The previous Sassy Saturday post can be read here: Conversion War Vision Quest
The context for this post: Eric and Kallen are in a situation where they need to acquire a lot of expensive items from the elven city-state of Dnnac Ledo. The smith says that he is willing to trade and Emily steps up to negotiate.
______________________________________________________________________
Sonic palmed a piece of ore and held it
up to the light.
“This stuff is common iron. As good as
it is, it gets boring to use the same old stuff. I’ve heard rumors that a
grendel’s hide is made of a unique metal and I’ve wanted to use some of that
stuff for six hundred and eighty years, but they’re rare creatures. By the time
I catch news of one, someone else has stripped it clean! If you have a Seed of
Chaos, then I could harvest it without doing you any permanent harm.”
“You want to skin me alive?”
Sonic frantically waved his hands. “I’ll
pay you, of course! I’ve accumulated plenty of human money over the centuries
and it’s not like I have many opportunities to use it.”
“How much are we talking?”
“How much do you want?”
Memories of the pawnshop came back to
Eric and gave him pause. Discussing how much Pilaocv would pay him for
Lunas’ influence choker came out gibberish to him. He settled on a trade
because he couldn’t comprehend the economics. He’d rather not go through that
again.
“How about a trade: three daggers, two swords,
an axe, and two suits of body armor.”
“That’s oddly specific.”
Eric thought so too, but a lie came
naturally.
“I want three daggers for myself and my
two teammates, two swords for Tiza so she can dual wield them, an axe for
domestic labor jobs, and the armor for Tiza and Nolien as well because they
lack my and my mentor’s physical advantages.”
“Alright, that makes sense. Okay, first
show me your true form.”
Eric reached for his grendel identity
and allowed it to shift his human body into its true stature. It occupied
substantially more space and this delighted Sonic. He fingered his way from
Eric’s knuckles, up his arm, and down his back.
“Fascinating! The stuff I could make
with this...” He grew an abacus in his stomach and set about making the
calculations. “Now let’s see….considering your size…..” He moved several rings
to the right. “Then balance that against the equipment you asked for.” He moved
other rings to the left. After a couple permutations of this, the abacus
dissolved into his stomach. “If I took four complete hides, then we would have
a fair trade.”
“Deal!”
“What!?” Emily asked. “He wants to take
every inch of flesh off your body! Four times! Even if you can grow it back, how is that okay?”
“Smithery is my Eternal Hobby,” Sonic
said seriously. “It’s what I do to stave off chaotic madness and create meaning
in my life. Opportunities like this are what I live for. Besides, it’s just
skin. It’ll grow right back.”
“I don’t think you grasp how painful
this is going to be for Eric,” Emily said.
“Emily...”
“Shut it, Eric! You don’t understand this
either. You may have an elven girlfriend, but I’ve spent a lot more time around elves than you have. They think
differently, and not because they literally have chaos in their brains. Their
Seed of Chaos makes them apathetic. They think nothing of ripping arms off
because they grow back. They can’t understand a human’s need for food because starvation
can’t kill them. They think we’re stupid barbarians because we can’t spend our
lives doing mad science for shits and giggles. Just because you have a Seed of
Chaos, it doesn’t make you an elf.”
Someone clapped. Everyone looked up and
saw that it was Tasio.
“Well said! I’m glad I dragged you
here. You’re fun.”
“Go to the abyss. You’re worse than
they are.”
Tasio shrugged and said, “Guilty.” Then
he disappeared again.
The smith looked shocked and
immediately bowed his head in apology.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give the
impression that I wanted to avoid pain by pushing it on someone else. I assure
you that elves still comprehend pain even if we do heal quickly from it. If I
could transform myself into a grendel, I would, but I have no idea how to do
so. I don’t know what they look like and I don’t know how their skin works. How
about this? Three hides.”
Emily threw up her hands. “It’s like
talking to a wall. I don’t think you’ve ever had your skin peeled off before.”
“You have?”
“Eight weeks ago; Bog of Poisoned
Glory. I was helping Kallen find Forol so she could ask the goddess for a
blessing. I was infected by a parasite that ate my skin before my eyes, then
moved into my internal organs. Kallen had to give me two years off her life just
to keep me stable enough to get to the ER. I was in intensive care for seventy-two
hours.”
“Okay, two hides.”
“Emily, it’s all right,” Eric said. “If
I didn’t believe in the idiom ‘no pain, no gain,’ I wouldn’t make it through
Basilard’s training sessions.”
“One hide or Eric walks out and you’ll
lose this opportunity forever.” Emily leaned in closer. Her stare was sharp and
piercing. Her Evil Eye filled him with despair for lost time and crushed
dreams. “For the rest of eternity, you’ll curse your greed overcoming your
creativity.”
“Fine. One full hide for everything.”
Emily blinked and leaned back. “I’m
glad we could come to terms.”
Kallen slung an arm around her
shoulders and pulled her in close.
“You drive a hard bargain, as usual.”
“It was nothing, Boss. Just practice.”
_________________________________________________Mana Mutation Menace, and the rest of the Journey to Chaos series, is available for purchase at Amazon as both an ebook and as a paperback.
To learn more about the heroines of Journey to Chaos, visit the Tvtropes character sheet.
Brian Wilkerson is a independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).
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