I found Martin where the Marshall said he would be, but he was in a meeting. I decided to hang out with Fiona until his meeting ended.

“Been a while, how’s everything going?”

“Good, but having to wait around can be tiring. I don’t know how Martin can enjoy politics this much.”

I chuckled, “just another challenge to conquer. Much easier than dealing a fatal blow to another person I imagine.”

“I guess you’re right, at least I still have our evenings together,” she added quietly.

“Is something wrong?”

“No… well, not exactly, just something not physically possible.”

“…”

I didn’t want to think about her and Martin getting intimate.

Fiona sighed, “I want to be a mother.”

“… oh… OH. Can’t get pregnant because you revert to your spectral form?”

She nodded sadly.

“Well, it doesn’t seem like it will be that way forever. I mean, you’ve gone from being dead to having a physical form.”

“I know, but it seems like all progress to expanding that ability has come to a halt recently.”

“Do you think it has anything to do with you being my spectral companion and since I haven’t grown, neither have you?”

“I don’t know, it’s not like there is much information about this process. But I think you might be partially correct. I only seemed to get expanded abilities when I put myself between you and near death.”

“…well, that isn’t ideal is it.”

She gave me the look, “no, no it isn’t.”

“That isn’t good for me either, it's not like I enjoy being at death’s door, even if I do enjoy a challenge. I planned on heading out on the barge in a few days if you and Martin want to join me?”

“Martin is busy with these negotiations so I doubt he will be available anytime soon. But I might as well join you. Is Ska coming along?”

“I’m not sure, I haven’t seen him much since we returned. He spends most of his time with the Marshall’s men rounding up criminals. If he’s around we can ask him.”

Just then the door to the meeting room opened accompanied by angry shouting and a group of disgruntled people shoving past Fiona and me. One of the men tried to shoulder shove me out of the way, only to fall on his ass, earning a glare from his buddies.

The man looked accusingly at me before he got to his feet and joined his buddies down the hall.

“What was that all about?” I asked Fiona.

“No idea, they usually aren’t this angry after a meeting.”

“That would be my fault,” Martin stated, walking up to us.

“Oh, I thought you were the man with the silver tongue?”

“I save that for the ladies,” he said with a wink toward Fiona, who glared at him.

“There better be only one LADY that you use that on.”

“Whoa, you know I would never…ahem, anyway back to what you asked, Paul. They are angry that they aren’t getting preferential treatment to access the Bazaar.”

“Seems like a small matter?”

“It would be but the Mayor decided to use the Bazaar as a bargaining chip but he wants to wield it like a blunt instrument.”

“Didn’t he give Hornwell rights to access the Bazaar though?”

“He did, and that is one of the reasons they are angry. They want the same rights as the Hornwell deal but that was in place before the Mayor’s change of heart.”

“What is he asking for in return?”

“The Mayor wants half of their rich ore deposits for access to the Bazaar. And that was after I talked him down from 65%. They offered twenty, and that is more than fair but I can’t get a deal to happen until someone folds or something major changes.”

“Sounds like a fucked up situation all around. But maybe I can help. I recently finished the first barge. In a few days, I am taking some merchants on a trip around the area to sell their stuff.”

Martin rubbed his chin in thought, “that may work. It could take a few weeks until things start to tip away from the Mayor. I don’t think he understands just how overpriced everything is in the Bazaar.”

“Wait, it is?”

“Oh, yea… bigtime. There is a local chemist that is creating health potions for half the cost of one from the Bazaar. The mana portions aren’t quite there yet, but they only cost eighty percent as much. As people's skills grow, the price will only go down. Plus people will remember the Mayor’s greed and reluctance to share access to the Bazaar, souring relations further down the line.”

“Access to the Bazaar will still have some value though, right? I mean why not just sell your items there instead of selling them at a loss outside?”

“Sure, but mainly for individuals. Or for esoteric things that are hard to come by on earth. As for selling outside the Bazaar versus selling inside, that’s easy, less competition. While you may charge less, if there is nobody else supplying the item, you essentially control the market. You also can sell more volume, offsetting the costs.”

“Makes sense. I guess I now have a monopoly on trade and magic gear.”

“Yes you do, my fabulously wealthy friend,” he said with a big smile, slapping his arm around my shoulder.

I just shook my head ruefully.

***

Martin and Fiona had to go, more meetings and… other things to do. That was fine, I needed to go to the fortress and rune craft my new staves. I was itching to try out some new combinations I had come up with.

Before I went there, I checked in with the Marshall. Ska wouldn’t be back for at least a week, according to him. Five of the Marshall’s men along with Ska were tracking down a group far to the west. I guess that left Fiona as my only company for when we left. It would be like old times and I looked forward to it.

The fortress was quiet and empty when I made my way inside. I grabbed a cold beer from the fridge and headed to my workshop. I plopped down on my chair and sneezed as a thin layer of dust rose up. I grunted as I rose back up and turned on the air filters. I hadn’t been in the room in almost two months. It seemed almost sacrilegious of me to avoid the place for so long.

As the ventilation fan kicked in, I took a towel and brushed the dust off of everything, letting it float through the air until it was swallowed up by the vent. I didn’t want anything interfering with my carving, and a sneeze at the wrong time could ruin an item.

I looked over to the corner of the room where my failed railgun project lay in pieces. I had figured out how to make it work but it was so finicky that it wasn’t worth the effort. A mana cannon was much simpler to produce.

Speaking of mana cannons, I had designs for a much more improved model, that could focus the energies into a tight beam. It was closer to a particle cannon than a laser but calling it a mana particle cannon sounded stupid so I dubbed it the mana laser. The design was still in early testing and I wouldn’t be fiddling with it today. No, I had new weapons of my own to build.

I pulled out both staves and set the ornamental one off to the side on a rack I had built. I planned on filling that rack with all sorts of staves when I got time.

The first stave was easy to construct as I already knew the basic framework from making it in the past. I was thinking of dropping the ability to shrink but decided to keep it for this staff in particular. There was no telling when I would come across the need for a smaller weapon.

Seeing as I had Time Shudder now, there was less need to blind my opponents. The pain aspect was also being less effective as the creatures and people I fought grew in power. I kept the spiritual siphon as it had saved me more than once.

I replaced the old runes with a new combination I had developed. It was another set of siphoning abilities and merged well with the first. One siphoned off stamina and the other mana. When I finished I inspected the staff.

Consuming Void

Quality: Exquisite

Damage as Staff: 22-45 bludgeoning/piercing/spiritual siphoning/mana siphoning/stamina siphoning x3 critical damage

Damage as Mace: 15-25 bludgeoning/piercing/spiritual siphoning/mana siphoning/stamina siphoning x3 critical damage

This dark chalbast bone staff is capped with an Osmium Mithril alloy, engraved with runic enchantments to consume stamina, mana, and strike out at the ethereal. A separate enchantment allows the staff to shrink down to half its length to act like a mace.

I grunted in annoyance at missing the masterwork quality. As for the rest of the staff, I was more than happy. I did wonder if the naming convention had anything to do with my class. I kind of wanted to know what a dark chalbast was and why such a beast had bones the color of dark ash.

I set the staff aside and picked up the other one. I rubbed my hand over the surface, examining the two heads. This one was going to take some time to complete. I needed to figure out how I wanted to layout the runic pattern. As for the actual runes, that was going to be interesting. For the dragon-headed side, I had stumbled upon a rune combination that enhanced elemental damage. It took a lot of runes to cover all the elements though. For the lion side, I had only come up with that specific set of runes after our encounter with the orc chief.

When I used Shockwave to slam him into the ground it gave me an idea. One I spent a considerable amount of time trying to replicate in rune form. It turned out, incorporating some of the runes I had used in my railgun design had been the answer. The tricky part was going to be getting all the runes to play nice. This was where my new cutoff came into play. No more exploding weapons for me. Consuming Void already had it built-in.

It was simple enough to implement the safety feature. Now if my hands left the staff, all magic would go inert, or that was the idea. It was still possible some magic could detonate but it would be far less than before.

I figured out my plan of action and got to laying out the design with a magical stencil I had picked up. It left no marks but would leave a glowing blue imprint of where everything should be.

I hadn’t bothered on the other staff, wanting to see if I could accomplish a masterwork with my own skill. I wasn’t quite at that level yet.

It was a good thing I had the stencil. I had to start over four times before the layout properly covered the staff and both heads. Now came the grueling work of carving in the runes.

It took me a full twelve hours to carve every painstaking rune into the staff. Thankfully rune crafting was rather forgiving. The runic geometry as I came to call it – calling it a simple knot didn’t seem to do it justice anymore – took a few hours and had to be completed in one go or it might not be possible to match the exact movement of the previous attempts. But each separate rune could be carved at any time. When I felt fatigued, I rested. Even so, the actual work took eight hours.

The end result was worth every drop of sweat as I watched in awe as the ends of the staff changed. The dragon's scales went from dark silver to a multichromatic look. And while the lion head didn’t change color just looking at it felt like it weighed on your soul. I wasted no more time and inspected the staff.

Dominion and Destruction

Quality: Masterwork

Damage: 28-50 bludgeoning x3 critical damage

Dragon Head: Enhances all elemental abilities used by the wielder

Lion Head: Imparts a crushing force equal to ten times the wielder's strength when activated. Cost 25 mana.

A masterwork weapon of dark chalbast bone and an Osmium Mithril alloy that imbibes the forces of dominion and destruction. Feel fear and tremble before my might!

I let out a low whistle, giving the weapon a twirl. The dragon's head seemed to catch the light and reflect it like a stained glass window. The lion’s head emitted an aura of authority making you feel inferior just by gazing at it, but while I twirled the staff that effect was amplified, making it seem like you were an ant standing before a hurricane. I really wanted to go test it out on some dumb schmuck.