Page 10

As they returned to the corridor, Harlow squinted, hoping that the body would be back and that it was not eaten by House. The hallway wasn’t empty, but the body was indeed gone. Harlow rubbed her eyes and looked again to confirm that there was a spectral form floating near the window.

“Ah-ha!”

Atlas thrust a finger towards the specter. “Look at that! Harlow, we are in an active haunt, isn’t this exciting!”

They were practically vibrating with excess energy. How they found such a thing exciting after the garden ordeal was beyond her.

“You think it’s exciting to be haunted?”

Harlow shook her head.

“Of course! That means there’s a mystery!”

The ghost did not seem to notice them as it began to drift down a hallway. Harlow peeked down after it, seeing nothing that should have grabbed its attention more than two humans gabbing about a ghost.

“Harlow! Quick! It’s on the move!”

Atlas yipped and with still mostly ripped clothing they chased after it as it began to pick up speed.

Harlow laughed as Atlas’s energy was all too infectious. As they followed, the ghost began to pick up speed. Atlas’s excitement for the chase burned brightly, and they followed close enough behind it to make sure Harlow wouldn’t get lost in House’s halls.

“Ah, of course! I know where’s going!”

Atlas pointed up ahead to an adjoining hallway that looked like any other.

“What’s down there?”

“My vault!”

She almost tripped when they said it aloud. Really? Of course the ghost was looking for it, it was looking for it in life so why not now, but what she was surprised about was how easily Atlas was taking her there. Perhaps they meant to leave her at the entrance.

Harlow pressed on her belly with her hand as she followed Atlas, all in an effort to push down the growing discomfort there. They had such a moment, her insides felt like they were on the outside and bubbling and wailing from whatever place guilt came from. Her plan was always to get closer to the Spellsaven and use that closeness to gain trust and access. But now that it was happening, after feeling the press of their body against hers, their breath on her neck, it felt every opposite way of good. Her hand pressed further down trying to smother it where it lay.

When they got to the end of the hallway the spirit paused and began to lower its head against a blank wall. The wall was between two bedrooms, ones that Harlow had seen inside already – both storage for reagents of two different types. But the wall kept his head from passing through. Harlow had to admit that was interesting enough. She had seen a few spirits in her line of business. (Thieving from mausoleums, burrows, and the like were usually the type of thing people hired the Thieves’ Guild for as they were often and oddly boobytrapped.) But to stop their head from going through, that had to be a specific ward.

Atlas stood beside the spirit, resting the side of their head on the wall right next to them, almost completely in their face. This spirit truly had no boundary issues. which was not the case for all ghosts. Some reacted quickly and terribly. Harlow had a scar near her ankle removed from such a mistake. But ever-confident Atlas seemed to have an unbridled fascination with it. They were practically vibrating from excitement, so much so that their earrings rattled in a way that reminded her of a dog wagging its tail.

“So... is that the vault’s entrance?”

Harlow asked smoothly before licking her lips.

“It. Is.”

Atlas answered as if through a fog, still staring intently at the spirit.

“And it’s warded.”

She walked around them, giving a big arc for space as she craned her neck, looking for clues of runework without casting any magic detection spells.

“And then some.”

Still distracted, their voice dropped as if to drive home the seriousness of the wardings.

“So, what do we do now?”

Harlow wondered if she’d always have to lead Atlas through conversations. Now she had the location, and she was careful to check her tone. She wanted to sound less demanding than it came out. She had to find a way to balance the excitement before it burst from her chest.

“Well, we can’t let it in, just in case... someone might be scrying on this person, and I’ve already let this go too long. But curious, yes... what inside does it want?”

Harlow didn’t have much to say as she didn’t even know what she was looking for. She was also supposed to still not know what Copperkelly was here for.

“I don’t have anything prepared for this sort of…”

Harlow gestured towards the ghost, “…temporal issue.”

“I can manage something. But at least this confirms they were after a thing and not me, although,”

Atlas rolled their eyes, “I could imagine that someone finally knows about the device.”

Harlow gulped. “The device?”

While Harlow waited for any kind of additional information from Atlas, the Spellsaven began to weave their hands around and opened several smaller pocket dimensions from which to retrieve reagents. They closed some and opened a few more. Their knitted brow gave her the impression they had misplaced something.

There were several ways to settle a ghost matter; some did involve brute strength and cunning disruption of their spirit, but most had to deal with those who had sworn oaths to their gods. Not being particularly religious, she had never taken interest in learning those, and even now considered that she could still be without that being in her skillset.

Finding what they needed at last, Atlas pulled what looked like to her, a bundle of dried herbs, a fresh orange, and something else she couldn’t ascertain from this distance.

“Would you mind giving me a little bit of a hand? I need a flame, but I lack the appropriate number of available hands,”

they admitted.

Nodding quickly, she pulled the reagents from her pockets and with dust-covered fingers, she produced a flame from the tip of her fingers which Atlas held their cupped fingers over. The items forgot their assigned state of matter and blended into one another, swirling and pooling at the base of their hands.

Harlow’s flame began to waver as the continued heat on their hands must be causing some sort of damage and she started to pull the flame back.

“Nnn, I’m fine.”

Atlas finally tore their eyes off of the puddle and whisked up a half-lidded look in her direction.

Harlow felt she’d melt just like that puddle.

Atlas returned to their hands and Harlow brought the flame back to its placement and intensity. Without notice, as far as she could tell, the puddle dried out and hardened into a colorless lump.

“Ah, perfect, thank you.”

Atlas scuttled back to the spirit whose head was still pushed against the wall. They crouched and brought the dusty ball into their hand and squeezed, breaking it into two. Then darting in an arc around the base of the ghost, Atlas crushed the ball further and sprinkled a circle around it on the floorboards.

With an outreached finger, they began to draw runes with the dust. They stopped and looked up at Harlow expectantly.

A slight panic ran through her and then she understood, she should be writing this down. She pulled out a small bound journal and the pen that Atlas gave her earlier instead of a quill and stood behind Atlas enough to see over their crouched shoulder.

It was interesting spellwork. A de-summoning spell. Usually these spells asked whoever’s deity to allow the spirt to continue on to wherever it was destined to be and usually to a plane associated with that deity. But this spellwork was not asking a deity for anything. Instead, it was asking their plane of existence itself to not interrupt the pattern of death that this spirit was originally on.

She wrote a note to herself to look into more spells that asked things of the plane and not deities. How much more could be obtained like this? Could all paladin and cleric spells be reworked like this for those who did not have a faith tied to a deity? It had to work similarly since there were so many who followed a philosophy of respecting the land instead of a deity.

Atlas stood when the spellwork was completed and the spirit raised their head off the wall. Its head then began to turn in a new direction, the eyes beginning to clear. This would be the perfect time to stall its exit and cast a spell that would let you still communicate with it. But Atlas did not move and so she did not either. Perhaps it would crash in that moment. And if it spoke it could easily reveal her position.

It then began to disappear slowly, and took about ten minutes to finish. A beautiful but short ten minutes in which Harlow and Atlas gravitated together. Atlas reached for her hand, not looking at her but holding onto her as they watched the spirit complete its journey from this plane. All that was left was the pair of them holding hands over an ashy circle. Romantic in its simplicity.

Atlas cleared their throat. “Ahem, House, if you could be so kind.”

The floorboards shifted and separated just so, each board tilting at one side to have the dust disappear back inside the house’s void.

“Thank you.”

They bowed.

“Where does it go?”

Harlow questioned.

“Honestly, I’m not too sure… just further into House.”

“So, you’ve never been… down there?”

“No…”

Atlas shuddered. “I don’t think I want to…”

Harlow was nodding when Atlas continued.

“But…”

They titled their head in rebuttal. “It would be fascinating.”

She watched the interest grow as Atlas leaned towards the fallen ash. “Other time, okay?”

They nodded and agreed, breaking the floorboard stare down.

Atlas took a step forward where the circle had been and turned to grab her other hand with excitement. “Shall we see if anything is amiss inside?”

She didn’t trust her throat not to make words that might betray just how excited she was to get the chance.

Releasing her hands, they turned and knocked twice politely on the wall. In reaction, the wall shimmered into a perfect seven-foot rectangle and Atlas just stepped casually through.

Harlow looked around, as if there would be anyone else, but more so to check for any standout aspects of the location so she could build a mental map of it.

Of course, House could move it around all it wanted to but, if it was another dimension, which was highly likely, House wouldn’t be able to move that – it would always be there.

All that House could do was make it appear to be a cabinet, a mirror, a wall, or the entrance to another staircase.

But the portal would be grounded there.

Holding her breath like she was passing through a tunnel, she passed through the shimmer and appeared in a large, open domed room.

Very much not a ceiling she could place within House.

Not to say it wasn’t, but she at least hadn’t seen such architecture there yet.

The room was full of warm golden light and the size of it was like a small warehouse.

Just completely open.

Which might be overwhelming in its grandeur if it wasn’t filled with so much stuff.

There were layers of different intricate rugs all over the floor. Only here and there could she see polished stone as the base. Not baseboards like House.

There were rows and rows of racks holding boxes, mostly unlabeled, and crates with packing details stapled to the side.

Short columns were placed with no discernible pattern throughout and objects of wonder and mystery placed on them.

Mostly mysterious because their place cards were blank or scribbled on with the worst penmanship Harlow had ever seen.

She wanted to stop and look at everything.

The ache of what wonders could be there was intense and she felt that wondrous itch of imagination strike within her.

Sure, she was a thief and any one of these items would be worth a lifetime’s amount of work, but Harlow had never been in it for the money.

This was a feeling completely powered by the “what if”.

The curiosity that was inside everyone usually pushed away by monotonous routine and from society to tell you to dream only sooo much, that you should keep your feet on the ground.

Harlow felt, what if this was her life.

What if she decided to hell with the council position? What if she gave herself completely to her position as apprentice AS an apprentice and nothing more? How freeing that would be.

She could spend a lifetime down here and never uncover everything.

She allowed herself this reprieve knowing that if she did, the Guild Master wouldn’t let her go so easily.

He’d remind her of her dreams of building a legacy, one of her own, and not one built on the shoulders of Spellsaven Daggerroot.

She followed the noises of moving items, of boxes falling, and the occasional “hmmm”s that could only be spoken from Atlas’s mouth.

She found them towards the back in a row of objects that appeared to be miscellaneous shaped gargoyles, all frozen in time, nothing animated, to Harlow’s disappointment.

Some were covered in greenery as if ripped straight from a garden like theirs, others looked like they were chiseled this morning, and some looked so worn that she couldn’t tell what creature or person they were made to resemble.

Those gave her an uneasy feeling and she gave them a wide berth as she got closer to Atlas.

As if just in time, Atlas whirled around with a small trinket box in their hands.

It was pewter (not impressive) and...

was that carved bone...

(kind of impressive)? And when she looked closer, with hands behind her back, the painted pattern appeared to be recessed.

On closer inspection it was intricate runes.

In Dragonspeak.

A language she had not even attempted to learn yet. Only a few people outside Dragonkin learned it, as it was not taught freely. One had to prove themselves to Dragonkin through a set of trials. The details of these trials were not released and when inquired about were told they changed with the challenger. You couldn’t even record or have a translation scribe spell when near someone speaking it, as its very nature was too magical to be decoded.

She could recognize the runes through the delicate curves of the handwriting but nothing else.

And here Atlas had a box covered in it.

Did they know Dragonspeak? It was nowhere in her research of them beforehand.

“This...”

Atlas’s smile was forced. She wasn’t used to seeing it on their face. Atlas performed all sorts of various grins and smirks, but this made her uneasy. She wanted to reach out to them, but their stiff posture made her rethink.

“That’s what he was after? Are you sure...?”

She looked around the hall of gargoyles but gestured widely enough to suggest the entire vault. “Just that little thing.”

Atlas nodded, serious. “This little thing. “

“What does it do?”

She leaned closer to it as if it would declare itself what it was.

“Inside is a device... like a ring.”

Atlas was staring slightly off in the distance and then shook their head to reorientate themselves. They paused their explanation to give a sigh and then, with gentle fingers, creaked the box open.

Harlow noted that Atlas did not say incantations or call forth any spellwork that she could tell to do this. Did the box not require one or did Atlas find other ways of casting without verbal components?

There was a simple gold band carved to look like a strip of feathers in which a ruby gem poked through, carved to look like an eye. She could not sense any arcane magic on it, but it must have some. To have such a designing spell on it was impressive, something very Spellsaven indeed.

“If this stone is pressed, it will revert time back five minutes.”

They spoke quietly as if talking about it aloud would announce its function to the world.

“Only five minutes?”

She was a little shocked. That wasn’t a lot of time.

Atlas’s face scrunched into offense and then they laughed. “Yes, only five minutes. There’s a lot of mischief you could do or undo in five minutes.”

Harlow sat with this and thought about all the things that a simple five minutes could achieve. About how many times five minutes was all she needed to get into any building, into any chest. And if she messed up, she could just press this and try again? She could see why the Guild Master would be so thirsty for such an item. She wrestled with difficult feelings on how she felt her bedtime storyteller would utilize this and to whose benefit.

Like the push and pull of wants and want nots, Harlow struggled for the first time. Here, it was right here. She could lift it from them this very moment; she knew her sleight of hand was good enough. And if it wasn’t, she could likely silence Atlas permanently. The very thought of that made her stomach sour. She had prepared for years. Years of study to get to this moment for it to come so quickly. She has access to the vault and now the device in Atlas’s upturned palm. So, why was she so sad?

“Yet you keep it in here. It seems to be a valuable thing that one would want to keep with themself.”

Harlow didn’t even like her favorite things to be out of reach, let alone in a whole other location away from sight and sound.

Atlas closed the box gently and covered it in a cave of their hands. “I used to, but...”

They used a hand to nervously comb through their own hair. “I found myself using it every chance I got. The littlest indiscretion, the most minor inconvenience, I would go back and do it again. I found myself using it during spellwork; I’d be working on a new spell and use up the reagents I’d prepared and then just use this instead of getting off my ass and prepping more. Times even when I didn’t get the answer I wanted from someone, I’d use it to try again, to practice being tactful.”

A blush of embarrassment crossed from one check, over their nose, and onto the other cheek.

“I can see how that would be hard to give up...”

Harlow spoke softly, understanding.

“Yes, and it took a lot for me to stop. So I really keep it here to keep it away from myself.”

Atlas turned and placed it among the gargoyles on the shelf as if it was just another sculpture with the rest.

If the world’s most creative and joyous Spellsaven could be tempted to such a degree, what would that lead to with someone as flawed as Kob? Hells, even she was under no delusion that he was a good man, but she always left it with him just being a man. Flawed to a degree as anyone else, including her. The Guild Master had already sent Copperkelly only days after she arrived; what kind of outcome would there be if he had this device? She always told herself before that a weapon is a weapon but it’s the hands that are held accountable. Harlow knew better. That wasn’t really how it worked and now she was standing in a place that in any other way shouldn’t exist with a device that shouldn’t work. She would be just as accountable if she gave it to the Guild Master. The indecision she struggled with even in this moment felt like it would drown her.

“Why not destroy it?”

Harlow could never, but if it caused such problems, why not? If Atlas created such a device, why couldn’t they just destroy it and if need be, if in the future they changed their mind, they could just do it again. She asked in such an inquisitive way and if Atlas was listening carefully enough, they’d be able to hear a low level of pleading. If they’d destroy it, then there was nothing Harlow could do about it. The decision would have been made for her.

Atlas chuckled but it was sorrow, not joy, leaking through. “If I only could. I keep it here to keep it from everyone else. It would be too dangerous out... there. I keep it here to keep it from me.”

They must have noticed the pity in her eyes because Atlas looked away and cast their gaze downwards, shoulders slumped. Even the fabric of their normally billowing clothing lost life in its movement.

Harlow took a tentative step towards them and reached out a hand for them to grasp. “Then that’s where it is and that’s where it stays.”

Gah, it hurt her so much to say it. She meant it, wanted to mean it. But she couldn’t promise it would stay. She had so much to think about, so much to weigh, and it wasn’t going to be something she could process now. Without saying the worls “I promise,”

she willingly let them believe that she would in fact leave it where it was. One day soon it would be missing, and by her own hand. And another day, surely not today, Harlow would have to decide to break her word against the only “father”

she knew or the one person that made her want to be a better person. A better person wouldn’t be a thief. To be a better person meant changing so much of herself and that was too much to dwell on for now.

Atlas grinned and bore through it, looking over their shoulder to her, and noticed her hand. They smirked and took it timidly.

Harlow titled her head, needing to change the subject for both their sakes. “So, you know Dragonspeak.”

The glow that normally followed Atlas was back and they sparked alive, twirling Harlow in place.

“I cannot say that I do, but I can tell you about this Professor Jenkelstrum, who if I do say is quite an intense individual. Come, I’ll show you his spell book. He allowed me to copy down most of the spells in his book and they are fascinating.”

Atlas took off with a quick fluid motion and dragged her behind them, very much not stopping to explain any of the other wonders in the vault.

Perhaps another time for Harlow, as even in the vault, she felt the most wonderous thing was them.