“Soulmancy?” Wallace repeated, his eyes thinning to slits. He squinted at Arwin for nearly a second before he continued. “You have Soulmancy? Why am I sohow unsurprised? I knew you were acting far too normal. A student as irkso as you never would have managed to find a normal path. Did you go and turn yourself into a Lich?”
The dwarf’s words dripped with sarcasm, but there was sothing sharper beneath them. This wasn’t just a random question made rely for conversation. Wallace was watching very carefully to see what Arwin’s reaction would be.
“No,” Arwin said firmly. “Nor have I done any of the typical atrocities associated with Soulmancy. The sh gave the skill on its own, when I evolved my class.”
“I believe he has found a new path to utilizing Soulmancy. Perhaps the originally intended one, rather than the brute forced thod which Liches use to acquire the ability,” Koyu said.
“And you, then?” Wallace asked. “A Soulmancer? One that’s been hiding since the last of them were purged from this world?”
“No. I never had the desire to learn,” Koyu said. “My eyes grew weary of this world long before the possibility arrived. My only knowledge of Soulmancy is from stories and observing the one who taught .”
Wallace blew out a sharp sigh. “Well, thank the gods for the small favors. I’ve spent a fair bit of ti with your guild in the past days, Arwin. Lillia especially has been working on driving the point into my thick skull that I need to open my mind. And I say, I’ve been trying. But accepting a Soulmancer is more akin to shoving a damn cannonball in there. Give sothing to work with, lad. Tell I wasn’t wrong about you.”
“Depends on what you thought about ,” Arwin replied with a wry smile. “But I have never — and will never — forcibly bent the will of sothing to beco my slave. I believe I unintentionally used Soulmancy to form functional contracts between myself and so of my weapons, but it was nothing like the vision that Koyu showed of his master utilizing the skill.”
Wallace ran a hand through his hair and sucked on the ends of his moustache for a second before he responded. “Then you have my attention. Tell more. I get the feeling I’m going to want to know where this is going.”
***
It took a surprisingly short amount of ti to fill Wallace in. Arwin had fully expected the conversation to sohow take an hour, but the dwarf just sat silently and nodded along until he had finished telling him about how the visions he got when making so weapons were likely related to Soulmancy.
Arwin took him through everything that he and Koyu had gone over, including his revelations from watching Shade work and how the crystal infused into his bow was sohow part of an ancient weapon.
Wallace didn’t say a single word until Arwin had finished. Then the three of them had stood in silence for several long seconds. The dwarf finally broke it with a long, thoughtful hum.
“One thing is for certain. You never fail to sohow catch off guard,” Wallace said. “First you go around eating lava—”
“What now?” Koyu asked, blinking.
“It felt like the right idea at the ti,” Arwin said. He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “And I still stand by it. It works. Has a good chew to it as well. I’m going to bla the sh for that.”
“The sh didn’t spoon the lava into your mouth,” Wallace said.
“But it did decide to make eat magical items. If you give soone the affinity for snacking on magic tal, you can’t be mad when they start trying to eat other weird things too.”
Wallace blinked. “You… eat tal?”
Ah. Did I ever ntion that to him? I suppose it wasn’t really pertinent to any of the conversations we had. Whoopsie.
“Magic, actually,” Arwin corrected. “And it’s not a weird hobby. I need to eat it to survive. This is a bit off topic, though.”
“You’re not glossing over this,” Koyu said. “What do you an, you eat magic?”
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“I want to know the answer to that as well. You can’t say sothing like that and expect to ignore it!”
Lovely. I’ve managed to get the overly righteous dwarf to side with a Lich within minutes. I almost feel like the sh should have given so sort of achievent for that. But if we’re going to be working together, I’d rather not keep this secret. There’s no point. They might even be able to help figure out how to master the Hungering Maw before its growth ends up getting to the point where I can’t contain it.
“It’s a really long story,” Arwin said. “But to condense it, after I lost my Hero class and beca a smith, I gained the ability to consu magic. The need to consu magic.”
“Fascinating,” Wallace breathed. “Any magic?”
“Haven’t found one I couldn’t eat yet. Really, this is kind of Necrohamr’s fault. Direct your questions at him. He’s the one that—”
“Necrohamr?” Wallace exclaid, his eyes going wide as saucers. “What does he have to do with anything?”
Oh, shit. Didn’t Necrohamr say sothing about coming to odds with the Dwarven council? The dwarves as a whole probably have a pretty negative view of him.
“Another long story,” Arwin said, pinching the bridge of his nose. They were going to forget the reason he’d gathered them here at this rate. “He’s an asshole. Was an asshole. Kind of still is. But he’s an enemy of the Adventurer’s Guild and doesn’t approve of the way things have been going. He pulled and Lillia out from under their thumb and is partially responsible for us getting new classes. But if we get caught on every single surprising bit of my story, we’re never going to make any progress.”
“There are more?” Koyu asked.
Arwin sighed. “If I said no, would you believe ?”
“No,” Koyu and Wallace said at the sa ti.
“Well, no,” Arwin said. “There aren’t.”
“I don’t believe you,” Wallace said.
“Good,” Arwin replied. “I was lying. Feel free to swing by for drinks after this and I’ll happily bring you up to speed… provided you swear to never breathe a word of it to another soul. Now, we’ve gotten past the preliminary bits.”
“We really haven’t,” Wallace said.
“Anyway, since we’ve gotten past them,” Arwin continued, narrowing his eyes and barging past Wallace’s words without even missing a beat, “I want to get to the reason I asked you to co here. I am planning to study Soulmancy in order to improve my abilities as a smith, but I don’t want to do it the way I’ve done things before.”
“Seems like it’s worked well enough so far,” Koyu said.
“It may have, but I’m fed up running around like a chicken with its head cut off,” Arwin said. “I’m half a smith. Half a warrior. Half a Lich, if you believe so people.”
“That’s three halves,” Wallace pointed out.
“You’re not too short to punt,” Arwin threatened. “I’ll do it. I have no respect for my elders. Especially when they’re half my height.”
“That,” Wallace said, crossing his arms in front of his chest, “was low.”
Could be lower. A whole lot lower.
“Good. Now are you going to hear out or not?”
Wallace gestured for Arwin to continue.
“Thank you. I want to do things the right way for once. You both have far more experience than I do in your respective fields. Sure, Koyu isn’t a master of Soulmancy, but I’d wager he knows more about it than most. Between him and you, Wallace, I have a very good base of knowledge to draw from. I want you to teach everything you can. About the parts of Dwarven Smithing I’m missing. About Soulmancy. About everything. And I want to do it fast.”
Koyu and Wallace exchanged a glance.
“You’re asking for a lot,” Wallace said. “And that goes twice if you want to do this quickly. You were a quick study… but there’s a big difference between teaching for a bit and dedicating weeks or months to it. I have tasks of my own that need to be done. This isn’t just so light favor. It’s a huge commitnt. Not to act like a greedy — well, dwarf — but I can’t just spend that much ti for no reason. Teaching is hardly my passion.”
Arwin thought for a mont. There were a number of ways he could probably convince Wallace. Access to Lillia’s drinks was foremost among them. But trying to make deals by opening with threats was rarely a wise choice when you wanted your coworkers to like you.
He’d offered Koyu a new body… but Arwin doubted there was anything he could make Wallace that the dwarf would want. Wallace was, after all, a smith. He’d probably be offended more than anything else if Arwin insinuated the reward for helping him would be getting a weapon of so sort.
No, Arwin had sothing far more appealing in mind.
“I don’t know how closely you’ve kept up with the Proving Grounds, but my teams perford exceptionally well. We’ve already got more people lining up on the street than we know what to do with,” Arwin said with a sly smile. “And my new policy is that I won’t be making anything for anyone that doesn’t bring interesting materials to work with.”
“Where are you taking this?” Wallace asked, his eyes narrowing.
“I think you know,” Arwin replied. “You can’t tell that there isn’t so material you’ve been dying to get your hands on. Correct if I’m wrong, but I don’t get the feeling you get out much. You’re quite busy, after all. I’d imagine there might be a material that you’d very much like to have find its way into your pockets. I have the perfect opportunity to put the word out.”
Wallace was quiet for a mont.
Then his lips split into a grin.
“Maybe teaching ain’t so bad,” Wallace said, reaching up to clap Arwin on the shoulder. “Always rather liked it. Fostering the new generation and all that. Let’s get to it, shall we? Ti’s a’ wasting.”
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