Gold, gold, gold, a dragon's glorious delight,

If you stand betwixt them, you'll be in a plight.

prophecy of the duskbringer

Seventh day of the first week of Autumn. Evening…

“I might have slightly overdone it” muttered Guppy as she lay stomach down on the floor.

She was surrounded by dozens of golden objects of various distorted shapes and sizes, and one hundred smooth golden marbles.

In the course of her experiments she had found that the heavier and denser the object, the less mana it took to transform it into gold.

It was also easier to transform objects metallic in nature as compared to wood or plant matter, those experiments she had to cut off half way when her vision blurred and she felt her knees hitting the floor.

So with this knowledge she had quickly settled on lead as the easiest, cheapest and most available material.

Grabbing her cloak, sling bag and coin purse she headed out once more, this time to pay a visit to the local weapons merchant.

There she ignored the shining arms and armour and used much of her available coinage to buy a hundred smooth bore musket balls.

Ignoring the merchant when he tried to sell her a variety of magitech pistols for ladies self defense she left the shop with her sling bag straining at its newfound weight.

She also bought more food from Bombas's bakery on her way back with her last few coins, almost breaking into tears when this time she could only sorrowfully stroke the beautiful jars as she passed, before forcing herself to move on.

Being her second visit of the day she drew a raised eyebrow from Bombas's wife Brenda, but was still greeted with a smile as she paid, no doubt the woman thought her some sort of errand girl.

With materials and provisions procured she made her way back, and upon arriving home had set to work in a frenzy.

The evidence of her success was lying all around her, in her delirious giggling she had even set up a game of marbles and was playing by herself while she waited for her siblings to get home.

She lay listening to the gold orbs as they rolled and collided with each other, producing a musical note that rang so sweetly in her ear.

Over time she sobered somewhat, and pondering over her experiments she discovered another oddity about herself.

She remembered hearing that normally people would either recover their mana over time as they absorbed and stored it from the atmosphere, alternatively they could accelerate this process with expensive potions and special meditation techniques.

However Guppy seemed to be able to do so through ingesting food, her new constitution somehow converting it into mana when her reserves ran low.

Her eyes suddenly sparkled as an epiphany struck her

‘Does this mean I can eat as much as I want and never get fat?’

It was a new, and somewhat novel concept for her, previously Guppy had always been worried about not getting enough food, she had never before been worried about having so much that she piled on weight.

A gluttonous grin spread itself upon her face as she day dreamed of all the food she wanted to devour.

‘Mmmmm, Jam donuts will be nice, or custard donuts, o-o-or even those beautiful chocolate eclairs with whipped cream and star-berry flowers on top!’

Guppy wiped the drool from her mouth and sat up, eyes alight and clenched fists raised in her excitement.

She was going to make that dream happen, after all, she was rich now wasn't she?

However as she thought about spending her new wealth she came to a realization.

‘Even if I despise him, what Tomsy said was true, this gold is unmarked and too pure to be normal'

'I would only draw the law down on my head if I just flung it around at jewelry shops or local merchants'

'I first need to find a reliable dealer and convert it to gold royals before I can really spend any of it.’

Guppy sat and thought for a long time, but she struggled to think of a suitable dealer, going to the smith's was no good, they might buy it off her, but they could easily turn around afterwards and report her, she had no backing to speak of to intimidate them into keeping their mouths shut.

And as for fencers working for the Grakoan mafia... well, Guppy wanted as little to do with them as possible.

She had no doubt they would be overcome with greed and the whole situation would turn ugly really quickly.

‘Yes, best to give them as wide a berth as possible’ she mused.

What she really needed was a group that was shady enough not to ask too many questions, but had enough integrity, or at least enough pride and public image to uphold, that would prevent them from stabbing her in the back, figuratively and literally…

“Wait, what about Avarice's Descent?” Guppy burst out loud as an idea sparked in her mind.

While she had never entered it personally, she remembered hearing tales and rumors from the local gossips who worked as cleaners or labourers in or around the capital’s premier auction house.

Avarice’s Descent was rumored to sometimes shift products whose ownership was questionable at best.

However they followed their own rules fastidiously, catering loyally to their patrons and clients.

After all, doing so netted them a lucrative percentage of each trade, it would suit her purposes well indeed to use them as her dealer.

Determining on a plan of action she gathered the golden articles and stored them in her sling bag.

The material stretched and bulged, but kept together for now.

‘I'm going to have to get a better bag soon, perhaps a nice sturdy leather satchel’

Guppy smiled at the thought.

Just then she heard the voices of her siblings approach.

She swiftly cleaned up the scraps of food she had scattered by her sudden onset of hunger pangs while transmuting, not wishing to welcome her siblings back to a mess.

Guppy then rushed to the door and opened it for her two siblings, eager to share the good news.

Alas, again she saw a wariness and hesitation in their eyes as they saw her, still not used to her new form. It hurt a bit, but Guppy took a deep breath and pretended not to notice, she was stuck like this, at least for the foreseeable future, so they all would just have to get used to it.

She brought them in, sat them down on two of the kitchen chairs and excitedly broke the news to them.

They were quiet for a moment, until Stalia spoke up

“Now Guppy, it's great and all that you have magic now, however that happened” she began,

“But everyone knows that the mages and alchemists have been trying to turn lead into gold for the last thousand years and no one, has ever, once, succeeded.”

Guppy said nothing further, she knew how stubborn her sister could get, and to be honest, if she had not personally done it she wouldn't believe such a fantastical story either.

It sounded like some made up story from a book, written to delight and entertain but will little influence from reality.

A normal girl was suddenly given the power to do what all the powerful and knowledgeable mages for the last millennia could not, and then lived in wealth and happiness forever more.

Hah, if someone seriously told her that story last week she would have laughed at them, loudly.

So instead of arguing she showed them the contents of her sling bag, then grabbed the buckle on Stalia's bag strap and turned it to gold before their eyes.

Silence descended…

“That's so cool big sis, can you turn it into other metals too?”

Guppy and Stalia both blinked at Kyle's unexpected outburst.

He rarely said more than 5 words at a time, this had to be the longest sentence they had heard from him in years.

“Unfortunately not” Sighed Guppy

“I can't seem to get the right grasp on it, it just turns into a melted sludge”

She pointed to several hideous blobs in one corner that looked like creatures out of a particularly horrible nightmare, they were the results of her experiments to turn metals into mithril, orichalcum and adamantite.

“None of my attempts worked, but we have a different problem, this is pure twenty-four carat gold, selling it to just anyone could be troublesome"

Stalia nodded as Guppy continued.

"So I plan to sell it off at the Avarice's Descent auction house so it can't be traced back and bring any misfortune down upon us"

More nods, from both siblings this time.

"Their auction on the first day of each week is tomorrow, I plan to go then.” Guppy concluded.

Stalia spoke up while tapping her chin with a finger.

“Tomorrow hmm. Not a bad plan, but you are forgetting one thing. I heard from customers at our bar that the only gold they auction is pieces of art"

"And that,” She gestured to the bags contents, “Looks nothing like art”

Guppy furrowed her brow, Stalia had a point, her plan wouldn't work like this, but then Kyle laid his hand on her shoulder.

“May I?“ he asked softly.

Curious as to his intent, Guppy nodded her ascent.

Kyle picked up her sling bag and emptied the gold into their cooking pot, he then started to heat it with his fire mana.

Soon the pure, and extremely soft metal liquified, applying an apprentice heat protection spell on his hands Kyle sunk his hands into the molten metal, and pulled.

His sister’s gasped in admiration and watched entranced as he molded the liquid metal, pulling and teasing it into shapes and swirls, solidifying it as he went by applying tiny amounts of a cooling water magic.

Sweat flowed from his brow both from the heat and his intense concentration as he sculpted with his hands, then fingers, then fingertips, and finally just his nails.

Time flowed by swiftly as they watched Kyle gradually shape the gold into a tree, defining it in beautiful detail as he added vines, leaves and even tiny golden fruit.

They sighed when he stepped away and the spell broke.

Kyle, tired but satisfied with his creation, let out a huge grin.

“I call it Anuteras” he stated, “After a dream of a great tree I had last night.”

His creation stood there proudly, looking like it had grown out of the pot rather than been made. Gleaming and twinkling in the candlelight it's beauty engendered awe within the sisters.

“How much do you think it'll bring?” whispered Guppy. "The raw gold alone was probably worth about a thousand royals!”

“I have no idea” Stalia whispered back. “I'm not sure if we can even sell it.”

The ninth evening bell rang, startling them out of their stupor and bringing their notice to the guttering candle on the table.

They quickly ate some food to satisfy their grumbling stomachs and headed to bed, sleep eventually claiming them all as the accumulated tiredness finally overcame their excitement.