“Order up!”
Iefyr approaches the counter, lifting his arcane Lens of Liminal Capture to his eye and pressing his finger down on the rune atop the trinket. Then again. And again.
The roasted turkey flatbread, drizzled with spicy tomato and meat sauce positively dazzles under the sparkling magical lights, each pulsing blue to signal that his food was ready. But the firbolg just keeps touching his rectangular device and its glowing rune over and over again. Every time, the crystal lens in front would shift its colors to more perfectly match the reflection on its convex surface.
The chef, a rotund elf, ducks his head down into the window, watching Iefyr’s obsession.
“Uh, hey buddy. Can you just take the krevist and move on? We got a line here.”
Iefyr lowers his crystal, cheeks turning pink. “Oh, oh! Of course, it’s just so beautiful, I didn’t want to miss a chance to remember it later.”
The elf scrunches up his face in confusion, but he has too many orders to get through to think too long about Iefyr’s words. Once the firbolg grabs the plate and steps over to a nearby cafe table, it’s out of his mind entirely.
Iefyr, meanwhile, already has half the krevist in his mouth as he bites down, juice and sauce dripping into his beard as the flavors dance together on his tongue. He moans like a touch-starved bureaucrat, drawing a few odd looks from other patrons at Edmond’s Deli and Cafe.
Edmond’s is Iefyr’s favorite restaurant in all of Silvercreek, which despite its modest name, was a pretty expansive city to the point where it nearly swallows all of the Silver Creek it’s named after. Iefyr had been staying in Silvercreek for nearly half a year, seeing the sights, experiencing its culture, and tasting anything he could get his hands on.
Silvercreek was itself nestled between a large forest to the north and a lake to the west, which allowed for more serious supply chain and trade opportunities. That, in itself, wasn’t terribly exciting to Iefyr, but that placement made Silvercreek a perfect place for developing one’s palate, with chefs coming from across the country to train and experiment with new foods that could only be kept and prepared in this singular location.
Iefyr spends so much reminiscing about all the culinary delights that brought him to Silvercreek, he almost forgets to savor the krevist until there’s just a drop of sauce on his wrist. Not wanting to waste any of his delicious lunch, he licks it and heaves a satisfied sigh.
Then, with his hunger finally satiated, Iefyr notices one peculiar patron who looks a bit out of place. A large, single-horned monstrous-looking fellow, wearing a few more layers than necessary for a summer day in Silvercreek. His skin is barely red, like an old brick in an even older building, but the horn on his forehead has a gold “mortar” of sorts, like glue holding the pieces together.
The gentleman has a journal open alongside a map of the city, and he seems particularly engrossed in both of them. Not just engrossed but concerned as well.
Iefyr’s gut instinct is to approach him and help. The same instinct his clan once told him would be his own undoing, but he hasn’t been undone yet, and Urbanus save him if he passes an opportunity to help a fellow traveler in need.
“Hail and well met, future friend,” Iefyr says as he walks up to the red-tinted monohorn. “Do you need some help getting around Silvercreek? I’ve been here long enough to know the roads as well as the seer next door knows my palm.”
His “future friend” looks back at him with half-smirk and half-cringe. “Is this a grift of some kind?”
“Hardly!” Iefyr says, rolling with it. “If I needed silver that badly, I wouldn’t have ordered the krevist combo.” He leans on the back of the chair opposite the other man. “And you have a map spread out over your plate, so I think it’s a safe guess that you could use a little help.”
The traveler gestures for Iefyr to sit, and the firbolg does, then scooting his chair as close as he can get to the table, pinning down the map with his elbows before resting his chin in his hands.
“I’m Iefyr, by the way. But you can call me Reef if that’s too hard to pronounce.”
“I think I can handle it. I’m Eijiro,” the traveler says. “Eiji for short.”
“That’s adorable,” Iefyr says.
“So I’ve heard,” Eijiro says, his skin nearly hiding the blush from the compliment. “Before we get to anything else, I have a simple question for you.”
“Oh? Right down to business then.”
“Have you heard of a man named Mason Winterbrook?” Eijiro asks.
Iefyr leans back, prodding his chin with his index finger. “Hmm. Can’t say that I have. Human?”
“Yes,” Eijiro says. “A person of interest to me.”
“Definitely haven’t met a human with that name. Haven’t gotten to know a human fairly well since I came here, actually.”
Eijiro sighs and nods. “That’s good enough for me.”
Iefyr leans forward again, arms crossed on the table, bending the edge of the map. “Excellent, can I give you a tour of Silvercreek then?”
“I’m not sure that’s entirely—”
Iefyr points to a fold in the map. “Right here, that’s Edmond’s, where we are now. And this part, this alley, takes us right to the Taste Bud Avenue—that’s what I like to call this little row of restaurants here—and then from there, you can circle around to the Silvercreek Library, Happy Posture Massage Parlor, and then down here to the Sigil of Urbanus, which is just a block away from where I live.”
Iefyr looks up at Eijiro, who now has a gentle smile on his face. “So what ails you?” Iefyr asks. “I’m sure Silvercreek has the solution to your woes.”
“Well, I suppose I could use a nice meal. And my back has been feeling tense,” Eijiro says. “It’s hard to justify taking yourself out all by one’s lonesome.”
Iefyr has no idea how he came to that conclusion, but that’s a question for much later. “Perfect! Let’s get started.”
“Now, Edmond’s is great for a nice quick lunch, but if you want a good meal, you have to try the Scratch Room,” Iefyr says, holding the door to the very same establishment open.
“What’s in the Scratch Room?” Eijiro asks.
“What ISN’T in here? It’s got just about every cocktail and spirit you could imagine, cuisines from across the world, and unlimited breadsticks that they paint with butter and sprinkle cheese on top.” Iefyr grins. “I’m really just here for the breadsticks, after that krevist at Edmond’s.”
They each sit down at a table and order a beverage, with Eijiro trying some noodles in cream sauce that takes a moment to prepare.
“May I ask a somewhat personal question?” Eijiro says, plucking a breadstick from the basket between them.
“Feel free,” Iefyr says.
“What exactly is your, ah, ancestry?”
“Ancestry?”
“Your heritage. Species, if we’re being scientific.”
“Oh!” Iefyr barks by accident. “I’m firbolg. Or, we are firbolg. Things get a little fuzzy when it comes to individuality with us, I can never tell what pronouns to use in this language.”
“Forgive me, but what does it mean to be firbolg?”
“That’s a very deep question, my friend,” Iefyr says. “I don’t really consider myself an ambassador of firbolg-kind to the rest of the world, but uh, I suppose you could sum it up with big people who like the forest a lot.”
“Does that apply to you?” Eijiro asks as his noodles arrive.
“The big people part does, but the forest bit, not so much! I’m rather taken with cities, you see. Firbolgs, well, we normally stay in the forests and trees and meadows, protecting nature and all that, but it always felt a bit too crunchy and dirty for me. Rough and unforgiving. And I suppose I don’t really see nature as natural for folks like us. You look at what intelligent species have been able to accomplish and you see a lot of categorization, structure, organization, all those things! None of that is in nature. It’s all in the artificial places we construct together. The places where we meet and create meaning together. Cities. Towns. Assemblies. Forts. Not terribly in love with the military aspect, really. But I can’t really justify not having one.”
Iefyr continues on and on, until he looks down at Eijiro’s plate and sees it’s empty. “Oh goodness, have I been rambling again?”
Eijiro smiles. “Yes, but it’s entertaining.”
“Well, pardon my bluntness, but what are you? I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone with a horn like yours.”
Eijiro scoots the plate to the side, so a server can take it away. “I don’t know if you have a word for my ancestry. But where I’m from, we’re called oni. There’s a bit of demon blood in each of us, but we’re not that different from other intelligent races.”
“Oh, so like a tiefling!”
Eijiro sighs and smiles. “Yes, like a tiefling. Just…from somewhere a little farther away.”
Iefyr perks up. “Before I forget!” He fishes his Lens of Liminal Capture and holds it out at arm’s length, letting it face both him and Eijiro. He lifts up two fingers and smiles at the lens while Eijiro just stares, confused.
Iefyr presses down on the rune atop the polished stone housing of the lens, and the colors flash together in the glass for a moment, settling on the white from the tablecloth, the reddish-brown of Eijiro’s look, and the blue-gray of Iefyr’s skin.
Deep within the Happy Posture Massage Parlor, two dwarven masseuses work their kinesthetic magic on Iefyr and Eijiro, thanks to a frequent customer coupon deep within Iefyr’s bag.
“Goodness, I haven’t felt this limber since basic training,” Eijiro mumbles.
“The therapists here are the best I’ve ever found in Silvercreek,” Iefyr says between grunts as a dwarven hand rubs away a knot in his upper back.
“Another question for you, if you don’t mind,” Eijiro says.
“You’re just full of them, aren’t you?”
“Perils of my career path, sadly.”
“Like I said before, feel free.”
“What’s that little trinket you keep smiling at and putting away?”
“Trinket?” Iefyr asks, thinking. “Oh the Lens! It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“I don’t…really have the information necessary to evaluate it nghh,” Eijiro says, punctuating his sentence with a grunt after a particularly fierce knuckle-roll from his masseuse.
“It’s a magic lens that captures individual moments when you apply body warmth to a rune on the lens’ housing. It’s probably my favorite thing in the world. My Warden helped me build it. When you take it home and place it in one of those wizardy orbs, you can see the moments that you captured, but later! You can reminisce and relive anything you want.”
“Anything?”
“Anything you capture with the lens, yes!”
“That’d be…that’d be incredibly useful in my line of work.”
“I still have the blueprints I gave to the arcanist and stoneshaper, if you’d like to see them. They’re at home, though.”
“I very much would, thank you,” Eijiro says, before another crack from his shoulder echoes through the massage chamber.
“What about that journal of yours?” Iefyr asks. “I thought it was a spellcasting tome, but it was blank at Edmond’s.”
“Oh, it’s just a gift from a friend, nothing special,” Eijiro says.
Iefyr wants to press a little harder, but then the masseuse slides her elbows down alongside Iefyr’s spine and the firbolg nearly melts on the spot.
“And this is where the magic happens,” Iefyr says, opening the door to his modest, cozy one-room flat. It’s in a building that he shares with a few other tenants, a young elven artist, a middle-aged gnome, and a particularly fit half-orc he suspects is in the city guard. The room itself has a few comfortable places to sit, the smallest bed that will fit a firbolg, a tiny dining table, and a door to the bathroom. “Not the divine clerical magic that I practice, that’s not actually limited by the constraints of a room,” Iefyr says before laughing.
“You’re a cleric?” Eijiro asks, setting his things down by the door.
“Yes! Devout! Thankfully, Urbanus is rather understanding and flexible with how one practices that devotion.”
“I don’t get much of a divine sense about you, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.”
“Oh certainly. I don’t want to project that, really. I care more about helping people understand and appreciate the cities they live in. That’s at the core of the service Urbanus wishes to provide people in this world.”
Eijiro smiles, broader than Iefyr’s ever seen. “Ah, now the pieces are coming together. Did I seem like that much of a charity case before?”
Iefyr holds up his finger and thumb, barely separated. “Just a bit.”
He digs through a cabinet, looking for papers related to the Lens of Liminal Capture while Eijiro places the lens itself into the “wizardy” orb that Iefyr gestured toward. As Iefyr lays out the parchment, each of the images he captured with the lens start to display in arcane energy projected just above the orb.
The sunrise over the western lake. The egg sandwich for breakfast. The light reflected along Taste Bud Avenue. The krevist for lunch. The breadsticks for second lunch. The two of them smiling and confused sitting at the table in the scratch room.
Eijiro looks almost forlorn, seeing the magic images levitate in the air.
“Here they are,” Iefyr says. “Shouldn’t take long to copy the notes into your journal or whatever you so choose. It’s a shame you can’t use the lens to capture the notes about the lens, but I’m rather attached to it.”
“I’m sure you’d be able to get a hefty purse in exchange for it.”
Iefyr shakes his head. “It’s also a gift of sorts, from a dear friend. Like your journal. I could never willingly part with it.”
“I understand,” Eijiro says. “But I actually can’t use my journal for these notes. Do you have any ink and spare parchment?”
Iefyr spreads everything Eijiro needs over the table, then starts a project of his own. He grabs a handful of fragrant flower buds and grinds them into the bowl of a glass pipe before lighting them and inhaling the smoke.
His curiosity is too strong, though. While Eijiro is busy, he opens the journal and peeks at a random page near the middle.
Have you seen a human named Mason Winterbrook he’s about up to my shoulder with pale skin and dark hair average frame.
No can’t say that I have why for
He’s a person of interest to me
Is he dangerous
Very dangerous, please if you have any information, I beg of you to share it with me
Iefyr’s smile sours. He flips to another page.
May I ask a somewhat personal question
Feel free
What exactly is your ah ancestry
Ancestry
Your heritage species if we’re being scientific
He looks to the most recent page with writing.
I’m sure you’d be able to get a hefty purse in exchange for it
It’s also a gift of sorts from a dear friend like your journal I could never willingly part with it.
I understand but I actually can’t use my journal for these notes do you have any ink and spare parchment
Sure let me go get some for you just a moment there you are
Thank you
Iefyr sets the book down, confused.
“Ah. I’m…sorry about that,” Eijiro says.
The oni stands, holding his bag with both hands before stepping over and gingerly placing the journal back within his bag. “I should have….I should have explained. Dreadfully sorry.”
“It…writes what people say?” Iefyr asks.
“I should go. Thank you for the tour, and the schematics. That’s very kind of you.” Eijiro moves toward the door.
“Eiji, what’s your line of work?”
Eijiro winces at the nickname. “I should go. Thank you again.” He swings the door open and—
He’s gone.
“Eiji, wait!” Iefyr barks, rushing outside. But in Silvercreek’s twlight rush, he’s already disappeared. Iefyr dashes back to his Lens, determined to get one more moment with Eijiro before…before something. Before he finds that Mason fellow. Before something awful happens.
He explores the immediate area, dashing around corners, the familiar shops and stands that line his neighborhood blurring past him. Adrenaline pumps through his body. Eijiro shouldn’t be hard to spot, the man’s enormous compared to most of Silvercreek’s citizens.
But after what feels like hours of searching, after the sun has dipped below the horizon and the stars have poked themselves through the night sky, Iefyr gives up.
“Say, friend. What’s that dangling from your wrist?”
Iefyr feels the gentle pressure of a dagger at his back. He winces. “Please, don’t do this.”
“Bet that’d fetch a high price at the pawn shop. Looks magical.” The mugger looks elven, long pale ears barely visible under a dark hooded cloak. That’s all Iefyr can see, craning his neck to look. “How much you think it’s worth?” The Lens of Liminal Capture still hangs around his
“It’s not worth it, trust me. Please, don’t.” Iefyr hates this. He hates when the city fails a person like this. He wants to believe that there are some awful people who simply exist and it can only be dealt with in violence, but he knows the truth. This elf needs money, whether for the thrill or the price, and Silvercreek has given him what seems like no other choice.
And here, Iefyr was without a weapon. Only a spell he knows by heart. A spell that could end this poor elf’s story right here. Right now. “Please, sir…”
“Simple decision, friend. Your trinket or your hand. Now, just—wh—Where is it! What did you do with my da—” The mugger grunts. Iefyr turns back to watch him reel to the side, a bulky silhouette rushing forward and pinning him down. A flash of light, barely perceptible, and the mugger’s wrists are bound together behind his back. He groans, muffled by his face against the cobblestone.
Eijiro stands behind the mugger, unable to meet Iefyr’s eyes. He does nudge the mugger’s ankle with his foot. “You. Rethink your life choices, stealing from a priest. Goodness.”
Iefyr lifts up his lens and captures an image. Eijiro can’t stop himself from smirking.
Thunder roars from across the lake, in the west. “Eiji,” Iefyr says. “You need a place to stay tonight. Come home with me.”
Eijiro nods. “Very well then.”
“I’m sorry for putting you in that situation,” Eijiro says, closing the door to Iefyr’s home behind him.
“It’s not your fault, I went chasing after you.” Iefyr smiles, but holds a little tighter onto his Lens than usual.
“Not that you were mugged,” Eijiro says. “Well, I don’t blame myself for that. But you were ready to call forth divine flame on him, were you not?”
Iefyr sighs, nodding. “How did you know?”
“Scorch marks on your robes. I saw a few in your wardrobe, and a couple on the ones you’re wearing now. Clerics around here tend to call on flame if left defenseless otherwise, as well.”
“I see.”
“I owe you for the tour as well. I wouldn’t have been able to track you and your mugger if you hadn’t shown me the streets.”
“Well, I hope you appreciated the tour more on its own merits than for a tactical advantage,” Iefyr says.
Eijiro falters. “You asked of my line of work. I’m an inquisitor of sorts. Ex-military. I didn’t want to mention it after what you said at the Scratch Room.”
“What I said? I can’t even recall.”
“Something about the military, and a distaste for them,” Eijiro says.
Iefyr laughs. “Ha! You think I’d let something as simple as that affect my perception of you? Eiji, how many burdens do you carry on your shoulders to let something like that worry you?”
“They accumulate, little by little, over time.”
“Well you can check that baggage at the door here at Hotel Iefyr,” the firbolg says. “And honestly, being an inquisitor—that explains a lot. Makes sense for you to have a book that records spoken words, and why you’d want a lens of your own.”
“I’m tracking someone. It’s complicated. We have a history,” Eijiro says.
Iefyr holds up a finger to silence him. “Not tonight, you don’t.” He picks up the half-smoked pipe from his desk, the one he abandoned when he went chasing after the oni.
He offers it to Eijiro. “Tonight, we only have each other.”
Eiji accepts it graciously. “Thank you, Reef.”
In the morning, Iefyr and Eijiro dress themselves and double-check that the oni has everything he needs. But Eijiro reaches into his bag and pulls out two sparkling gems, only returning one to a particular pocket.
“I’d like you to have this,” he says.
“What is it?” Iefyr asks.
“A keystone.”
“Like the kinds that brings together a stone archway?”
Eijiro smiles. “Close. More key than stone. Take it to the unmarked shop between the liquor store and the krevist shop two blocks south of here. Knock four times and the door will open. You’ll know what to do.”
Iefyr smiles. “If I didn’t know you were so cryptic, I’d think this was still a dream.”
Eijiro gives Iefyr a tight hug, which Iefyr savors. “Take care of yourself, Reef. Live well.”
Iefyr grins. “May your foundation last for centuries,” he says, watching Eijiro depart.
He turns the keystone over in his palm, a beautiful blue-violet gem, cut like a diamond, with almost impossible geometry. Shaped almost like a teardrop, or perhaps a comet.
He gathers his things and departs to the shop that Eijiro mentioned, knocking four times on the unmarked door. On the fourth tap, the door swings open. A single hallway, leading further within the building, barely lit by candles that spring to life as soon as he sees them. An open door at the end of the hall.
He steps through, cautious but curious, pushing open the door to the chamber deeper within.
A complicated device stands assembled in the middle of the room, like an archway that belonged in a park. But instead of stone or painted wood, it was made from metal, with all sorts of runes attached to it. Then, just a few feet between him and the archway stood a pedestal with a comet-shaped indentation and shimmering letters at the comet’s tail.
“The Grand City.”
Iefyr places the keystone in the divot. The archway springs to life with magic, gorgeous blue and violet rays circling from around the room until they focus into a single oval-shaped opening in reality. The innermost point is pure ink black, but Iefyr already knows he’s going to step through and see what’s on the other side.
It’s almost tragically anticlimactic. On the other side is a room not too unfamiliar from the one he just left. If anything, it looks like a mirrored version of the previous room. He hopes this isn’t some silly prank that Eiji had planned.
But when he opens the door to the street outside, he discovers the majesty of the gift he’s been given.
Streets stretch in all directions, vehicles pulled by invisible animals rush past him. Criers shout the daily news of The Grand City underneath towering buildings lined with gold and silver. The smells of seven different cuisines float all around him, threatening to carry him away to a dozen restaurants. Shops and souvenir stands punctuate each intersection, and citizens of all different ancestries tip their hats or give a knowing nod to each other as they pass.
Iefyr holds himself steady, barely containing his excitement.
It’s a city bigger than he could ever imagine.
And I can’t wait to see every block of it.
Orcanist 