Filcarel was bored. It wasn’t a feeling that he was familiar with. His life had always been full of activity. As a child his parents had organized a lot of his time with tutors and family outings. As an adult he was driven by his own passion for practicing magic and by the need to support himself financially. But now, after the way things had changed at the guild, he had this new problem. Too much free time.

  Technically he was still an employee of the Artificer’s guild. Filcarel had tried to quit on the spot, but Guildmaster Sie had refused to accept his resignation. He could just not show up, of course, and that’s what Filcarel was doing, but it wasn’t quite that simple. The guildmaster had gone to the capital, Rosette, on business and he promised that when he returned they would speak about it again.

  By that time Filcarel might change his mind. He really might, because there were some good things about artificing. One of them was that it was something else to do. He now understood that you couldn’t practice magic all day long every day. It was too mentally draining, and even Filcarel’s passion for orbcasting wasn’t infinite. Learning about runes wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

  The other thing about artificing was that when you were done you had something. The point of artificing of course was to create a device, and there was a satisfaction to be had from creating things. It provided some psychological happiness that performing magic didn’t, because magical spells eventually just evaporate back into the aether.

  So it was a maybe, now. He might want to continue working for the guild. It would be hard, but maybe, probably, easier than finding a new job and adapting to that. Yeah, it seemed like the obvious choice. But he couldn’t change his mind now, because the guildmaster wouldn’t be back for at least two weeks. Maybe a month. Perhaps he could use that time to… learn?

  Rune languages were the basis of the vast majority of magic throughout the history of the realm. Rune magic dated back thousands of years, before even the First Empire. Runes were primordial, exotic, arcane, but also a familiar presence in everyday life. It was easy to learn, but impossible to master. Scholars spent their lives learning it’s intricacies and could solve any problem with the right application of knowledge.

  Filcarel hated it. He respected that there was a complex logic, but hated the idea of memorizing all the stupidly long sequences involved. He hated the seemingly endless list of rules and their exceptions and the endless grammatical minutiae. He hated the hands off mechanical approach to spell casting that left no room for artistry or expression.

  He didn’t mind the activity of monotonously of carving and testing predetermined enchantments. He liked being paid good money to do a mindless but relaxing task. But he refused to be defined as a magician in those terms. Mastery of rune formation was a dry and intellectual accomplishment. Filcarel would never be good at it.

  Maybe he would be just good enough if he worked at it five days a week, starting probably no earlier than eleven A.M. He wouldn’t hate himself for that. But he would hate himself if he wasted his unpaid time when he was on a break torturing himself with textbooks and rune manuals.

  There was still his problem though. He was burnt out on orbcasting.

  It was Demonsday, his fourth day of no work in a row, and he was just sick of practicing. He decided to get some fresh air, go for a walk, and think about his options. How could he fill his days meaningfully?

  You might think that he could get a job somewhere performing magic. There were people who did that. Entertainers didn’t make a lot of money though, and it was more about the entertainment value anyway, not the quality of magic.

  Filcarel could cast useful spells, but that didn’t pay either. That kind of thing wasn’t even a real job, except in very niche cases. If you needed some magical spell done over and over, well, that was what magical devices were for. Artificers filled that need in society.

  There were of course court magicians. The very wealthy didn’t care about practicality or cost, and it would be a dream job for someone like Filcarel. But the very wealthy wouldn’t employ a mere adept, regardless of how talented they were. It was about the status of it, having a mage at your beck and call, doing magic on your whim.

  Walking now, he passed the illusionist on the bridge. It was afternoon on Demonsday. Tomorrow was the Day of the Tree, and so foot traffic was lower than normal. There was still a small crowd watching the performer. Magically speaking, there was a lot going on, but not in a good way. Fully half of the runes fizzled uselessly. Filcarel grimaced at the inefficiency. It was normal. Rune formations accounted for it, and the magic went off successfully.

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  He did admire how the street magician worked the crowd though.

  The man put a ‘blindfold’ around his head and told the crowd that he would guess what someone, anyone, was holding. Filcarel could see that the blindfold was an illusion. He had used a ring to cast the spell. The Illusionist guessed improbable things like ‘Elephant’, and ‘My Grandmother’, and then when the performer was down to his last guess, he cheated by ‘casting invisibility’ on the blindfold. It was funny. It would be impressive if he could actually cast {Invisibility}. Instead he just dispelled the illusion. Coins went into the hat.

  There was one more job Filcarel could think of that would pay well. He had enough knowledge and expertise to be a tutor and he might even enjoy sharing his knowledge and passion. The problem was that that was the business of the mage’s guild. And the mage’s guild didn’t just let you join up, they had expensive monthly dues. Could he earn enough as a tutor that he would be making a net profit? He didn’t know, but he doubted it. It would be an expensive experiment if the answer was no.

  Filcarel continued his walk. He meandered through the streets of Tumas. He pretended to be aimless. He didn’t want to admit to himself that he had a destination in the back of his mind. There was somewhere he could entertain himself. Not in a productive way, but… he needed to occupy his mind.

  There was a tavern of sorts here on the valley side of Tumas. It was on the main street, on the left side heading towards the Baron’s keep. It’s sign just said ‘GAME’. It wasn’t really a tavern, parlor was the word for it. There was a small entrance fee. The food was a little overpriced. But it was where you went around here if you wanted to play.

  He’d never really played the competitively, for the strategy of it. Instead he had just collected the pieces, traded them, and played with them like any other toy. He hadn’t come to places like this at all when he was a child. He had always been curious though, and of course he assumed that he would be good at it.

  Filcarel found a seat at an empty table, watching the room. There wasn’t a lot of action going on, only two people seemed to be actually playing, a private game. Some teenagers were being noisy in their corner of the room, and there were a handful of other people eating and drinking too. Mostly the place was empty, it looked like he had come at a slow time.

  Waiting for the waitress, Filcarel decided to look through all his game chips. He had a lot of them. Most of them were soldiers themed after the Rosette Kingdom. He had some Zeg styled skirmishers and a few Clynish type mercenaries as well. Every piece in the whole realm was unique, as if they were real tiny little people.

  Most pieces weren’t very expensive though. Individually anyway. If you had a big collection it would add up. Filcarel did have one chip at least that was super rare though, and he resisted the temptation to summon the magic from inside it. It might seem like he was showing off. One of his father’s friends had given it to him; he was an ambassador to some far off place, Filcarel didn’t know where.

   was one of the very few skills in the world that pretty much anyone could learn. You didn’t need to have any enhanced attribute, and it didn’t take a lot of effort to get the hang of the basics at least either. Making the pieces themselves was the real difficult part of the skill. He’d never really thought about it before, but it was a little bit (but not at all) like artificing. To make something special took a lot of skill and valuable materials.

  Filcarel’s troops covered a decent part of the table. A dozen tiny knights were organizing the rest of the troops into units at his suggestion. The Zeg fighters did not get along with the Rosette pieces though, and were just causing a disruption. The two nationalities did have some natural animosity towards each other, but maybe he just needed some kind of Zeg captain or something to enforce their obedience.

  “You’ve got some discipline problems in your army there.” A short gray haired man with a long beard greeted Filcarel. “I’m Mireenel, the owner here.”

  “I suppose I do.” Filcarel shook the man’s hand. “I’m Filcarel, more of a collector. I’ve never played the game seriously, so my battle group might not be very well thought out.”

  “Haha, no it’s not, but it is nice to see some foreign pieces. I’m a collector myself. These mercenaries are good ones, they tend to be very solid front liners. Do you have any other exotic chips?”

  Filcarel tried to keep the smile off his face as he flipped his last piece onto the table. “Oh, I do have a chip I would consider exotic.”

  “No Way! A DRAGON!” an enthusiastic youngster yelled.

  A crowd of onlookers came over to admire his prized figure. The illusionary creature was almost ten inches long, which made it huge in comparison to the tiny soldiers. It stretched it’s long neck and wings and arched it’s back like a cat. A tiny scream of defiance escaped it’s fanged jaws. Filcarel didn’t have any control over this piece, his mental suggestions had no effect at all, but he really didn’t care.

  “How do you get a DRAGON? I want one!” The kid was asking.

  “Ah, well that’s not even a human unit.” Mireenel explained. “I can’t say that I’ve ever even seen one before.”

  Filcarel leaned back smugly enjoying the attention. Often when summoned, the red scaled dragon did nothing but nap, or lick it’s scales like a cat. This was an exception, it was even flying a little bit taking big leaps from one end of the table to the other. The dragon was putting on a show, to the delight of the people watching in the parlor.

  The soldiers sharing the table were less pleased. The knights were having difficulty just staying in their saddles as their horses were panicking. Spearmen and archers that had shown discipline before were now breaking formation. Only the Zeg skirmishers looked like they were willing to protect themselves. One of them flung a tiny javelin into the dragon’s wing as it flew by.

  Soon, the table was engulfed in illusory fire.