in the light of lunch than they'd been going at breakfast. Which is to say they were not going at all, and even moreso than before the Life Mage proposed his "simple bargain", which he kicked off by drenching his insides with the contents of a freshly popped bottle of Moonshade Ice Wine Peach Rosé. He identified it as a rare and especially potent vintage—New Freedom 449, that eventful year when Magelord Filbercio took his then-paramour Rotoluncia to a public wine-tasting event, which came to a premature end after the latter tried to kill Ranger Julia and burn down (or more accurately blow up, given the intended mechanics of Vas Frio Hur) the municipal vineyard.
The general temperament of Adepts was ever thus, especially whenever the Fracas of the Day involved all the grisly little things crawling about the underbelly of life, like personal ambition and the consolidation of power and having to pretend to be attracted to the Magelord just to make some headway with the former two. The typical Moonshadian Adept lived not a life but an entanglement, often inextricably entangled with the entanglements of others while paradoxically mired in self-absorbed torment, a combination that frequently led to scandal or property damage. Usually both, in spades.
But Mortegro, ever the non-conformist, preferred to keep his hands, legs, eyes, ears, mouth and other body parts well clear of any such entanglements besides his own. As for why, he recalled a moment from his initiate days, when his mentor Gustacio once lamented to him that Moonshade's social ladder might as well have been erected in a bucket full of crabs. The comparison deeply amused a part of Mortegro few others had ever seen or known, the part who was still Morton Shumway, native of Fawn, the fisherman's haven.
Morton Shumway did not know much about the world at large, but he was at least familiar with the politics of crabs, specifically those packed into very small buckets along with a multitude of other crabs.
"Torrissio, please," said the Mortegro of here and now, who rarely had the depths of his own patience tested like this. "Please do not waste our time any longer. We've already agreed to bargain with you over the charges for Petra's repair, so let us—"
"Oh, come off it! What is the rush, old friend? Have a drink with me first."
"No, thank you," Mortegro told him for the fourth or fifth time.
"I reckon we are wasting time," Stefano whispered with his ally. "Either that or he's bluffing. First he tries to scam you into becoming the Magelord, then he tells us he has some other bargain in mind but apparently he can't tell us what that bargain is without getting absolutely potted first?"
"Frankly, I am left with the impression that he was going to get potted whether we swung by or not."
"What should we do? I reckon we ought to just pick up the woman as is and bail. This man is all talk and no trousers!"
"Oh, he's got on trousers alright. In fact, we really ought to not take that for granted, especially given how much he's had to drink—"
"—but you will forgive me for prolonging the matter, hm?" Torrissio resumed. "Bartering is a very emotionally exhausting activity for me, a man who has lost virtually everything and everybody worthwhile to him. I mean, the woman whom I…" He hesitated, calculated, "…whom I slept with on a semi-regular basis is dead, gone forever! Never again shall Columna grace the world with her tender visage! The way her eyes would light up whenever I'd turn the paperboy into a toad. The way her adorable pug-nose would crinkle with delight every time I'd let her have a go at bashing the automatons. The way her creamy and pliable backside would—well, all that's gone now, reduced to naught but a little crock of ashes on my mantelpiece…"
The Life Mage capped off what was perhaps the last ever bottle of Moonshade Ice Wine Peach Rosé (N.F. 449) with an obscene noise from his gullet. The bottle slipped out of his wavering hand and soared towards the floor, but in a stroke of luck (good or bad, depending on who one asked) his be-slippered right foot broke its fall. After a brutal-sounding thud, the bottle rolled safely onto the terrazzo.
Seemingly unfazed, Torrissio continued shuffling towards his apparent destination, another one of his laboratory's curio cabinets. Thankfully, this one did not appear to contain any flasks, bottles, jugs, kegs, decanters, ewers, flagons, milk cartons, goon bags or anything else that could potentially hide a beverage.
What it did contain, however, was his impressive collection of magical artifacts of Ophidian provenance, his plundered scrolls and priceless books, his numerous little geegaws and kickumbobs, remnants of the clockwork devices that once dominated this realm, whose actual purposes were now impossible to fathom.
"Torrissio, for heaven's sake!" Stefano cried out, wondering if such a spectacle could still be considered second-hand embarrassment when the first-hand showed no signs of it. "Pull yourself together!"
The Adept ignored him, muttering to himself as he jammed a small key into the cabinet lock, jiggling it impotently.
"And now you want me to give up my Petra—! Ugh." He spat the word off his tongue. "You know I hate that name. Made-up nonsense."
"Define nonsense. Rocco came up with the name, true, but it obviously means something precious to her," said Mortegro.
"Her real name is Elissa. Only I would know that, for that is the name engraved into the carapace of her soul gem, in the old cipher of the Ophidians."
"So what? She's Petra now and I say that's all that matters. All of that soul gem business is ancient history," said Stefano. "Petra is who she wants to be."
"And how would you know that, mundane? Have you ever bothered to ask her?"
"Have you?"
A cold, tense silence filled the next few overlong seconds. The Life Mage was not used to defeat and now he faced it on two fronts; he miserably ramped up his efforts with the key. "Bah! You're all the same, Adept, automaton, mundane, Magelord, what does it even matter? You do nothing but take and take, more and more from me, a man so thoroughly pillaged he has hardly anything left that he could cherish."
"What about those nice slippers?"
"Do shut up, you worthless coxcomb."
Mortegro pinched the crux of his brow, hoping vainly to stem the oncoming headache. "That is not why we brought Petra to you and you know it."
"I suppose I do." Torrissio paused, just long enough to heave a little sigh. "Alas, that automaton remains as dear to me as any other object in my collection. But like any other object in my collection, even she could be up for sale, provided the price is right. And there truly is something that I would be willing to accept for her in reciprocity, and it may surprise you to learn that I have already given the matter a great deal of thought, long before this Anarchy business spoiled everything. And you dared to suggest that I was bluffing! Ah-hah—!"
At last, his increasingly frustrated key-jamming produced the desired click. Torrissio wrenched the cabinet doors open with the full force of his frustration; the little whirl he added to the stumble that followed almost made it look intentional.
"You've quite the motley assortment in there," observed Mortegro.
"My anthropological expeditions are always worthwhile in unpredictable ways. Although I never know what exactly I am going to find, I rarely fail to find any artifacts of at least some interest, even if such discoveries lack the requisite cultural gravitas for inclusion in my personal collection. Ah! But never mind all that—have a look at this, Death Mage! Behold!" Torrissio lunged halfway across the room, darting towards his fellow mage with what he surely believed was the insuperable dexterity of a world-class fencer.
In fact in his wine-fueled haste to impress, he nearly fumbled the object he was now wielding. Whatever it was, it did look vicious, Mortegro had to admit after he got a good look at it: A narrow shaft roughly the length of a steak knife, worked from the brass that the Ophidians so preferred. Its pièce de résistance was no doubt that engraved silver tip, shaped and slitted to resemble the flat head of an adder with its tongue extended.
"Eh? Eh? Are you beholding?"
"I'm beholding, Torrissio," Mortegro nodded, calmly. "What is it?"
"The Ophidians were ingenious, nay, artful in their approach to torture. I've found so many handheld torture devices just like this one scattered around their ruins, but this might be the only complete example of its kind," Torrissio explained, somehow only slightly slurred as he turned the device over in his hands for Mortegro's perusal. "Now. I cannot be precisely sure of its mode of operation, but this reservoir in the shaft here, coupled with this mechanism in the handle strongly suggests to my expert eyes that this was a ritual blood-letting device, no doubt to be used in conjunction with the dark magics of the snake people. I propose that these would've been used to drain prisoners of their blood en masse, likely by puncturing this horrible point right through one of the major veins…"
"My my!" Stefano butted in, leering over Mortegro's sloping shoulders. "What a delightfully deranged imagination. It's always dark magic and puncture wounds with you lot, isn't it?"
"Away with you!" snapped Torrissio, swatting at the interloper as effectively as one might shoo a hungry moggie from a tuna sandwich.
"Probably just a fountain pen."
"I said away—!"
Mortegro narrowed his eyes. "Why are you showing me this? Don't tell me your bargain involves…"
"Ehh? Oh no! Stars no!" Torrissio snorted. "As if I could possibly find any use for your enfeebled blood? Oh, do stop glaring at me like that, Morty. I only thought you would share my fascination for this sort of thing, being a death magic licensee."
"Well I don't."
"Evidently. How about a drink?"
"No, thank you."
"You simply look like you could stand to loosen up a little, that's all. Oh, never mind, never mind." Torrissio waved it off and resumed his search. "In fact, I unearthed that particular treasure very close to the artifact that is going to be a part of our bargain: A loose bundle of pages—well, more of a folio, perhaps once part of a journal. Hand-written in a cipher that I cannot readily interpret. I assume it must be some strain of Ophidian—well, have a look yourself. Over here—not you, pignut."
He barked the last invective directly at Stefano, whose loose shrug conveyed a reassuring lack of interest in following the other two men as they headed towards the curio cabinet.
"I absolutely do not like handling this relic unless it is positively necessary, but if ever I must touch it, I wear these," Torrissio explained, tugging a pair of flimsy cloth gloves over his hands. "I only have the one pair, so you absoltively-posilutely will not be touching it at all, of course."
"Of course."
With as much care as one could manage after drinking an entire bottle of wine (and whatever else one may have imbibed prior to that), Torrissio extracted a slender volume as previously described—a "bundle of pages", likely a loosened section from a larger book. He dandled it delicately about his protected hands, allowing his fellow mage a generous, if distant examination.
"Now. I cannot discern if this is some kind of parchment or perhaps vellum, some sort of ex-ungulate of some stripe, who can say; Ophidian writing material is not at all like ours, and it can be extremely fragile. And for something hand-written to have survived the eons in this condition is nothing short of miraculous."
"And unique. Is that dye or some sort of patina?" wondered Mortegro, noticing how the pages themselves were an unusual color, uniformly brown with a weak purple tint.
"I know not, and I'd rather not entertain my immediate assumptions in polite company. Though you will notice how the gilded ink stands out against it. Catches your eye, eh? Hopefully when it does, you too will notice the problem that has been eluding me for so long."
Indeed. Those gracefully looping squiggles did not form anything that Mortegro could easily identify, much less interpret.
"And you believe this is some lost strain of Ophidian?" he asked.
"I assume so. As I said, I found it within an Ophidian ruin on this very island, amid the remains of other Ophidian books and scrolls, and several Ophidian blood-letting devices. What else would it be?" Torrissio paused. "Don't say aliens."
"I would never. Actually, I was just about to ask: Haven't you tried Rel Wis?"
"Honestly, Mortegro!" Torrissio hiccuped in disbelief. "Of course I have tried Rel Wis. I tried Rel Wis, Vas Rel Wis, An Wis, bloody Dim Wis, Kal Reski-Tas—"
"Kal Reski-Tas! My, you were digging deep," said Mortegro, raising his eyebrows. When was the last time he'd heard of anyone resorting to Invoke Memory outside of the most academic exercises?
"I even tried Wis Quas to rule out invisible ink. I showed it to Fedabiblio and used his lens. I even took it to Monk Isle! Bah. Those bum-babbling dunderheads were about as useful to me as a fork in a consommé."
"But now you want me to take a crack at it?"
"Desperate times call for desperate measures, do they not?" Keeping his present company (unwanted or otherwise) in mind, Torrissio lowered his voice to a more intimate volume. "Now. Listen. I can sense that this scroll has been infused with power, terrible and dreadful."
Mortegro sniffed. "I think it's just water damage."
"Don't be a fool! I would wager my life that these accursed leaves detail the dreadful secrets of some lost Ophidian death magic, infused with the blood of the tormented!"
"Hmm. Mold, perhaps."
"I am being serious, Mortegro, and it would behoove you to treat my predicament with similar respect. I must decipher this document and claim its secret, any way I can, if only to protect it from those who would seek to abuse its power."
"How virtuous of you. And so, this is the bargain you would strike up for us?"
"I told you it was simple. You want the automaton girl, my greatest creation yet. In return, I ask for knowledge of equivalent worth," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "That shall be my final offer. Is it not a more equitable trade than the last one? Are you not yet satisfied? You still look flummoxed."
"I am flummoxed! Between the two of us, you were always the Ophidian expert," said Mortegro, "so I cannot imagine why you would think that fobbing the task onto me could possibly yield anything beyond what you have already gleaned for yourself."
"Ahh, but where I was always the expert in finding artifacts, relics, all the right things, you were always the expert in finding the right people. Diplomacy, disarming, prising secrets…"
"If you say so, but there's hardly anyone left to pry!"
"You are still the Death Mage of Moonshade, are you not?" Torrissio continued to shrug and now started rolling his eyes too, his characteristic spleen at last shining through the haze of inebriation. "I was thinking, perhaps you could hold one of your risible little seances and summon the ghost of somebody who can help?"
"I could, but we've still got to be rational about it. Stars in hell, what you suggest would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I wouldn't even know where to—"
No! I do know where to start looking… Mortegro's realization elicited a quiet gasp. He sneaked a sidelong glance at Stefano, trying to catch the man's eye, hoping they were at least on the same wavelength.
Alas, Stefano could not return the glance for he was currently busying himself with the contents of Torrissio's substances cabinet; when caught at just the right angle, one could make out the bulbous outline of a miniature bottle or two snuggled within the front pocket of the thief's morning coat.
But Torrissio noticed no such quiet gasps or subtle glances or bulbous outlines (thank goodness) and thus had no further comment on the matter. He moved towards his laboratory door and made a funny little motion through the threshold with his fingers, as if beckoning something from the outside.
"Well, as I said, that is my final offer. Take it or leave it, but if you lot truly want me to return that metal maid to the Avatar's company after I am through with her repairs, no doubt you will commence a search of every single haystack left on these doomed Isles of ours until you have found the needle we seek. Until that happy day, I do not anticipate seeing either one of you again," he said, sweeping himself aside from the doorway.
He did so to allow the entrance of his automaton valet, a towering, chrome-plated humanoid clad in a handsomely tailored swallowtail jacket. The automaton's eyes blinked, sullen amber bulbs marking time for his standard query, a rusty and toneless "Greetings, signore Torrissio. Do you have a new task for me?"
"Yes, Marvello III. Please see these two non-entities to the door and bid them adieu for me. Frankly, I can't be arsed right now…"
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