After a late lunch down at the common hall—warm lunch, thank the gods—Dain decided he’d better spend his coins before his resolve softened and he did something stupid, like save them.

  He buckled his satchel, tugged his wingcloak straight, and stepped out into Granamere’s square.

  The midday light made the gilt around the water fountain sparkle, but the rest of the square looked its usual workaday self: wheelwright’s boys banging at hubs, a mule refusing to be anything but a statue, and a drunk miner on lunchbreak shouting at nobody in particular. Across the way, the relic shop’s shutters—yesterday chained and sulking at this time—stood thrown open. Behind the front window, Marr stood on a stool, fixing a shelf with careful taps of a small hammer.

  He couldn’t help himself. Connections were currency and he had the pockets for those, so as he passed by her shop, he lifted a hand and gave her a friendly wave through the glass.

  Marr’s eyebrows popped like startled birds. For a fraction of a second she looked as if she were counting how many pieces of him were still attached, but when she realized he was in one piece—well, minus the arm, but she never saw him with two arms anyways—she nodded back.

  Still alive, old lady.

  Funnily enough, though, the materials merchant shop was right beside Marr’s shop. She did mention it was run by her brother, so they might’ve agreed to the arrangement. Yesterday, the shop was also chained and shuttered the whole day, but today the door stood wide open. He slipped inside quickly and stopped dead a step past the doorway.

  Shelves. Shelves everywhere. Screw the tidy display shelves like in Marr’s shop. These were crowded plank runs, all roof to floor, bowed under baskets and buckets and wooden trays of ores and metal bars. Nails hung from the ceiling in paper bundles like dried peppers, and several barrels brimmed with metal nuggets along the walls—slag metal, to anyone else, but to an Altar, sometimes useful side offerings.

  He smiled. It was a messy shop to be sure, but it also had a bit of charm to it, so he wouldn’t mind diving his hand into some of those barrels.

  Behind the counter at the end of the shop, the old shopkeeper slept with his chin tucked to his chest, spectacles sliding down a broad nose. He decided he’d let the big man roost in dream-land for now and just browse in peace.

  He started down the closest aisle, letting his oreblade cane nudge baskets as his eyes devoured labels. Most of the magic materials were metal—Obric was a land that raised ore like other lands raised goats—but every few shelves, a non-metallic prize would nest on its little plate: moss-paste pucks for salves, seedpods that glittered like black frost, and a stoppered jar labeled ‘moonspit’ that he didn’t recognize, but he wouldn’t want to open on a bet.

  Hm.

  These don’t seem… particularly useful.

  Not much in the way of magic beast parts, that was for sure. Magic metals were typically used as main offerings for all sorts of Implement-Class constructs. To get a construct that could shoot fire, he’d need fire-resistant magic metal as the base offering, and to get a construct that could fly, he’d need lightweight, gravity-defying magic metal as the base offering.

  He didn’t think he’d be getting a construct himself anytime soon, though—far too much maintenance for far too much attention—but magic metals were also useful when it came to reinforcing and upgrading relics, so maybe he could just pick up a few to upgrade his prosthetic even further?

  Yeah, I think I’ll do that.

  As he picked out two metal bars costing three hundred curons each—aethersteel, which would lower his prosthetic’s weight even more, and bloodsilver, which should make it so the metal plates would slowly regenerate if damaged—a small lockbox tucked at the back of a lower shelf caught his eye.

  He plucked it up and looked at the copper label wired through the handle: ‘soulfire metal’. Even through the metal box, heat licked his palm through the iron, and when he held his ear to the lid, he heard a small flame snapping and crackling inside like hot coal in rain.

  Soulfire metal, huh?

  It was one of those temperamental mountain metals: born burning, and stayed burning unless quenched with something even colder than ice. It wasn’t good for anything he’d want to hold, but it’d be excellent as a main offering for a fire-type Elementum-Class relic.

  Price: 500 curons.

  Bit expensive, but I still have four days to make back some money, so…

  He tucked the lockbox under his arm and continued looking.

  Two shelves later, a bright purple glint arrested him. Behind a fronted glass case rested a crystal eye the size of his fist, round as a blown bubble and made of pure sapphire shot through with faint inner veins. There wasn’t just one pupil in the center, either, but three triangular-shaped pupils, each a shade of dark blue so deep they were nearly black.

  He checked. The shopkeeper kept snoring, so he lifted the glass slowly and eased the eye into his hands.

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  “… Exhibit me damned,” he breathed. “A baby All-Seeing Crystalwurm’s eye.”

  He rolled it around in his palm, watching the pupils shimmer like distant storms. He’d only ever seen sketches of an All-Seeing Crystalwurm in catalogues—those massive, sea-faring wurms that lay at the bottom of the Thalassene Sea—but he didn’t anticipate to find an Uncommon grade material in a border town like this. It’d be a terrific main offering for any observation-type relic.

  Price: 800 curons.

  He stared at the tag. Then he stared harder, as if the number might develop zeroes out of shame.

  Eight hundred curons for a baby All-Seeing Crystalwurm’s eye. It’d easily sell for three times that price in any town or city with a real Altar, so he supposed like sister, like brother. Both magic shopkeepers in Granamere charged their wares at incredibly low prices. Perks of shopping in a border town, maybe?

  Whatever the case, he also tucked the eye into the crook of his elbow and scanned the room one last time for dessert.

  Books didn’t usually live in material shops—shopkeepers hated buyers wasting time reading instead of spending—but a slim, cloth-bound volume had been swallowed by a stack of brass metal rings near the counter. He plucked it out. The cover, touch-worn and properly dull, carried a title hand-stamped in flaking foil: ‘A Practical Guide to Title Offering, One-Title Through Three-Title’.

  His heart bobbed. He did still remember most of the common recipes for the more coveted Titles, but ‘most’ wasn’t all, and ‘remembered’ wasn’t right. A refresher would keep him from accidentally getting a bad Title he’d either have to discard or sit with for the rest of his life.

  The book’s price, penciled on the label, was a hundred curons, so he marched to the counter with his haul for the day all tucked under his arm.

  He’d almost made it to the big man’s elbow when the snoring stopped. The bearded shopkeeper jolted awake, spectacles bouncing, and sat up with a grunt as he blinked at Dain.

  Dain blinked back at him, too. He was large and muscled like a bear startled from winter with shoulders broad enough to serve tea from—a true born Obric man.

  “... Oh,” the man said, voice rough and bass-deep. “You’re the one my sister complimented. You beat a golem, right?

  Dain smiled pleasantly. “The very same. Dain Sorowyn, traveling relic merchant.”

  A thick brow rose. “Karr, brother of Marr,” the man said, looking at the items tucked under his arm. “You’ve found things you like?”

  “Mhm. I’d like these metal bars, soulfire metal, the crystalwurm eye, and—” He lifted the book. “Education.”

  Karr grunted and swung his counter scale around. “Let’s see. Three hundred times two, five hundred, eight hundred, and a hundred curons… two thousand curons total.”

  He held out a palm, and Dain counted curons into it, the twenty silver coins clacking up to the exact sum. Karr weighed the money with a practiced pinch, then slid it into a drawer without so much as a peek at the individual coins.

  “Thank you for your patronage,” Karr said, almost politely. Then curiosity tugged at his mouth. “Say, what’re you planning to do with the soulfire metal and the eye?”

  Dain had the right answer—a stupidly honest ‘get some relics’—chambered behind his teeth, but common sense put a hand over his mouth. This was a small border town. No Church-approved Altar. Anyone buying magic materials for offerings either had an illegal access point or very long legs that’d carry him to a town that did have an Altar very fast.

  “Collect them,” he said blandly instead. “I like interesting things.”

  Karr let that sit. The big man’s expression could’ve been mistaken for a rock face, but Dain saw a pebble slide. Not suspicion, just… more like a memory rolling across his mind.

  “Hm,” Karr said. “No problem, then. Coin’s coin.”

  With that, Dain dipped his head politely and took his leave.

  Auraline had always crowed that Obric was nothing but savage brutes and mine-loving giants, but here were Marr and Karr, selling treasures for pennies and nodding with manners better than some wealthy merchants he’d met. Even Yasmin, sharp-tongued and sharper-bladed, only snarled out of loyalty to her lady.

  If he weren’t on a path paved in blood, maybe he’d like to linger here longer.

  He tilted his chin up. The sky still blazed bright, the square noisy with carts and chatter. His eyelids, however, had finally grown unbearably heavy with the thought of a bed.

  Nap first.

  Then supper.

  Then a refresher on Titles.

  The impact registered first as the golem fell through the shaft on the ceiling: stone fracturing, dust cascading, fractured beams of sunlight scattering across the cavern floor. Its gyroscopes recalibrated. Its pistons hissed. Systems re-aligned. The descent had been inelegant, but survivable.

  It raised its head and looked around. Its wings folded close, and hydraulics lifted its frame upright. Four ocular lenses rotated in sequence, collecting light in the red, blue, yellow, and purple spectrums.

  Two other golems lay still around the cave.

  Model [Hound-Implement Golem]: legs snapped, torso cracked, core removed, optics shattered.

  Model [Humanoid-Implement Golem]: chest cavity ruptured, fingers scattered, core removed, optics removed, directives incomplete.

  Both: Destroyed. Unfit for recovery.

  Its lenses whirred again.

  Tracing mana signals.

  The world shifted into streams of residue. Across the cave mouth stretched trails of light invisible to biological sight but blinding in its vision: thin, ribbonlike currents left by warm bodies alive with mana.

  Three mana trails.

  Two in grey spectrum. Origin estimation: Autonomous Land of Obric. Matching signatures: Obric flesh. Civilian derivative.

  One in violet spectrum. Origin estimation: [ERROR].

  Recalculation attempted. [ERROR ERROR ERROR].

  Steam vented from its cranial plating. Cogs in its head jammed momentarily as the computation looped, searching for more stored references.

  Grey spectrum mana. Obric signatures: familiar. Enemy. Designated target.

  But violet spectrum mana…

  Its lenses narrowed to slits. It processed the error as static, then discarded it. Secondary calculations were not required.

  Directive remained primary.

  Directive: Destroy the Autonomous Land of Obric.

  The error was irrelevant. Unknown trails were irrelevant. Obric was directive. Directive was purpose. Purpose was function.

  It unfolded its wings. Every hinge screamed with pressure release. Resonance gauges rose, calibrating lift, and steam vented in twin clouds from its back.

  The cave filled with the mechanical roar of its core as it took flight again, wings tearing through the walls of the shaft.