Chapter 1: The Hexed Underwear Incident
The air in the Waypoint Ruins cellar tasted like forgotten spells and regret. Charlie sneezed, a cloud of glintstone dust puffing from a nearby shelf. The stone shelves, slick with centuries of spilled alchemical goo, glowed in places with a faint, sickly light. It was the kind of place where you expected a trap door to open under your feet, or a ghost to ask you for a toll.
He was here for a glintstone shard. Sellen had been weirdly insistent about it, her note specifying the exact crumbling alcove. It felt like a setup, but when did anything not, around her?
“Just grab the shiny rock, don’t touch anything else, and maybe you’ll keep your smallclothes curse-free for a week,” he muttered to himself, mimicking Sellen’s haughty tone. He crouched, his scuffed leather armor creaking in protest.There it was, wedged behind a cracked urn that probably held something blasphemous. He reached, fingers stretching.That’s when he felt the familiar, dreaded tingle.
It started in the seat of his trousers, a sudden gathering of arcane energy.Not now. Not here.
“Oh, you have got to be—”
The hex activated with a soft schwoop of tightening fabric. His worn leather trousers, already riding a bit high, became an instrument of sudden, excruciating focus. The material seized, yanking itself with vicious precision deep into the cleft of his backside. Charlie let out a sharp, undignified yelp, shooting upright as if goosed by a ghost. He dropped into an instinctive, bow-legged stance, hopping on the spot.“Augh!Stars above! Sellen!”
A light, melodic laugh drifted from the study above. A moment later, the sorceress appeared at the top of the stone stairs, a delicate porcelain teacup in hand. She looked immaculate, her jet-black hair pinned in its loose bun, her robes pristine save for the perpetual dust of glintstone around her sleeves.
“Why, Charlie.What seems to be the trouble?” she asked, taking a slow sip. Her eyes, sharp and amused, tracked his desperate little dance.
“You know what the trouble is!” he hissed, trying to reach behind himself to pluck the fabric out, but his pauldrons got in the way.He waddled in a tight circle.“The wedgie hex! You timed it!”
“I timed nothing,” she said, descending the stairs with an elegant swish of her robes. The sweet, sinister scent of her perfume—honey and poison—wafted down ahead of her.“The hex was condition-based. It merely required you to adopt that particularly vulnerable… bent-over position.A safety measure, really. One can’t be too careful with curious Tarnished and unstable artifacts.”
“This artifact is a rock! A dusty, stupid rock!” He finally managed to hook a finger under the vicious waistband and pull, gasping in relief as the tension eased.He shot her a wounded look. “You couldn’t just ask me not to touch anything? You had to enchant my pants?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” She stopped before him, close enough that he could see the faint, glowing lines of sorcery in her irises.“And my methods are far more memorable. Consider it a lesson in situational awareness.” She reached out and dusted a bit of cobweb from his shoulder, her touch lingering. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“For the frontal-wedge? My thanks are boundless.”
“For the lesson,” she corrected, her smirk deepening. She turned and glided toward a worktable, setting her cup down beside a ledger filled with what looked like cursed contracts. “Now.Did you retrieve the glintstone shard? Or were you too… distracted?”
Grumbling, Charlie bent over again—much more cautiously this time—and snatched the jagged blue crystal from its niche.He tossed it to her. She caught it without looking, the stone’s light flaring momentarily in her palm.“Good,” she purred.“It’s attuned. Perfect.This will do nicely.”
“For what?” Charlie asked, suspicion tightening his gut. He rubbed his lower back, still feeling the phantom grip of the hex.“A project. A… side endeavor.” She turned, leaning back against the table.The casual pose was a threat all by itself. “Ranni has you fetching finger-sliver blades and cursing your own shadow, doesn’t she?All that gloomy, lunar puppet-show drama.It’s so dour. Don’t you ever want to have a little fun? To exercise a bit of… ambition?”
“Last time you said ‘ambition,’ I spent three days picking thunderbugs out of my hair.”
“And you looked dashing,” she said, waving a dismissive hand.“This is different. This is about knowledge.Power.The kind Ranni fears. The kind your other mistress,” she spat the word, “would see smothered.”
Charlie sighed. He hated it when they talked about each other like this.“Sellen, just tell me what you want. I’ve got a blasphemous claw to find for Ranni before the next moon cycle, and I’d prefer not to do it while my underwear is trying to strangle me.”
She laughed, a real, throaty sound that echoed in the dusty cellar.“Fine.Direct and to the point. I admire that, even if it’s born of simplicity.” She pushed off the table and closed the distance between them again.“There’s a tome.The Compendium of Averse. It was last seen in the care of a very lazy, very narcissistic demigod who uses the pages as kindling for his vanity fires.I want it.”
“Let me guess. You want me to get it.”
“I want you to liberate it,” she corrected, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s in a place Ranni would never deign to send you.A place of glorious, golden indulgence.You’ll love it.Probably. There might be a bathhouse.”
Charlie’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the catch?”
“The catch,” she said, her finger coming up to tap his chest plate, “is that my former masters, the pompous fools at Raya Lucaria, would rather see that book—and me—turned to ash.They may have… agents there. Watching for it.”
“So you want me to walk into a demigod’s palace, steal a book your old sorcerer buddies also want, and avoid getting incinerated, all while potentially fighting off a magical wedgie.”
Sellen’s grin was all sharp teeth and promise.“See?You do understand. It’ll be an adventure. Much better than listening to a doll complain about the fate of the stars for the hundredth time.”
He looked at her, at the playful danger in her eyes, at the way she absolutely knew she had him.He thought of Ranni’s quiet, cold orders. The way she never laughed, not like this. The way she never made him dance like a fool in a cellar, even if she did let a shadow assassin kick him off a cliff once.
“Fine,” he said, the word heavy with impending regret.“But my pants stay hex-free. That’s non-negotiable.”
Sellen’s smile softened, just for a fraction. She leaned in, her lips brushing his ear.“No promises, my dear Tarnished. But I’ll consider it… a reward for good behavior.”
She pulled back, winked, and turned to her ledger, the conversation clearly over. Charlie stood there, the sweet-poison smell clinging to him, the memory of the wedgie a fresh ache, and the certain knowledge that he’d just agreed to something catastrophically stupid.
Again.
Charlie took the weathered scrap of parchment she offered without looking at him. The drawing on it was suspiciously competent, showing a book with a spiraling lock. He shoved it into his belt pouch, the leather still warm from… well, from recent distress.
“Don’t get caught,” Sellen said, her voice suddenly flat, all the playfulness drained away. It was the tone she used for real threats. “The academy’s hunters… they don’t ask questions. Their glintstone doesn’t tickle.”
A cold knot formed in Charlie’s stomach. He gave a single, sharp nod.
He turned to leave, his boots scuffing on the grimy stone. He’d made it three steps toward the stairs when the air behind him crackled.
He flinched, throwing a look over his shoulder. “What now? Swirly hex? You gonna conjure a toilet out of the void?”
Sellen’s expression was one of pure, innocent surprise. Mostly. A faint smile touched her lips. “Oh, dear. The release sigil for the wedgie enchantment must have had a… delayed reciprocity clause. A rebound. How terribly careless of me.”
A patch of the stone floor directly beneath Charlie’s feet shimmered, turning not to water, but to a slick, translucent gel. It was like stepping on a giant, magical jelly.
His foot shot out from under him. There was no grace to it, no slow-motion flail. It was a simple, violent physics event. His legs went east, his torso went west, and the hard cellar floor came up to meet the seat of his pants with a wet, percussive SMACK.
The air left his lungs in a pained oof. He lay there for a second, stunned, the cold damp of the gel seeping through his trousers. The impact had been solid, reverberating right up his spine.
From her table, Sellen clucked her tongue in mock sympathy. “Oh, that sounded personal. Are you intact, my champion?”
Charlie pushed himself up, wincing. He glared at her, but there was no real heat in it. This was their language. “You’re a menace. A gorgeous, brilliant, absolute menace.”
“I know,” she said, batting her eyelashes. “It’s why you keep coming back. Now off you go. The book won’t liberate itself.” She paused, her head tilting. “And Charlie? Try not to sit on any important artifacts. You seem to have a magnetic relationship with the ground.”
Muttering colorful descriptions of where she could stick her glintstone shards, Charlie trudged up the stairs, his backside throbbing in time with his heartbeat. The sweet-smelling air of the cellar gave way to the damp, mossy chill of the Limgrave night.
He emerged from the Waypoint Ruins, the stars blurred by a faint mist. The ache was fading into a familiar, dull reminder of his life choices. He patted the pouch at his side, feeling the outline of the parchment. A tome for a temptress. A potentially suicidal errand to avoid a different, colder mistress.
“Just another Tuesday,” he sighed to the darkness.
He’d taken maybe twenty steps toward the road when a voice cut through the fog, sharp and clear and utterly devoid of Sellen’s playful malice.
“Thief.”
Charlie froze. The voice came from nowhere and everywhere, bouncing off the crumbling stones.
A figure detached itself from the shadow of a broken archway. It was tall, draped in the deep blue and silver robes of Raya Lucaria. The cowl hid the face, but the staff in its hand glowed with a cold, focused light. An academy hunter. Sellen hadn’t been exaggerating.
“You bear the scent of forbidden craft,” the hunter intoned, the voice genderless and cold. “You have consorted with the graven witch. You will come. Or you will be collected.”
Charlie’s mind raced. He could run. He could fight. He could try to talk. Talking usually ended with him in more trouble, but it was the only tool he consistently had.
He put on his most disarming, idiotic grin, the one that made people underestimate him. He spread his hands, a picture of harmless confusion. “Consorted? That’s a strong word. She asked me to get a book. I’m basically a glorified courier. A very unlucky, underpaid courier who recently had a disagreement with a floor.”
The hunter’s staff didn’t waver. The glintstone at its tip brightened, humming with gathering energy. “The item on your person. Surrender it. Your sentence may be commuted from obliteration to mere eternal servitude.”
Charlie’s hand drifted to the hilt of his own cheap sword. The ache in his backside was gone, burned away by a spike of clean, sharp adrenaline. So much for a clean exit. Sellen’s game had started the moment he’d said ‘yes.’
“Yeah,” Charlie said, his grin turning taut, his voice losing its performative silliness. “See, the thing is, I just promised someone I’d fetch this book. And I’m trying to be a man of my word. Also, eternal servitude really clashes with my armor.”
The hunter said nothing. The staff flared.
A beam of crystalline magic, sharp as a razor and cold as the void, lanced toward Charlie’s chest. He was already moving, throwing himself to the side. The beam sheared through a sapling where he’d been standing, freezing it instantly into a shattering sculpture of ice.
Charlie hit the ground, rolled, and came up running. Not toward the hunter, but into the deeper darkness of the woods, the hunter’s footsteps—ominously silent—pursuing as the mist swallowed him whole. The chase was on, and the book, still just a drawing in his pocket, now felt heavier than a mountain.
The hunter moved like silence given form. Charlie crashed through bracken and snapped twigs underfoot, a thunderous animal compared to the whispered rustle that tailed him. Another beam of frigid light seared past his ear, frosting the leaves of a low-hanging branch. He felt the cold kiss of it, a near-miss that turned his sweat to ice.
He ducked behind a massive, gnarled tree trunk, heart hammering against his ribs. Think, idiot. He couldn’t outrun a sorcerer in open ground. Glintstone magic had range. His sword had… well, it had about arm’s length.
“The witch’s stain is upon you,” the hunter’s voice echoed, dispassionate. “It sweats from your pores. There is no hiding.”
“I just bathed!” Charlie yelled back, peeking around the trunk. He saw the shimmer of robes twenty paces away, moving steadily closer. No urgency. Like he was already bagged game.
His hand closed around a fist-sized stone in the loam. It wasn’t a glintstone shard, but it would have to do. He took a breath, muttered a prayer to any god who wasn’t currently mad at him, and burst from cover.
He didn’t run. He charged.
The hunter paused, staff rising. The crystal glowed, compiling its lethal calculus. Charlie hurled the rock with all his might, not at the hunter, but at the ground in front of them.
It was a stupid move. A child’s move.
The rock struck a larger, moss-covered stone with a sharp crack. No explosion. Just a noise.
And the hunter’s head twitched, just for an instant, toward the sound.
That was all Charlie needed. He closed the distance in three lunging strides. The hunter’s staff swung back, too late. Charlie barreled into them, not with his sword, but with his whole body, tackling the robed figure into the damp earth.
They went down in a tangle of limbs and rustling fabric. The staff clattered away, its light winking out. Up close, the hunter smelled of ozone and old parchment. A gloved hand found Charlie’s throat, squeezing with inhuman strength. Spots danced in his vision.
He drove his knee up, meeting something solid. The grip faltered. He scrabbled for the dagger at his belt, yanked it free, and pressed the dull edge against the spot where he guessed a neck would be.
“Commute this,” he gasped.
The hunter went still. For a long moment, the only sounds were their ragged breaths and the distant drip of the mist.
“You fight like a cornered rat,” the hunter stated, voice muffled by the cowl.
“Thanks. I practice.” Charlie adjusted his grip. “Now, we’re going to have a little chat. Who sent you? The Academy, or someone else?”
A low chuckle emerged from the robes. It was a dry, unpleasant sound. “The book is a key. It opens a door the graven witch must not approach. You are a fool, little thief. You carry your own doom in your pouch.”
The body beneath him began to… dissolve. Not into flesh or blood, but into motes of blue light, like a crumbling spirit ash. The fabric emptied, the physical form unraveling from within.
“An projection?” Charlie groaned, rolling off the dissipating figure. “You sent a magic voicemail to kick my ass?”
The hunter’s form was almost gone. The voice was now just a whisper on the wind. “She watches. She is always watching. Your other mistress. Tell the doll… the stars lie.”
And then they were gone. A faint smudge of glintstone dust on the wet leaves was the only proof they’d ever been there.
Charlie lay on his back, staring at the hazy stars. His throat ached. Every muscle trembled with spent adrenaline. “Great. Just fantastic.” He sat up, patting his pouch. The parchment was still there. A key to a door Sellen shouldn’t approach. A warning from a ghost. And a message for Ranni.
He pushed himself to his feet, collected his fallen dagger, and started walking. He knew where he had to go. The one place that was reliably, uncomfortably quiet.
The journey to Ranni’s Rise was a blur of mist and lurking wolves. He avoided the main roads, sticking to the cliffs where the wind scraped the land clean. By the time the familiar, crooked silhouette of the tower pierced the gloom, his body was one solid ache.
The elevator groaned its eternal complaint as it ascended. The chill here was different from Sellen’s cellar—sharp, thin, and ancient. It smelled of petrified wood and cold moonlight.
She was at her desk, as always, her back to him, a doll-like figure of exquisite stillness. The room was lit by the soft blue glow of her spectral form and the countless scrolls littering every surface.
“Thou’rt late,” she said, her voice a melody of frost. “And thou smellest of haste, and terror, and…” she paused, her single visible eye glancing over her shoulder. “…wet moss. A most undignified bouquet.”
“Nice to see you too,” Charlie said, slumping against the doorframe. “I had a date.”
“With a precipice?”
“With an academy hunter. A projected one. It said to tell you something.”
That got her full attention. She rotated in her chair, her porcelain face unreadable, her hands folded in her lap. “Speak.”
“It said, ‘Tell the doll the stars lie.’”
For a heartbeat, nothing. Then, Ranni’s eye narrowed. A sliver of genuine, icy fury flashed in its depth, so potent the candles on her desk guttered. “Insolent phantasm. The arrogance of those who peer at the cosmos through a prison window.” She stood, flowing to the window to look out at the dim sky. “The hunter was not sent for the book, Charlie. It was sent for the message. To provoke me. To see if I would flinch.”
Charlie pushed off the wall. “So the book is important. Sellen said—”
“Sellen hungers for what glitters, heedless of the teeth within the light,” Ranni snapped, whirling back to face him. Her composure was back, a sheet of ice over a deep, dark lake. “The Compendium of Averse is not merely a tome. It is a biography. Of the one who first betrayed the Greater Will. Its pages are steeped in a madness that calls to a certain… proclivity in your graven mistress. They wish her to find it. They wish her to read it. It is bait, wrapped in the illusion of ambition.”
The pieces clicked into place with a sickening finality. Charlie felt the weight in his pouch transform. It was no longer just a book; it was a snare. “They’re setting her up.”
“They are laying a feast for a hungry woman, knowing the meal is poison.” Ranni walked toward him, her steps silent on the stone. “And thou, my hapless hound, art the delivery boy.”
“Why not just tell her that?” Charlie asked, frustration boiling over. “Why all the stupid games? The wedgies, the swirly hexes, the— the competing? Just tell her it’s a trap!”
Ranni stopped an arm’s length away. He could see the intricate cracks in her porcelain jaw, the impossible depth of her lunar eye. For a fleeting second, something like pity softened its chill.
“Wouldst thou listen? If thou wert consumed by a fire of thine own making, and someone with cold hands offered thee water, wouldst thou drink? Or wouldst thou curse them for the damp?” She looked away. “She must see the trap for herself. And thou must be the one to show her. Not I.”
The assignment settled on him, heavier than any enchantment. He wasn’t just fetching a book anymore. He was walking a condemned woman to the gallows, and she was smiling, thinking it was a parade.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked, his voice hollow.
“Precisely what she asked,” Ranni said. “Retrieve the book from the Plaza of Infinite Indulgence. Let her believe thou art her dedicated, foolhardy agent. And when the moment comes… thou must be ready to snatch it from the fire. Literally, perhaps.”
She turned back to her desk, opening a small, ornate chest. From it, she drew a single, slender needle. It was silver, etched with miniscule, anti-clockwise spirals. It hummed with a quiet, negating energy.
“This is a Needle of Unbinding. It is… a lockpick. For the mind. Should the book’s madness take hold, this may stem the tide. For a time.” She offered it to him. “Keep it hidden. Even from her.”
Charlie took the needle. It was cold, and its hum made his teeth ache. He tucked it into a hidden seam of his armor. “A lockpick for the mind. Right. Any other cheery gifts? A helmet for my soul?”
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Ranni’s lips. “Thy flippancy is a shield as pitiful as thy armor. Yet it serves.” She sighed, a whisper of sound like wind through a crypt. “Go. Prepare. The Plaza is a den of gilded vice. They will not appreciate thy… aesthetic.”
Charlie nodded, turning to leave. He was at the elevator when her voice halted him one last time.
“And Charlie?”
He looked back.
“Should the hunter’s masters appear in true flesh… thou hast my permission to be decidedly impolite.”
This time, her smile was real. It was small, and wicked, and it didn’t reach her eye, but it was there.
“Thanks,” he said. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
The elevator began its descent, leaving her in her tower of cold wisdom and secret worries. Charlie leaned against the gate, the needle a cold brand against his ribs, the drawing a fire in his pouch. He was a delivery boy, a protector, and a patsy, all wrapped in one scuffed, aching package.
He emerged into the night. The mist had cleared, revealing a sliver of pale, untrustworthy moon. Somewhere, in a palace of gold and sin, a poisoned feast sat on a shelf. And he had an invitation.
He started walking, his path now clear, his steps filled with a grim purpose. The games were over. The real work had begun.