Chương 10: Relic Hunter

Gold light moved along the crack in the mask, and my eyes traced the progress of the light from its chin and upwards, following the curve of the cheek until it reached the eyes, and then the whole thing shone. And that was when the pain arrived. Beginning in my hand, where the ring was, proceeding with excruciating slowness up my right arm.

Reaching my shoulder, it found new and branching pathways into my body, and I could distantly, through a haze of hurt, trace its progress as it chose a path to my chest and then downwards, to a point somewhere above my navel, where the pain took root. It twisted in upon itself at that point, gripping my insides and crunching them together with heat and power.

At some point I had gripped hold of the edge of Sinon's desk, but that, and anything external to my body, was no longer of any concern to the few threads of conscious thought I had available. Fear was mixing in with the pain as I did not understand what was happening, and while one part of my mind was occupied with holding back against the agony, another was speculating about who would sign my death certificate in the morning, and if I would go out with the blacks in the morning or next week.

Probably Amalia, now, until a new quaesitor can be found. Tendrils of… something. No longer pure pain, a shock of power pushed out from that point above my navel, into my legs and into my left arm, and then up to my head. Suddenly, pain gave way to another sensation and I made a strange sound that was absorbed by the shelves around me. My ears rang, and I swayed where I found myself standing, nausea and dizziness competing with all these other sensations. I am alive! That was my first thought.

I breathed in, and breathed out, and tried to still my mind. And then I turned my attention inwards. What has happened to me? That was my second thought. Something inside me had been broken down, and then reassembled, and now I could feel… It was like a new shape of something, something missing, something present that was never there before. It filled my entire body, but with clear concentration at that core in the middle of my abdomen. The letters appeared in that same strange writing as before.

They filled the whole width of the air above the desk and filled my vision. CLASS INHERITED: RELIC HUNTER Rarity UNIQUE Registry Status UNRECORDED Binding RING OF <ERROR: ENTITY NOT FOUND> Succession UNKNOWN Varenza was old before its oldest surviving charter. Its cellars descend into streets that have not appeared on any map for generations. Its saints stand on plinths cut for forgotten gods, raised by builders whose foundations still lie beneath the modern city.

Foundations built before the Mandate, for a glorious city, for a different purpose, where … <ERROR: INCONSISTENCY WITH ESTABLISHED GUARDRAILS IDENTIFIED> The Relic Hunter reveals the past. A relic is a surviving piece of something the world has lost. In the Hunter's hands, each fragment becomes a trail. Every trail ends somewhere. Find the clue. Reach what was hidden. Take it into your hand.

Class RELIC HUNTER Level 1 ATTRIBUTES Might 8 Agility 9 Vigor 11 Perception 20 Intellect 20 Will 16 CLASS ABILITY ACQUIRED Relic Sense Rank F By touch, detect the strongest surviving Relic Link between the target and another made object or place. A link exists only when they were physically joined, made as a set, fitted to the same site, used to open or secure one another, or deliberately hidden together. FREE SKILL RETAINED Recognise Personal Effects Static ADVANCEMENT Complete Finds to advance.

A Find is complete when the sought relic is in your hand. Warning: The Mandate does not recognise this Class. The world twisted in on itself as some power I vaguely associated with the Mandate attempted to push the prompt away, and it went momentarily fuzzy at its edges. Then it met resistance, and another, older, power asserted itself in the room, firming up the prompt. The letters hung in the air, and I read them once.

Then again, and like ice thawing under a hard sun, their meaning trickled into my muddled brain and became clear.

"Relic Hunter," I said, softly into the room. A class. A unique class. I could feel the truth of the prompt in my body, in the absence of pain and heat coming from my centre. I have a class! I had never thought I would obtain one, and had long ago reconciled myself to a destiny where I would remain class-less. The cheapest classes appeared at the Auction starting at several thousand florins, sums of money which would take me years to earn.

I knew some of them of course, but this was something different, and that was the theme of my life these days: something was not quite right. I had stopped attending Auction some years back, but I clearly remembered how the elite and noble youth had bragged and shouted after they had purchased their classes. How they had thrown friendly punches and not-so-friendly scowls when they compared their newly purchased classes.

"I got one that was Uncommon!" one might say, the joy on his face quickly doused as his friend shared the details of his Rare class. They would run into the square and test their new strengths against each other, and for us others it was important to give them space as those demonstrations often turned violent. With a class, worlds opened up. It not only made them stronger, immediately, but it gave them a purpose in life, a goal to strive towards: more power.

Abilities that made them more than human, giving them freedom and autonomy to spend their lives doing more than earning to keep themselves housed and fed. By morning, brokers would be waiting outside their family doors with contracts, expedition offers, marriage proposals and loans. A Class was not merely strength. It changed what work a person could claim, which doors opened to him, and how much everyone around him believed his future was worth in florins.

Even his debts would acquire new terms, with moneylenders writing those into the assets column of their ledgers. Once, I had heard a rumour, that someone had acquired for themselves an Epic class, in an Auction I had attended but left early. The square had emptied for him when he wanted to try out his new attributes, his new abilities, as no one else dared test themselves against his powers. And there was, of course, the Legendary class ranking.

My father had once told me that once, in his youth, a Legendary class had been put up for Auction, but the price had been so dear that it stayed there, unbid on, until midnight ended the Auction. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Unique had never been mentioned, in rumour or in record. The word told me, simply, what it was: this class did not exist anywhere else. A surge of trepidation together with excitement rose through me then.

True excitement, and not just those arrows of sensation that sometimes broke through my flat moods. And in its coming, I knew that it had been decades since I felt excited. The attributes were well known (and also, self-explanatory, so I will not bore you by describing that the attribute for Might reflects a person's physical strength and presence).

A non-classed person had no prompt to show their attributes, so their numbers were the subject of much speculation and derision, but it was commonly agreed that a strong non-classed person would have a Might of 3, perhaps 4. A child would have a 0 in most attributes and for the rest, if it was a 1 or a 2, it did not matter. I knew from records and facts that a Common class would average a score around 4, then the Uncommon would sit on 5; Rare on 6, Epic on 8 and Legendary on 10.

From there, it could be trained, or attribute increases could be purchased at extravagant cost in the Auction. I did the numbers in my mind, for my new class, and promptly my legs gave way beneath me, and I sat down hard on Sinon's chair. I told myself this must be some kind of error, but mostly because I had to think something like that. I knew in my bones that there was no error, as I could feel myself adapting to the changes even as I sat there.

I could feel pinpricks in my legs, and arms, and chest, and knew my strength had changed drastically. The stamina and… It is difficult for a man to assess the speed and ability of his own thinking, but I could sense myself drawing connections, seeing threads between concepts and processing those faster than before. I read the prompt again, more quickly this time, as I knew I had to hurry up.

There were more mysteries to unravel in the description of my prompt, as tended to happen when a mystery was solved: more questions appeared. Very few mysteries end with an answer. I closed the prompt with a mental command, then reopened it, to make sure it was still there. Closing the prompt again, I breathed out. For a moment the room was only Sinon's office again: shelves, docket trays, the ledger satchel, two guild baskets by the door, and the cracked funerary mask beneath its disposal cloth.

I touched the ring with my thumb. RELIC SENSE Class vessel. Ineligible target A strange sensation, doubling up on the meaning of the word: something about the ring resisted my new ability. The wrongness warned me not to investigate further. Apprehensive now, I picked up Sinon's pen. RELIC SENSE No surviving Relic Link. So what is the point of this ability, then? I thought, disappointment creeping up on me. I activated my old skill, for reassurance more than anything.

RECOGNISE PERSONAL EFFECTS Clerk's pen, iron-nibbed Subjective Value 7 coppers Objective Value 7 coppers The old Skill remained, like the class prompt had said. I turned the pen between my fingers. Iron nib, walnut shaft, a crack by the grip that Sinon had repaired with waxed thread. It was exactly as old, cheap and badly mended as it had been a moment ago. The Class supplied no maker, no former owner, no secret crime committed with the nib, like what the Mandate Ledger might reveal. I put it back on the desk.

The buckle in the guild basket reported the same as the pen: no surviving link. I set it down beside the knife and picked up a boot clasp. RELIC LINK DETECTED Relationship SET Target Type Matching boot clasp Bearing North-West Estimated Salvage Negligible Immediately, I felt a vague pull in a direction that would take me through the wall behind Sinon's desk and I knew instantly that I could turn in that direction and that following the pull would lead me in a direction to an item linked to the clasp.

Along that pull came a vague and undefinable sensation that whatever item was linked to this clasp would not have any great value. Excitement began to rise inside me again, and I next looked at the doorstop. It was a random thing to focus on, but it cost me little. It was a river-grey block set against the inside edge of Sinon's door. I closed my hand around one corner.

RELIC LINK DETECTED Relationship PART Target Type Subterranean structure Bearing Down / East Estimated Salvage Indeterminate The direction struck through my palm. Down, and out through the door. And I could sense a depth to the pull, which indicated that whatever this connected to was far, far below the basement of the Misericordia. I let go and the sensation vanished.

I sat in Sinon's chair and looked at the stone, which was telling me it was linked to something else, below the city where there should just be limestone and dirt, packed solid. There was a structure under the Misericordia which was absent from every plan I knew. I had no idea what it contained. And a sensation of excitement bubbled within me. There was something, down there where nothing should be. Of indeterminate value.

For the first time in years, something that felt very much like a purpose began to take shape in my consciousness. I again looked at the mask, gold light working faintly behind the bronze. Reaching out, I touched it. RELIC LINK DETECTED Relationship SITE Target Type Funerary chamber Bearing West / Below Estimated Salvage 80–300 florins Again the pull ran through the wall behind Sinon's desk, but this time it reached much farther: west and down, deep beneath Varenza. 300 florins? I thought.

That was a yearly wage for me. Whatever this mask was linked to—was there any way I could find it? I quickly realised that I would have to bring the mask with me, since I would need to realign the direction regularly to follow its pull. But to do that, I would need to take it from— Then I remembered the tavern. The beggar lay on his bench in the coemeterium with his forearm open and no cloth over him, and today was black-day, the last day of the week; first light was hours away.

The pit-cart went out the wide doors at first light, and if there was one man everybody expected to make that cart-journey, it was this one. I squared the blotter, gathered the loose dockets, and put things where things went. Under the docket tray lay a slip of paper which I picked up and looked at, prepared to find its rightful place. The paper was soft and worn, and the ink had faded. It was, in all its simplicity, a request, of a type which the Misericordia received on a daily basis.

Asking us if a dead body of a certain description had journeyed through our halls, it would normally come from parents desperate to know what had happened to a child, or a woman wanting to know about her disappeared husband. This note read: Requestor asks the administrator of the Misericordia to be on the lookout for a man, 53-56 years old. Likely to present with worn and torn clothing, with no effects of value or inheritance links. Scar on left forearm, three centimetres in length and worn old.

The seal at the bottom of the page was worn, its device almost smooth, but I could see a six-pointed star. That was not a design I recognised. I read the note again, feeling my back run with cold as I took in the words, before I put the slip back exactly as I had found it. Same tray, same corner, squared to the same angle. I drew the disposal cloth back over the mask, took the lantern and the ledger satchel, and went out through Sinon's door. I locked it behind me.