"Welcome to my grand atelier," said Ekur, ignoring the man and instead looking behind him. "Where? Where is it?"

When Ekur caught a glimpse of what the man carried behind him, the sorcerer rushed forwards with all the enthusiasm of a zealot meeting their god.

"Woah, stop right there," said the man as he held up a warning hand to the sorcerer. The man finished coming up the stairs, dragging a large trunk of chained wood behind him. With a sigh, he set the trunk down roughly, dropping the chain he dragged it with.

The trunk was rectangular in shape and almost the size of a man. It was a testament to the man's strength that he could lug something like that around with relative ease, just a few drops of sweat forming on his brow.

"No, you cannot damage it, is-is it damaged?" said Ekur as he tried to circle around the man. "If you have damaged it, I will unleash such mystic wrath upon you that Samas the Worldwind herself will bear witness to the destruction!"

"Look, I am not here to deal with this bullshit. The merchandise is fine, these holders are sturdy, magically reinforced on the insides." said the man. "And Samas? You are from Utu, then.

Far, far, far east. What are you doing here on the opposite side of the world? Actually, never mind, I don't really care.

Let's talk payment."

Ekur ignored the man completely. "I am here because the Order in all their prideful and misguided arrogance believes me, my wondrous research, wrong. Heretical, even. How? How can it be that they see me in the wrong when I have made such headway against the Undeath?"

"Woah," said the man without an ounce of enthusiasm. "Now let's talk about my payment. I lugged this over three country borders, one of which would have burned me alive if they caught me. You better have made this worth my while."

"Payment? Of course, a simpleton such as yourself would care so much for coin." Ekur shambled over towards a thick chest at the corner of his quarters, and the man raised a hungry brow at it.

The chest was a massive box of aurichalcite, already a valuable ore by itself, and it was larger than the sorcerer himself. Its dark blue, almost black surface was embedded with what must have been twenty sigilstones.

The sigil-carved stones glowed as they responded to the sorcerer touching the box, shutting down the security spells that guarded the box. The chest unlocked itself and opened with an invisible force, revealing several compartments, one of which was utterly packed with glittering gold coins.

"Now we're fucking talking," said the man with a whistle. "How in the undeath did you ever get so much coin? I mean, I can kind of see your pockets were packed, ateliers like this, floating and invisible ones especially, don't come cheap, but heh, looks like I doubted you for nothing."

Ekur responded positively to the praise and began to monologue about himself. "I have never been a sorcerer of much merit. My roots are subpar, limiting my ability to work with it.

But my knowledge and mind have always been sharp, far sharper and far more innovative than anyone else's, and that has allowed me to thrive where to so many have faltered.

Always, I have wished to help the common masses. In my youth, I devised a means for the common man to control the very elements himself, sheltering his home with a single sigilstone that bent the winds to his will."

"Shit, you invented wind conditioning," said the man with a nod. "I've even read about you in my textbooks.

Fore' I dropped out of the academy, of course, but still, you were a case study in arcane economics. How it doesn't matter how shitty your raw power is, if you can figure out a smart and cheap way to mass produce the right spells in the right sigil stones, you could get rich."

"I am NOT 'shitty'," said Ekur with an indignant shake of his senile fist. "I was blessed with the mind of gods! But cursed with the body of the common masses. In weaving the grand epic that is my life, I have had to rise above my lot and surpass every manner of challenge!"

"Okay, sure." The man shrugged. "Funny how life is. Rich entrepreneur like you turns into a crazy sorcerer hiding out at the edge of the world. I study economics and that lets me know when a market's ripe for the takin'. Ends up with me as a slaver.

Fate's a funny thing. Oh wait, there's a goddess for that

But whatever, enough about that. I'm just about dying to get back home with my pockets a lot heavier."

The man kicked the trunk with his boot, and it opened up, revealing an unconscious young girl inside, her sackcloth covered body trussed up tight by threaded bonds of black fabric. The insides of the trunk were padded with cushioned fabric, keeping the girl sheltered from outside impact.

The man pointed at the girl with the tip of his boot. She did not respond, instead lying in the trunk pale and still, almost motionless, only the shallow movement of her breathing indicating she was alive at all.

"These slave holders are custom made for Zerulians," he said, tapping at the trunk with his boot. "Helps with the vampyrs, mostly, but daemons don't like light either," said the man as he recited his common product pitch to convince customers their products were not damaged in transit. "Cushioning is lined with marsh rabbit fur – softer than a baby's bottom. Shock resistant and ventilated. Holder comes in different designs, don't raise eyebrows at border gates, well, most of them, anyhow.

The bonds are also fabric, not chains, so no tears on their skin, keeping them in pristine condition. They also come imbued with a sleeping curse that keeps your purchase docile. Oh, and the bonds come with the purchase, though you've gotta replenish them with mana every five or six days."

"Oh…how…how wonderful," said Ekur as he shoved past the man to stare at the girl.

"You can inspect the product, I guess," said the man as he looked at the greasy spot on his cloak where the sorcerer had touched him and patted it down. "Make sure there's nothing wrong with her. Price is still the same though. Two thousand gold.

Add two more to that for my horses -you didn't tell me there were flesh hungry giant fucking scorpions on the way here."

"Done, done," said Ekur as he waved the man away, focusing the entirety of his attention upon the wonderful specimen before him.

Lavender skin. Dark, fibrous hair. Goat-like ears. Small black nubs of horns just beginning to sprout from the forehead.

He took a bony finger and pried open her sleeping eyelid. Deep amethyst eyes. Yes. This was a genuine daemon.

"I nabbed her straight from Judica and let me tell you they don't fucking play around. There's a bit of an underground slave market there, but it's real, real underground. Moment one of their Executors sniffs a slaver out-," The man made a slicing motion with his hand across his neck. "Dead fucking meat. But I'm a professional."

The man noticed the sorcerer running his hands across the girl's body, inspecting her flesh with a zealous, almost worshipping intensity. "She's yet to be bled too. I'm assuming that's why you wanted her? Grey bearded sorcerer shut-ins like you tend to like them younger."

"Yes!" Ekur said fiercely. "She must be whole and pure. That is the only she will fit into the grand schematics of my ritual." He turned the girl around and narrowed his beady green eyes when he saw that her ponytail had been hacked off at the bottom. "She is not whole!"

"This is standard procedure," said the man as he put a hand to his hip, ready to draw his sword. At close range like this, even if this sorcerer with a cog or two loose in his head got aggressive, he would have the advantage. "We have to cut off the spikes in daemon hair. Otherwise, they can use their mind magic, and nobody wants that."

"This is not what I was promised!" shouted Ekur, spittle frothing from his mouth.

"Gods above, alright, calm down. Let's talk about this." The man put a hand to his head and rubbed his forehead. He could not afford this mad man to back out of this deal now, not when he had put so much expense into carrying the product.

If he got anywhere near the field of two thousand gold, he could quit his work and live off his wealth forever, black sun and ensuing supposed apocalypse be damned. If the world did start to end, he'd happily watch the desperate peasants try and swim past the moat of his new castle estate with a smile on his face.

But not if this idiot did not pay him. "I can lower my price by a hundred gold for damaged goods."

"Gold does not matter to me!" said the sorcerer as he shook his fist.

"Alright, then. Looks like you don't want her to warm your bed or anything like that. You want her for some kind of ritual." The man sighed. "Well, this might be good news. She's special. Judican cell she was taken out of was separate from the rest."

The man had wanted to withhold this information because it could mean the Judicans would send their executors after special prisoners taken from them, and nobody wanted an executor tailing them.

They were ruthless bloodhounds that would make sure anybody and anything that stood against them burned.

"Special?" The sorcerer grew even more interested.

The man sighed. "Yes. Means she probably had some kind of magical potential to her. And if you're going to make me stay here and talk, can you open a damned window so I can talk without breathing through my mouth?"

"Of course, of course," said Ekur as he waved stepped to the center of his quarters where a small altar of rock rose up, its tip a smooth surface lined with circuit carvings. He put his hand on the control conduit, tapping into his atelier's systems, and bid one of the stone walls to slide open.

The stone of the wall creaked as it parted, the bricks sliding into each other and baring half the tower to the outside world. Cool and dry night wind flowed in, and thank the gods, took out the sorcerer's stench.

"Always impresses me what sorcerers can do," said the man as he stepped to the edge of the open tower. He looked down at the rushing river and the mudbanks, then at the vast expanse of shadow shrouded trees. "Great view. I'd make sure my own castle keep had something like this."

"Tell me more! More!" said the sorcerer.

"Alright, just sit yourself down and calm-," the man stopped as he raised a brow. He was staring down at the riverbank, and did his eyes deceive him?

Something was skittering across it. A black blur, it seemed, barely visible from this distance. He thought maybe it was a floater in his eye, maybe something he got from lacking sleep, but no, this thing was real.

Right by the edge of the riverbank and underneath the atelier, it jumped up, getting much, much closer very, very quickly.