“Ay,” said Hannah. “Bein’ a chrononaut sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.” Her voice was dripping with sarcasm.
“Well,” said Alfric. “It’s just… not what people think. That’s all I was trying to say.”
“I get it,” said Mizuki. “But Hannah’s got a point, that complaining about having a really really great power is a bit, um.”
“Myopic?” asked Alfric.
“On what planet is that the word I was searching for?” asked Mizuki. “I have no idea what that even means.”
“It means your eyes don’t work right,” said Hannah. “Nearsighted.”
“Yeah,” said Mizuki, frowning. “I guess that fits.”
“Because I’m not looking at the bigger picture,” said Alfric. “And I do understand that. Sorry. I’ll try to complain less.”
“Well I don’t know I want that,” said Hannah with a sigh. Most of this conversation was conducted toward the back of his head as they went down the road. “It’s somethin’ important to you, and obviously there are some pent-up feelin’s about it, ay? So we want you to share, I’d think, but also to realize that it is a gift you’ve got.”
“It’s mostly a safety net,” said Alfric. “When I think about the benefits, it’s in the context of not needing to worry about worst-case scenarios or sometimes being able to take more days off. I think about ninety percent of my problems would go away if people had the right perspective on it.”
“Same with sorcs,” said Mizuki. “If people could understand that most of the bad stuff we do was just chasing something in the aether, we’d be a lot better off.”
“You did come into the temple explodin’ things,” said Hannah.
“I created explosions,” said Mizuki. “That’s very different from exploding things.”
“And why did you do this?” asked Alfric.
“There were energies there,” said Mizuki, shrugging. “I thought that I might be able to make a construct.”
“Like a wizard?” asked Alfric, who didn’t seem to be all that educated in terms of magic, or at least, preferred to let other people be their own domain experts he could lean on.
“Kind of?” asked Mizuki. “The aether is complicated, but yeah, there are ways for a sorc to do more long-term kinds of things, in the right circumstances, stuff that would last a month or so.”
“But instead, an explosion,” said Hannah.
“Well, right,” said Mizuki. “I hadn’t encountered that particular, um, disturbance before. So it makes sense that I wouldn’t get it right the first time.”
“I recall two explosions,” said Hannah.
“You know what I mean though,” said Mizuki. “What I should have done was to talk to a cleric, get permission, whatever, but what if they’d said no?”
“That someone would deny you permission isn’t a good reason to not ask for permission,” said Alfric.
“Well, either way, it didn’t work out,” said Mizuki. She shrugged.
Hannah was very aware that this wasn’t an apology, not that one was really called for. Hannah hadn’t been the senior member of the temple then and now wasn’t technically a member at all. Or perhaps she only technically was. But the fact that an apology wasn’t strictly called for didn’t mean the lack of apology went unnoticed. From Hannah’s perspective, Mizuki had gotten carried away chasing after something shiny in the air and either didn’t reflect on how this painted sorcerers or couldn’t connect the dots.
Before the conversation could go further, a young boy of around ten came riding up on a bird.
“You shouldn’t steal,” said the boy.
He was bare-chested and scrawny in the way that young boys often were and barefoot on top of that, wearing only pants. He was sitting on a small saddle, holding reins that went up to the bird’s head. The bird itself—well, Hannah knew very little about birds, only that she was likely too heavy to ride one, but it had blue plumage and a longness in both its neck and legs. Birds needed to be enlarged by clerics of Xuphin to be rideable by anyone but a child. Enlarged above a certain size, they’d just die. There was metal on the clawed feet and the beak, partly to protect the creature and partly to keep it doing what it was supposed to be doing, which was carrying the rider.
“We’re not stealing,” said Alfric, who wasn’t sparing much attention toward the boy.
For his part, the boy seemed to be expertly riding the bird and had brought it to a slow walk alongside the wardrobe. “You are too stealing,” he said. “The wardrobe belongs to Alfric.”
“I am Alfric,” said Alfric. “This is my wardrobe.”
The boy looked at him. “Prove it?” he asked, clearly trying the question out.
“How would he do that?” asked Hannah.
“I don’t know,” said the boy. “But anyone who read the note could say they were Alfric.”
“And who are you?” asked Alfric.
“I’m Bib,” said the boy. “My dad is the hexmaster of the Knob.”
“Yeah?” asked Alfric. “And can you prove it?”
“Your name is Bib?” asked Mizuki. “That’s not a name.”
“People call me Bib,” said Bib. “It’s not my name.”
“Well, either way, you can’t prove it,” said Alfric.
“I could get my dad,” said Bib, frowning.
“You could get someone to vouch for you, sure,” said Alfric. “But I have people to vouch for me.”
“I have never seen this guy before,” said Mizuki. “I actually just started following him because he was carrying the wardrobe. It seemed really suspicious.” She had a mad grin on her face.
“He asked me for help movin’ it,” said Hannah. “But now it does seem a little suspect. Alfric, if that is your name, is this a theft?”
“I’ll give you a cut of the proceeds if you stop asking questions,” said Alfric.
“Was I not already gettin’ a cut of the proceeds?” asked Hannah. “Well then, good citizen am I, doin’ work for a stranger for free.”
“You’re making fun,” said the boy. He was frowning at them. “I really don’t know if you’re stealing it.”
“We’re not stealing it,” said Alfric. “We pulled it from the Traeg’s Knob dungeon and just needed to store it at the common house for a day.”
“It’s the Hill House,” said the boy. “Where are you taking the wardrobe?”
“To Pucklechurch,” said Alfric. “Where we live.”
“And you’ll charge people to use it?” asked Bib. “That could make you a lot of money.”
“We’ll see what the limits are,” said Alfric. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it had some kind of limit on how many people can go through in a day, or a weight limit, or something else like that. And if it doesn’t have that kind of a limit, we’ll probably sell it to someone in a big city, where it can get more use, or set up a business or something.”
“A business?” asked Mizuki. “For this thing?”
“Sure,” said Alfric. “Place it in Plenarch and charge ten rings for someone to use it.”
“Plenarch is a terrible choice, ay?” asked Hannah. “It’s on the coast, water in three of the six directions.”
“Well, maybe somewhere else then,” said Alfric. “I guess we’d also want to make sure it can’t end up dumping you in someone’s home.”
“Ten rings sounds like absolutely gouging people,” said Mizuki.