Crownsmith Chronicles

Benj was starting to get sick of his apprentice. Somehow, Taft had developed an attitude in the months he had been gone. He had gotten better at baking, Benj had even said so, but his temperament seemed to match his rising skill set.

"Did you sell my pies?" Taft accused, looking at the baked goods on the cooling rack.

Benj stretched and folded dough on the table.

"Yes."

"Those were for Mable!" Taft spun, snatched a bowl off the shelf, and started making what Benj presumed was another set of pies for Mable. "You can't just sell things whenever you want. Next time, make your own pies."

Benj frowned at his dough. It used to be so peaceful in the kitchen. Just him, his favorite mixing spoon, and a similar frown when Sephus sold his pies. He sighed and suppressed the first response that came to him. It wasn't punchy enough.

"I'm sorry, I thought they were mess-ups. I had to sell them at a discount."

The bowl in Taft's hands landed on the table with nearly enough force to break it. "They were perfect! I put my heart and soul into those pies. I even decorated the top with hummingbirds!"

Benj held his dough aloft. "Those were hummingbirds?! I thought the neighbor's cat got in here somehow and stepped all over them. I am very sorry about that."

The fact was, Benj was not sorry; he had sold them on purpose. Since his return from Royal City, Taft had done nothing but bark orders and throw fits. He would have never sold the pies at a discount, though. The hummingbirds were exquisite.

The two worked in cold silence all morning. When someone stopped by, Benj would take their orders because Taft was too busy remaking the pies he sold. He didn't mind. He enjoyed the small breaks the customers provided. He just wondered where Sephus was. Usually, he preferred to talk to the customers.

The bell rang, and Taft glared at him over a pie crust. So, Benj stepped into the small reception room, drying his hands on a clean towel. Lucia met him with her usual look: with unwavering eye contact and the expectation for you to say the first word. Only, this time she spoke first, which was a pleasant change that Benj did not notice.

"I think I'm on to something big. Are you busy?" she asked, habitually pulling the kerchief down to her brow line. She had started wearing one to cover the lightly colored circle on her forehead.

Benj looked inside to where his dough was rising. "I suppose I could step away for a while. What is it?"

"I'll have to show you; It's big. Also, do you still have those…" She gestured with her hands to indicate she was talking about the touch stones that heat up.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Sure, I just have to do something really quick…"

Taft cut him off from the other room, "Don't be gone for too long, we have a lot to do here!"

"Cover my dough for me, okay?" Benj called into the bakery before shutting the door. He then went to his room and retrieved his relics. "I'm ready."

Lucia led him home to her father's herb emporium, which was also technically the village inn, even though they hadn't set up any of the spare rooms. The dining room was sparsely decorated, except for an open book surrounded by miscellaneous items and carving tools. One of the items was the rusted box they had found in the wizard's cave.

"This book was written by the same person from Asven. This is his book," Lucia marked her page with a spoon. She turned to the first page and pointed to the author's name, Ziles Kalizar.

"I thought we established that already," Benj shrugged like it wasn't as impressive anymore.

"You don't understand; he physically wrote it. It wasn't copied by some two-bit scribe, and it wasn't reproduced in any way. This is an original."

Benj reached down and rubbed the paper with his thumb and forefinger. The page felt like any of his recipe books back home, but it didn't feel four thousand years old, or however old it was.

"How do you know?"

"I was reading it to try to understand what these things do, if they do anything," Lucia dumped the contents out of her rusty box. "I don't want to accidentally touch another cursed item, so I'm looking into it first. Or I was trying to when I touched the page and… Benj, I saw him sitting there writing these things. He talks to himself a lot."

"Are you sure it's him? You said you could barely see him with his face covered when you were up there."

"It's him," Lucia stated, taking the spoon out of her book and scooting a piece of metal closer. She opened the book, flipped through the pages for a while, and replaced the spoon. "I was looking at this, and I matched the runes in the book to the ones inscribed here."

Benj looked closer at the piece of metal. It was long and oval and looked like some kind of bracket for a plow or something. He then looked at the book she was pointing at and asked what it meant.

"It says 'To take a portion and split it to selected miaves.' I'm not sure what a miave is, but it's also written on this one," she pointed to a different object that she had dumped out.

Benj looked at the other items from the box. There were three similarly shaped scraps of metal, a large copper coin, and the cursed bracelet. The coin looked rough and textured, unlike any he had seen before. He plucked it off the table to get a better look at it.

Lucia lurched forward to stop him. "Wait!"

Seeing Lucia's distress, he shot his hand forward to put it back, but it felt like his hand was moving through water. An explosion of sound and wind sent the chairs, table, and everything on it tumbling away from him violently. The table landed upside down in the kitchen, and several pages from the book floated to the floor next to Lucia's spoon.

They stood in the aftershock, not speaking and not moving.

"I was going to tell you that the coin had runes on it," Lucia finally said, exasperated.

"Oh," was all Benj could muster in response.

"We should probably clean everything up now," Lucia suggested, still not moving.

Benj nodded, "Then we should try this outside."

Lucia nodded. Benj slowly pocketed the coin, and they each took a step and then another. Their movements were mechanical at first, but soon, they were flipping tables upright and replacing missing pages quickly. Their initial shock gave way to an overwhelming sense of excitement. Lucia would use the coin to make a breakthrough in her research, and Benj was eager to try the ability again.

Besides a few dents in the walls and a single crack in the table, they had restored the dining room to its original bland glory. After Lucia carefully spooned the relics back into her rusty box, they wordlessly went outside, where it wouldn't cause a mess a second time.