Absentmindedly he begin cutting up his ruined shirt into strips.

His only shirt, he suddenly realized mournfully.

It had been a long night, convincing the thieves guild not to murder him and beggar his friend. And all while bleeding and covered in wood splinters.

He had crashed immediately when he’d gotten home.

Huh. That was the first time he had called the shop home, too. Funny how fast being threatened did that.

More first aid was called for. And he was dying for a sandwich.

--

Some odd hours later, he had cleaned himself and his space up. It had been a glorious mess, he realized belatedly. When he got deep into his creative sparks, it was like the entire world went on mute.

He wasn't naive. He had always been a ‘forest for the trees’ kind of guy. But this was beyond spectrum behavior for him.

Clearly he needed someone to help him out in the ‘staying alive’ department. The skill he had gained was strong, beautiful in its simplicity. And powerful. But it was also dangerous.

It was time to be a better keeper for himself.

Or you know. Hire one.

As he wandered down the stairs, he spotted Brand behind his desk. “Hey, ‘boss.’” Always good to start off on a happy note.

“Don’t hey me, you fucking zombie.” Brand stuck a finger in his face. “Did you come down here in one of your fits, and disorganize my goods?”

“Ah, no. That was probably Claire. She was trying to steal some things from you.”

“...” Brand gapped.

Charley filled him in.

--

“That tratorious fucking Troll testicle!” Brand was happier than Charley had seen him get, ever. He was on the edge between hysteria and sobbing, “I knew I wasn’t a bad [Trader]. I knew it!”

Charley patted him on the back. “It’s worse when friends do it. You have every right to be mad.” He offered solace in the form of revenge, “but now you know there’s a commissioned [Thief] who’s going to rob him blind.”

Brand nodded forcefully, a brittle smile on his cheeks, “There’s that.” The smile left, “Charley. Are you a fucking idiot?”

“Pardon?”

“What you did at the meeting. The thieves guild aren’t going to change -- they operate the way they do for a reason. Low profile. You basically just asked them to commit suicide.”

Charley nodded “That’s the best case scenario, but it wouldn’t happen. Incredibly outside chance.”

Brand hesitated. “You want that.”

“I want them to never fuck with you, me, or someone I love. If their building went up in a structure fire, I wouldn’t call the fire department.”

“It’s a brigade.” Brand corrected. “So why go into the maw? You already struck a deal for us.” He offered a contrite apology, “Thank you for that, by the way.”

Charley waved it off.

He looked seriously at his new friend. “The man from the story I told? Robin Hood was an outlaw and a terrorist. Do you know how the story ends?” He smiled sadly, “He died. They strung him up and he became a legend people retold with happier endings. I’m not a fool, Brand.”

Brand pressed him, “So, why the meeting?”

Charley sighed. “I wanted to understand the enemy. Maybe offer them something more. Plant a seed.”

Brand massaged his temples. “And for that, you wanted to immediately get yourself *and my business* as far into the shit as possible? Not ask around, maybe. Do some homework. Ask me about it.” The statements poured out, one after the other.

Charley paled a little, “Hey, I thought I was going to have a chill meeting with some middle management schmuck, not sit with my toes in a bonfire. I was trying to give them a reason to let me walk out of the room!” He added guiltily, “and maybe I got a little carried away once I saw the audience.”

They both stared at each other for a moment. Brand slammed the point home, “I’m glad you made it out. But you put more than just yourself at risk. And that was stupid. Do it again, and you’re out of my building.”

Charley wilted. “I’m sorry.”

Brand sighed again. “So what happens next?”

“Hopefully nothing.” Charley shuddered. “Two outcomes; they don’t take the suggestions, and that’s great. The..” Charley got evasive for a moment. He hadn’t told Brand about the twins existence, and wasn’t going to spread that any farther than he had too. He liked breathing. “..second option is that someone low level in the guild posts a bounty board. Probably against orders -- upper echelon wasn’t buying what I was selling. And then the shit hits the fan, and I don’t know what comes next. We see what happens with our local Thieves guild.”

Brand took it in. “You have the weirdest idioms.”

They sat in a comfortable silence.

A few moments later, Brand seemed to lighten up. “I’m not force feeding you again. Or taking out your chamber pot.” His nose wrinkled.

Charley sighed, “Yeah, I had some thoughts about tha-”

Brand cut him off, “don’t care, already hired someone.”

Charley blinked. Brand pointed behind his desk to an open door. Charley didn’t see anything.

Brand raised a finger, and pointed farther down at an angle.

There looked to be a twelve year old girl quietly threading and working some patchwork repairs to a shirt. But her eyes were up and on the two talking about her.

“That’s Maria. Be nice or I’ll cut your throat and save the guild some trouble.” And he meant it. He followed, “that’s my niece.” Charley didn’t show any recognition. “Ander’s kid.”

She was Button nosed with sharp brown eyes. She had a single well kept braid of dirty blonde hair.

Charley smiled wide and started walking around the counter, ignoring Brand’s death glare. He sat down in front of the girl.

“Hi, Maria. Nice to meet you. I’m Charley. Charley Peace.” He didn’t offer his hand, unwilling to interrupt honest work. Unlike Brand, he thought darkly.

She nodded, staring at his face. “You’re the idiot dad found in the woods.” Charley didn’t break his smile.

Hard to argue with the truth.

She had the look of a person taking the world in, and finding its measure. Charley liked her already.

Maria nodded at his reaction, satisfied, “he told me I should do my best to keep you alive, but that it was okay if you died.”

Charley let a full belly laugh. Sweet children. Absolutely no fucks given. “What else did your father tell you?”

Maria closed one eye, and put a hand to her chin, “Not to touch anything sharp.”

Charley kept laughing. When he could get enough air in his lungs, he offered, “Welcome to the Team. What’s a good wage?”

Brand offered from the other room, “I’m already paying her a straight salary. From your cut.”

Charley nodded. He called back out, “great. Double it.”

Maria let out a beatific smile.

Brand called back, “you don’t even know how much i’m paying her!”

Charley gazed back at Maria seriously, “It’s a high risk job. Also how much of that did you hear?”

Maria responded very seriously, “all of it.”

Charley winced. “Any chance you don’t tell your dad any of this?”

She let out of a coy smile, “tell him what?”

“Blessed child.”

--

Charley showed her the workshop and she immediately made herself busy.

He enjoyed how quiet she seemed to be. But that wasn’t quite right. He enjoyed how *self contained* she was. She’d be a good assistant.

He approached the table and it’s neigh-finished handsaw. He had left the project with the runes inscribed, laying on the cusp of completion.

All she needed was for the final lynchpin to fall in line, sealing in the magic. It was a heady sensation.

What do you name a blade that can only scare one thing?

He gripped the handle purposefully.

“Scarecrow.”

It took with a visible jerk, a brief vibration running through the wood and into his palm.

[Scarecrow. Runes: Origin, Sundering. Cuts through wood as water].

It’s dark handle was simple, the blade was thin and plain. The inscription wrapped from one side of the blade to the other, following the tang towards the grip. It was beautiful. God willing, it might even make him some money.

He felt a pang of loss as he thought about how much he would love a saw like this.

Another time. He was very aware of his debts in this moment.

And lack of wardbroade. And disgusting sandals.

It also put into relief how woefully inadequate he was in the personal ‘don’t die’ category of things. If a single goblin had come into that house he had been staying it, that would have been the end of him.

It was another feather in the long line of embarrassing things to have happened.

This world was frustrating. New, beautiful, but also deadly. His descent into the guild had cemented it for him. He needed a weapon.

But he wasn’t going to go off half cocked.

No.

He was going to talk to a professional. He thought back to a particularly tall, and admittedly beautiful, [Sergeant].

“Soon.” He promised himself.

Maria looked up from the other side of the workshop in inquiry.

Charley chuckled to himself, “Here. Can you take this down to Brand, please?” He casually tossed the enchanted prototype to her as she got closer.

As soon as she held it her eyes widened in horror.

It just made him laugh more. Good times.

She practically ran down the stairs.

Charley got busy with the magic.

--

There were two priorities in store, he figured. Now that he had a prototype that worked, he could churn out at least a few to offset his horrible poverty. He had tasked Maria to interrupt him if it had been a full twenty four hours or it looked like he was at a good spotting point.

That was important to get a baseline on how long it would actually take to churn one of these things out. He still honestly had no idea. Between the experimentation and failed attempts, he hadn’t taken good measurement.

He still have six saws in his box, so there wasn’t a danger of running out. He pat Fiona on his toolbelt thoughtfully.

The second priority was experimentation. And for that, he needed to talk to [Sergeant] Mellis of the wall. And it would be nice to get some tips about personal defense. And get a stronger bead about leveled.

Charley sighed. There was a whole world of things he didn’t know about, and it was time to start plugging some of those holes. Soon.

He cracked a smile. After he made with the magic.

[Nimble Hands] holding a chisel and hammer to his next victim, and sunk into his [Meditative Focus].

It felt a little bit easier than it did before. Not much more, but it was like he was on familiar ground when before he was blindfolded on an ice flow.

The first rune went on, Origin. It felt good, and briefly came out for air, despite his desire to keep going. Once he got started, it was almost like the runes themselves wanted to be finished.

The more he stared at them, the more he was coming around to the idea that the runes weren’t just single word forms. They were a language, and when combined they formed structured--well, sentences weren’t the right word, because they didn’t have connective conjunctions or pronouns. At least, that he could tell. It was too soon to rule these things out.

Still, leaving something half formed wasn’t horrible. It Just left him with the feeling of vague unease. Like he was writing a letter and stopped halfway through a sentence.

He almost didn’t spot Maria in the corner of the room, then realized he had a tall glass of water near to hand.

He smiled. “How long was I under?”

She sniffed, not bothering to put aside her needlework. “Four hours.”

“Okay.” He cracked his back. After tending to his body and needs for a moment, he dropped back into his [Meditative Focus]. What a godsend that was for late nights.

He was specifically trying to hold onto the sense of time and complexity, this time. He didn’t want to lose himself completely in the project.

He delicately began chiselling the second rune, Sundering. This was more complex than the first rune, certainly. There was a connection that had to happen between the two runes, they couldn’t just start completely apart from each other. One bled into the next.

The connection process was all. Linking the flow between one rune and its conclusion, making the chain between them stable and strong.

Going slow like this on a rune was almost agonizing, but Charley persisted. He didn’t want to just rush to its conclusion. He wanted to feel the process as it was unfolding behind his fingers.

He realized something on a deeper level. The rune for Sundering was not an easy one. It used more shapes, and more lines, and was easily three or four times more advanced than Origin.

Raw joy flooded through his body.

[Natural inscriptionist] reached level 5!

Skill: [Passive: Deep Intuition] gained!

[Passive: Deep Intuition]

The world is filled with information that can be read, deciphered, and felt. Allows one to tap into the feed. Ability works better with less concentration.

He was absolutely sure he wouldn’t have figured that one out if he didn’t have Fiona in his hands, helping the process and guiding..whatever it was that she did.

Charley sighed to himself mentally and put it on the list of stuff he didn’t know.

It was a long list.

The feeling of mana uncurling in his chest..no, it was lower than that. It was closer to his solar plexus. That felt more right.

He needed that feeling. And needed to get stronger. Time for a trip to the wall.

[Deep intuition] was a glorious ability. Truly and utterly it was exactly what he needed to shore up the whole ‘natural’ part of his [Natural Inscriptionist] racket. It was also suspicious.

It really cast a light on his last few abilities. “Are the abilities we get tied to our class, or is it an expression of what we need to thrive and more greatly tied to our desire?” Charley muddled out loud.

“Yes.” Maria calmly answered from the corner.

Charley blinked and fluttered his lashes. “I’m sorry. I completely forgot that you were there.”

“I figured.” She mock frowned at him.

He put his hands up in surrender. “It wasn’t a criticism! It’s actually kind of amazing for keeping me focused.” He chuckled to himself. That and a crazy skill set.

Maria started spooling up her threads and packing away her needles. “Brand wanted to talk to you when you got back into it. And it was about sixteen hours.”

Charley raised his eyebrows. Oh, wow. He knew it had been longer, now the question was if it was the complexity of the rune he had chosen. Or was there some type sliding upward scale of difficulty based on how many runes needed to be added together?

He blew air between his teeth. There was always the possibility that it could be both.

And if the complexity increased at a steady constant time, like a straight line on a graph. Big O of (n).

Or if he was unlucky and there was a logarithmic increase, and the time squared or worse after each rune. Big O of (n^n).

Hell. Who was he kidding.

He was never very lucky.

Certainly there was a lack of experience working against him. He made a note to ask what levels people typically were, and where he was when he compared himself against others. He was absolutely dying to talk to another [Enchanter]. He practically salivated at the thought.

He added it to the list, and went to talk to Brand.

Charley took the time to write an actual list before he left the workshop. No more of this disorganization.

List of priorities:

Cashflow.

More shirts.

Defense - more than zero.

Learn how to level more effectively.

Hunt down an [Enchanter] and squeeze him for information.

--

“You put SUNDERING on a freaking SAW! REALLY?” Brand was beyond incredulous. He was livid. “An enchantment that adventurer’s would LITERALLY kill for? Pay through the nose for? And yet, you made something for a construction worker.”

They were downstairs in the store, Maria having gone home with a wave.

Charley couldn’t help it. He smiled. A blood vessel pulsed visibly on Brand’s forehead.

“Yes, Brand. Really.” He gave it a beat. “On something that no one else is bothering to enchant. No guilds have ever even seen something like this, I’d wager.”

Brand paused, suspicious. He wasn’t ready to cut his tirade, but he motioned to continue.

Charley sighed. “Think about it. You saw those construction sites we passed. Splitting the logs and setting them to size was backbreaking labor, probably the biggest bottleneck in the process.” Brand frowned at that one, and Charley switched arguments. “Look, how many days do you think it’ll take to lay the wood for that guildhall?”

Brand snorted, “months.”

Charley nodded forcefully, “Right, months. And that’s months of lost potential profit. What’s that worth to the cotton guild?”

Charley could see Brand working the numbers but he didn’t let up, “you also have to pay those *skilled* laborers wages the entire time. How much do they get paid?”

Brand was experiencing a transformation, avarice pouring through his features. “Two silver, a day. More if they are guilded. A project that size has a team of at least ten, give or take. Not counting unskilled labor.”

Charley quipped, “And how else are we going to get me my gods damned hot tub?”

Brand said, “What?”

“What?” Charley returned, unperturbed. “Ignore that last one.”

Brand was getting excited now, “Twenty silver for a skilled crew, a day, sixty gold for a month.” He started counting with his fingers. “The cotton guilds must clear at least fifty gold in the same window. Double both then add them. 220 gold for a two month project, and that’s a conservative estimate for good weather. Wow.”

“And just think about how much the guild pay if their people could suddenly be free to work on the *next* project, even if we only saved them a month. But it's not just a month, is it? It’s a tool they get to use a lifetime.” Charley flared his hand, examining his fingernails in consideration. “How much would an adventurer pay for a sword?”

Brand’s grin went feral. “Less.” He grabbed the tool firmly in both hands. “It's not break-the-bank less. But it’s a market no one else is working in.” He tapped the tang of the blade. “Saw’s, then.”

“I guess ‘saw’s’.” Charley quipped.

Brand paused, closing his eyes. “I hate you.”

Charley wisely nodded, “But you love money.”

Brand left with his prize, mollified.

Charley didn’t mention that the market would adjust and likely go down soon enough after they sold a few. Best not to break the man.

He went off to search for a particular guards-woman.

--

Name: Charley Peace

Class: [Natural inscriptionist].

level: 5

Skillset:

[Runic Enchantment]

Able to inscribe runes onto objects. Permanent.

[Corvus Enca] Level: 3. Limited to lesser effects.

[Passive: Nimble hands]

[Meditative Focus]

[Passive: Deep Intuition]

Runes known:

Origin.

Flow.

Sundering.