The Fence of Laoren
Stolen goods.
There had always been people willing to deal in them. But fenced merchandise was, more often than not, the kind of cargo that landed you in a cell if you so much as slipped. Most wouldn't touch the trade.
In the back alleys of Laoren, however, there was one fence who'd grown thick-boned in the business. A man whose legs were frighteningly fast, and whose instincts never missed.
It was fair to say that nearly every piece of stolen goods in Laoren passed through his hands.
I walked the back alleys for some time before I spotted a crowd gathered in the distance. Sure enough, they were sellers — a whole pack of them come to unload their loot. Beyond them stood a single man, a robe drawn over his head and a mask covering his face, a cloth spread on the ground as he bought up stolen goods right there in the open.
Grimer always worked like that, like a street vendor with a cloth stall. He never stayed in one place long enough to be pinned down, which made him a nightmare to catch. He knew every twist of Laoren's back alleys and could vanish down the shortest route the instant things went south.
Then Grimer's head snapped up. He held still for a moment, face tilted, and his gaze cut straight through the alley — to where I was hiding.
"That's all I'll be buying today."
That was a considerable distance. Had he really sensed me from all the way over there? That was more than a little impressive.
"Grimer, buy this one too before you go!"
"Come on, I brought something good!"
Even through the jeers, Grimer packed up without a shred of hesitation. I'd heard his instincts were sharp, but I hadn't expected this.
Or maybe...
Maybe he had something that went beyond instinct — something that warned him of danger.
Grimer vanished into the alleys at a dead sprint.
"Leksan. What do you think? Does he have it?"
He does.
So the one who'd picked it up had sold it straight to Grimer. Those back-alley types never wasted a second.
"We're going after him."
Just how fast were Grimer's legs? And could I actually catch the infamous Grimer? Now that was interesting.
Laoren's back alleys were a natural labyrinth.
But that only applied if you were traveling inside the maze.
Thud — thud — thud — thud. I vaulted from wall to wall and shot upward, landing lightly on a rooftop. Down below, the ground was a tangle. Up here, the sky was empty. No maze. No obstacles.
Since ancient times, the sky had been a mage's inheritance. And that was a truth that now applied to me as well.
Of course, I didn't know any magic that would let me fly.
All I could do was run on two legs as hard as they would take me. But push it far enough, and running was no different from flight.
A low crack ran through my legs as explosive strength gathered in them, and mana layered itself over the top. The force was enough to crumple the rooftop beneath my feet. I kicked off at once and launched skyward.
A thunderous boom tore the air as my body tore across the sky. The heavens rushed past. Below, buildings packed tight as teeth blurred by at speed. And there, threading the gaps of that near-labyrinth of stone and timber, a man was sprinting hard. Grimer.
His legs really were something else. I'd always been confident in my own running, and he was still faster than me — though that was without mana in the picture.
I'd done a little research of my own, and mana was inexhaustible. It could take any shape at all. A power of creation, in the truest sense.
I turned a somersault in midair and gathered mana beneath my feet. I was still only an apprentice, so I couldn't shape it into a proper spell. But I could change its raw form. And in empty air, even a small change could turn into something else entirely.
What I set beneath my feet was an explosion. Nothing large. Just enough to throw my body onto a new line.
Dynamic vision honed by devouring countless life-flames flashed sharp. My physical abilities had climbed so high they could read an opponent's movements with something close to foresight. The instant I predicted the direction of Grimer's flight —
Boom!
Another blast from my feet, and I tore across the sky once more. What was so special about flying, anyway? If this counted, then I was flying.
I knifed between the buildings and hit the ground in a heartbeat. In the same instant Grimer took a step to keep running, I landed right in front of him and shattered the street.
"Hrk!"
Even a man with instincts like his hadn't expected to be chased like this. Grimer let out a startled sound and dropped onto the ground, and the stolen goods he'd been stuffing into his bundle spilled out in a clattering rush. For him, it must have felt like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky.
I knocked the dirt from my shoes and looked down at him. Grimer stared back with the face of a man who couldn't tell whether he was dreaming.
"Fence. Grimer."
He flinched at the sound of his own name. Then his hand plunged into the cloth bundle.
Sorry, but that was a waste of time. I was faster than he was. I closed the gap in an instant and caught his wrist — except a tool already glowing with light was clenched in his fist. Reaching into the bundle had been the fake. He'd drawn my eyes that way on purpose.
A flash.
Light burst out so violently that for a moment I couldn't see at all. A flare. I wrapped mana around my eyes a beat too late; they'd already taken the full brunt of it. The world split into fractured smears. My vision swam from the intensity of the light.
Grimer, on the other hand, had a mask over his face. Whether it blocked the glare or not, he was fine. He used the opening to roll and run.
As if I was going to let him go. I already had his arm.
And then another trick I hadn't seen coming.
His arm came free in my grip, sliding out all at once. For a stunned half-second I wondered if I'd simply pulled too hard — and in that half-second, Grimer bolted, one-armed, without looking back.
A prosthetic?
I realized, late, that what I was holding was a tool made to look like a human arm. So he'd been missing the real one to begin with. The man had more escape methods than I could count.
Blinded vision, a decoy arm — under ordinary circumstances, Grimer would have gotten away clean. The problem was that limited vision didn't mean a thing to me.
I closed my eyes. And in their place, I opened the other one I'd been given.
The Third Eye.
The pupil they called a Dragon's Eye locked onto a receding flame. A burning life-flame. The instant I had it, I kicked off the ground and exploded forward. The flame rushed in close, and I brushed it lightly with my hand.
Grimer tumbled across the street without so much as a twitch of resistance. With the link between soul and body severed, it seemed his limbs wouldn't answer him; he lay sprawled where he'd fallen.
My sight began to crawl back. He still couldn't do anything but work his mouth soundlessly.
"Sorry. I wasn't trying to take you down that hard."
I'd only chased him because he'd run the moment he saw me. Originally I'd planned to explain the situation calmly and walk away with the stolen goods. But he'd put everything he had into getting away, and I hadn't been left with much of a choice.
Don't play innocent. You were having the time of your life playing tag back there.
Leksan's voice drifted in. I ignored it. A people-eating magic tool never tells the truth.
I caught Grimer by the hand, pulled him up, and sat him down. Then I set the prosthetic back beside him. Pulling a man's arm off hadn't sat well with me either.
"All I need is one piece of stolen goods you bought."
"Hhk— uh, s-stolen goods, you say?"
Grimer's mouth seemed to have started working again, because he managed a question.
"What you bought is a dangerous magic tool."
"...A magic tool."
His shoulders twitched. From the look of it, something had already come to mind.
I left him there and walked over to the cloth. I was giving the scattered goods a rough once-over when Leksan spoke up.
There. That's the one.
In the direction Leksan indicated sat a gauntlet engraved with a skull. That mage, Bormora. I had no idea why he was so obsessed with skulls.
I couldn't feel any mana from the gauntlet at all. As Leksan had said, it looked like the power in it had run dry.
"Leksan. What kind of ability does this magic tool have?"
Well, compared to me, he's a pretty useless piece of junk.
Awfully full of himself. From where I was standing, Leksan wasn't much use either. And without mana, it wouldn't run anyway.
I picked the gauntlet out of the pile and shoved it onto my hand. Leaving it lying around somewhere else was a good way to get it stolen, and this was the safest place for it.
"H-hey."
Grimer lurched to his feet, swaying. Maria had gone down and could barely get back up, but this guy had some real bounce to him. He adjusted his mask and spoke.
"Are you a mage, by any chance?"
I supposed I did look a bit like one.
A mage? More like a madman. What kind of mage handles mana like that?
I wished the peanut gallery would sit this one out. I'd worked hard to become a mage, and I took some pride in it. So I squared my shoulders a little and gave him a solemn nod.
"That's right."
An apprentice mage was still a mage.
"Ah!"
Grimer let out a gasp and dropped to his knees right in front of me.
"Mage, sir! I make tools myself — would you take a look at my work?"
Now that, I hadn't seen coming.
"You make tools?"
"Yes! I make tools!"
"You're a fence."
A fence who bought stolen goods. That was Grimer. No question. But he held up the prosthetic from the ground and the flare tool he'd just used.
"Most of the goods I buy are materials for my own toolmaking. You'd be surprised how much useful stuff turns up among stolen goods — like these!"
"So you made those yourself?"
"Yes, that's so. I've many more besides."
Grimer rummaged through his pockets and pulled out several more tools to show me. Not that showing them did much good. I didn't have an eye for this sort of thing.
Behind the mask, though, his eyes were shining.
"Magic tools. They're the ideal I dream of reaching. I've taken apart and analyzed every magic tool I've gotten my hands on through the trade, but they remain a realm I cannot understand!"
Well. That tracked. The root of every magic tool was mana, in the end. It wasn't a realm a human without mana could hope to grasp.
"But a mage such as yourself would know the answer, would you not? Please — I'll give you the magic tool I bought this time. All I ask is a single hint for someone as lowly as me!"
The man's will was something else. Most people, the moment they heard the word mage, bowed their heads and started shaking. Grimer didn't bother with any of that. He clung on for the sake of his own curiosity, desperate and unashamed.
So he wasn't a fence. He was a toolmaker — and a fairly eccentric researcher at that. I respected the heart behind it. Anyone with their eyes lit up like that, chasing a dream, looked impressive. Anyone at all.
There was just one problem.
The thing is, I don't know either.
I'd puffed myself up calling myself a mage. But I didn't know the first thing about magic tools.