Chapter 122: The Bazaar of Forgotten Spells (Part I)
A Labyrinth of Smoke and Mirrors
The Guild's grand hall thrummed with the chaotic harmony of a thousand half-finished spells. Silver-robed apprentices darted like anxious sparrows, their hands flicking in precise patterns to guide enchanted brooms and self-emptying buckets. The air smelled of ozone and burnt thyme, undercut by the musk of ancient stone.
Bennett paused beneath a floating chandelier of crystallized lightning, its blue-white glare illuminating stalls that defied architectural logic. To his left, a shop shaped like a giant hourglass sold vials of frozen time. To his right, a hut constructed entirely from gargoyle teeth displayed cursed jewelry behind wards that hissed at passersby.
"Barter system," he murmured, watching a grey-robed mage trade a phoenix feather for a jar of sentient mercury. The merchant—a woman with hair like liquid bronze—sealed the deal by pressing thumbs to the customer's forehead, their shared incantation leaving frost patterns on the air.
A cluster of silver apprentices nearly collided with him, their arms stacked with grimoires bound in what appeared to be human skin. They froze mid-scurry, bowing so low their noses brushed the mosaic floor.
"Magic scholar's robes," Bennett noted, glancing at his own black attire. The deference felt heavier here, more ritualized. Even the grey-robed journeymen offered tight-lipped smiles that didn't reach their eyes.
The Alchemist's Burden
The smoke-belching shop drew him like a lodestone. Up close, its obsidian bricks pulsed faintly—each one carved with containment runes older than the Loring bloodline. The display window flickered with crystal spheres: some cloudy as cataracts, others clear enough to show landscapes that couldn't possibly exist.
The shopkeeper emerged from a curtain of hanging keys, his silver robes hanging loose on a frame bent by centuries. "Welcome, honored scholar!" His voice crackled like parchment in flame. "Seeking a soul-mirror? Or perhaps a storm-caller's lens?"
Bennett's fingers hovered over a sphere filled with miniature lightning. "Something... foundational."
The old man's milky eyes sharpened. "Ah! A virgin crystal for a virgin mage!" He shuffled behind a counter stacked with ledgers older than the Sword of Kings. "Birth year?"
"Pardon?"
"To align with your ascendant star, naturally." The shopkeeper tapped a ledger open to pages crawling with astrological diagrams. "The Guild requires all first-spheres be attuned before—"
Bennett cut him off gently. "I've no need for bureaucratic formalities. Just a reliable tool."
The apprentice's grin revealed three remaining teeth. "Spoken like a true hedge-mage! Let's see..."
Shadows in the Glass
The back room smelled of camphor and forgotten hopes. Dust motes danced in shafts of light from a stained glass window depicting a mage being devoured by his own summoning.
"This one," the shopkeeper wheezed, unveiling a sphere the color of a month-old bruise. "Carved from a meteor that fell during the Sundering Wars. Sees through glamours, tracks ley lines..."
Bennett reached instinctively, only to jerk back as the glass surface rippled like water. For an instant, the sphere showed not his reflection, but a figure shrouded in funeral wrappings—its eyes twin voids that drank the light.
"Ah! The Deathseeker's Orb recognizes you!" The old man cackled. "Last owner was Klack's predecessor. Died screaming during the Purge of '73."
"Klack? The necromancer?"
"Hush!" The apprentice glanced fearfully at his hanging keys. "We don't speak that name here. Not since the Council banned..."
Bennett leaned closer, the sphere's chill raising gooseflesh. "Banned what?"
"The old arts." The shopkeeper's whisper stirred dust on forgotten shelves. "They say true necromancy leaves marks even fire can't cleanse. That orb... it remembers."
Outside, the Guild's false sky darkened abruptly. Thunder rolled from no cloud.
The Unasked Question
Bennett left with two spheres—a standard scrying crystal and the Deathseeker's Orb wrapped in lead-lined silk. The barter cost him a vial of Gandoft's dragon-tear elixir, its loss aching like a pulled tooth.
He was halfway to the Hall of Echoes when the whispers began.
"—Scholar's robes but smells of gravedirt—"
"—saw him at Klack's trial—"
"—careful, that one's got Saimer's stink on him—"
A grey-robed woman materialized in his path, her face hidden beneath a hood stitched with warding sigils. "The Deathseeker's Orb," she hissed. "Return it before sunset."
Bennett feigned ignorance. "I've purchased nothing illicit."
Her laughter was the scrape of bone on stone. "That orb isn't a tool—it's an invitation. The dead don't appreciate unannounced visitors."
She vanished in a swirl of ash, leaving behind the acid tang of fear.
Above, the enchanted ceiling flickered. For one heartbeat, Bennett saw not artificial constellations, but a sky choked with screaming faces.
QQ's voice echoed from memory: "Grandpa's junk always comes with strings attached."
Chapter 122 (Part II): The Unspoken Pact
A Dance of Shadows
The elderly apprentice's rheumy eyes narrowed as Bennett's expression shifted. "Ah, but before you take it," he interjected hastily, "you must sign a binding pact."
"A pact?" Bennett's voice carried the faintest tremor, quickly masked by curiosity.
The old man's wrinkles deepened into crevices of suspicion. Here stood a scholar draped in the Guild's most honored black robes, yet ignorant of foundational protocols—like a king who'd forgotten his crown. Were it not for the wards humming beneath every stone, he might've called the guards.
"Dark arts walk a razor's edge," the apprentice explained, fingers tracing invisible sigils on the counter. "Harvesting lingering spirits? Permitted. But spill innocent blood to create spirits?" His voice dropped to a tomb's whisper. "That makes you no better than the flesh-eaters of Vorngard Pass."
Bennett's mind raced. He'd read of these distinctions—scraps about "ethical necromancy" buried in Klack's journals—but never faced their implications. The Guild's hypocrisy hung thick as the shop's sulfurous air: condemning blood magic while profiting from its tools.
Ink and Irony
The contract emerged from a drawer lined with mummified raven claws. Brittle parchment unfurled to reveal clauses glowing blood-red:
I, [Name], swear by the Ninefold Seal never to—
—forfeit my essence should I—
—eternal servitude in the Hall of—
Bennett's quill hovered. "This reads like a trap."
"All dark artifacts require it!" The apprentice's chuckle rattled like dice in a gambler's cup. "Blame the Black Necromancer Purge of '89. Half the Council got caught selling soul-cages to warlords."
A memory surfaced—Klack drunkenly ranting about "hypocrites clutching purity scrolls with gore-stained hands." Bennett scrawled his name. The ink hissed, binding his signature to the parchment's hungry fibers.
"Why sell these at all?" he pressed.
The old man sealed the contract with wax the color of dried viscera. "Because shadows pay better than light."
The Catalyst
The obsidian sphere fit Bennett's palm like a missing piece of his soul. Its surface swam with smoke-that-wasn't-smoke, hinting at landscapes where trees grew roots upward and rivers flowed with liquid starlight.
"A bargain!" The apprentice grinned as Bennett traded two azurefire diamonds—each worth a barony—and a pound of spell-chalk. "May it serve you better than its last owner."
"Who was that?"
"A charming fellow." The old man began rewrapping unsold artifacts. "Traded his daughter's voice for a lich's femur. Died screaming when his own creations turned—standard tale, really."
The archival apprentice arrived winded, silver robes askew. His eyes widened at Bennett's black attire before bowing so low his nose brushed the Deathseeker's Orb. The contract vanished into a ledger bound in what appeared to be... Was that human skin?
Threads Unraveling
Bennett exited into the Guild's false twilight, the sphere a cold weight against his hip. He told himself it was mere curiosity—a scholar's itch to dissect forbidden mechanisms. But deep within, where ambition and dread intertwined, something older than reason stirred.
High above in the Council spire, seven pairs of eyes tracked his progress through scrying pools.
"Fool," spat the woman with mercury eyes.
"Opportunist," corrected the man shaped like smoke.
The youngest councilor—a boy with star-pupiled eyes—merely smiled. "Seed planted. Let's watch it grow."
As Bennett crossed the plaza, the sphere pulsed once. A beggar-child glimpsed shadows writhing beneath his cloak—tendrils that might've been arms, jaws that might've been screaming.
History pivots on such moments. A scholar's whim. A merchant's greed. A sphere purchased to salve embarrassment now carried the weight of unborn wars.
Somewhere beyond the veil, Klack's ghost laughed and laughed and laughed.
Chapter 123（part1）: The Arboreal Artisan and the Alchemist's Epiphany
The Enchanted Tree
Leaving the shadowed alley of forbidden artifacts, Bennett wandered deeper into the Guild's labyrinthine halls until a structure unlike any other arrested his gaze—a colossal tree, its gnarled trunk wider than three carriages, roots plunging through polished marble floors into unseen depths. Though hollowed into a shop, the ancient behemoth thrived defiantly, emerald vines snaking across its charcoal bark. A doorway carved into the wood revealed shelves lined with wands, their grains shimmering faintly like frozen lightning.
Bennett stepped inside, the air thick with resin and sawdust. Above the counter hung a staff taller than a man, its surface etched with runes that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Magic here felt alive—a far cry from the deadened artifacts he'd left behind.
A Scholar's Obsession
The shopkeeper emerged like a mole from its burrow—a man whose head seemed too large for his spindly neck, one eye magnified grotesquely by a jeweler's lens. His gray robes marked him as a certified alchemist, though the tarnished badge betrayed his lowly status. Bennett hid a smile; this man mirrored his younger self—a fellow outcast drowning in formulas while others chased glory.
"Interested in wands?" The alchemist's voice crackled with the zeal of a man starved for conversation. "These are just blanks! You'd need gemcutters down the hall for cores. Though…" He leaned closer, breath smelling of fermented birch sap, "if you've got true walnut wood—fifty-year stock, first spring bud—I'll kiss your boots for a splinter!"
Bennett's hand drifted to his satchel, where the Guild's "gift" of subpar walnut lay forgotten. "What if one sought to engrave spell matrices directly?"
The alchemist froze, then erupted into motion, scattering wood shavings as he brandished a cracked ledger. "You've seen Master Gandolf's staff, haven't you? That's what we all chase! But walnut's too porous for high-tier runes. Now, crystal—" His good eye gleamed fanatically. "Pure quartz amplifies magic twofold! But who'd wield a three-hundred-pound club? Not those brittle-boned fossils on the Council!"
Seeds of Revolution
As the man rambled about crossbreeding flood-resistant zi-jialuo trees with swamp vines, Bennett's mind raced. Here stood a kindred spirit—a heretic dismissed for ideas too bold, too dangerous. The alchemist's scrawled diagrams revealed genius: hybridization ratios, conductivity tables, even a crude attempt at grafting moonlight moss onto firebloom stalks.
"—and if we splice lutong roots with frostwillow saplings," the alchemist babbled, ink staining his sleeves, "the cold resistance alone could—"
"Create a universal conductor," Bennett finished, pulse quickening. "Neutralizing elemental weaknesses."
The shop fell silent. Somewhere, a leaf detached from the living ceiling and spiraled down, catching fire midair before disintegrating.
"You…understand." The alchemist's whisper trembled.
Bennett traced a finger over a blueprint—a staff design blending crystal latticework with living wood. "What's your name?"
"P-Pip."
"Well, Pip," Bennett withdrew the flawed walnut blank, its surface pocked with lazy enchantments, "how'd you like to burn down an empire?"
The Council's Blind Spot
High above, in a chamber veiled by illusion, the mercury-eyed councilwoman scowled at her scrying pool. "Why indulge that fool? His 'discoveries' are children's doodles."
The smoke-shaped mage chuckled, tendrils coiling around Pip's frantic sketches. "Let them play. Hybrid plants take decades to mature—plenty of time to…harvest."
But the star-eyed boy said nothing, watching Bennett pocket a sliver of Pip's experimental alloy—a metal-wood fusion that hummed with wrongness. A material that shouldn't exist.
Whispers of Change
As Bennett exited, the great tree shuddered, its vines tightening protectively around Pip's workshop. Somewhere in the Southern Marshes, a grafted sapling pierced rotted soil, its leaves half-flame, half-frost.
History remembers revolutions as thunderclaps—wars, coups, grand speeches. But true change often begins in dusty shops with wide-eyed dreamers and a stranger's idle question:
What if?
Chapter 123 (Part II): Grafts of Ambition
The Alchemist's Hands
Set's hands told stories no spellbook could capture—fingers stubby as tree roots, palms calloused and cracked like drought-stricken soil, wrapped in bandages stained with sap and alchemical resins. These were not the hands of a pampered scholar, but of a man who'd wrestled secrets from the earth itself. Bennett stared, pulse quickening. A gardener-mage.
"My hybrids?" Set's laugh rang bitter as witchroot tea. "Master Azz called them 'abominations' and burned seven years' work in an hour. Said I'd 'pollute the natural order.'" He gestured to the shop's hollowed tree, its walls lined with dead wood. "Now I sell sticks to fools who think walnut makes them wise."
Bennett's smile sharpened—the same predatory curve that once coaxed three ancestral swords from Duke Harroway. "What if," he murmured, tracing a glyph that made Set's lone eyeglass fog, "someone appreciated your…abominations?"
Azz's Ghost
The name hung between them like poison ivy. Gegwu Azz—the coward who'd abandoned Klack to Medusa's gaze in the Frozen Wastes. Bennett filed this revelation away, another thorn for future leverage.
"You're Set?" Bennett leaned closer, the shop's sawdust motes swirling in his wake. "The Set who crossbred frostbloom with firethorn? The Set whose Moonlit Mandrake paper made the Alchemy Review's shortlist?"
The alchemist blinked, childlike in his astonishment. "You…read that?"
"Devoured it." Bennett's lie tasted sweet. Klack's journals had mentioned the essay dismissively: "Some idiot trying to marry light and shadow. Waste of parchment." But desperation bred opportunity—and Set reeked of it.
The Steward's Shadow
Clarke's entrance sliced through their camaraderie like a scythe. His new robes gleamed arsenic-gray, the Steward's badge—a wand piercing a bleeding star—glinting with freshly minted arrogance.
"Lord Bennett." Clarke's bow was shallow, eyes lingering on Set's grubby apron. "The Chairman grows impatient."
Set recoiled as if struck, nearly toppling a shelf of ashwood blanks. "S-Steward Clarke! I didn't—that is—"
Bennett stepped between them, shielding Set from Clarke's sneer. "We'll continue our discussion soon, Master Botanist." The title hung like a crown over Set's shabby head.
As Clarke led him away, Bennett caught Set mouthing "Master Botanist" to himself, tears glinting behind that absurd monocle.
Thorns in the Garden
The corridors buzzed with obeisance. Apprentices pressed against walls; gray-robed adepts bowed so low their noses brushed floor-moss. Clarke's new authority radiated like corpse-light—cold, undeniable, bought with Bennett's borrowed prestige.
"Congratulations on your promotion, Steward," Bennett drawled, noting how Clarke's stride lengthened at the title. "Though I'm curious—what becomes of fools who question the Guild's…horticultural policies?"
Clarke's reply came polished as his badge: "The Garden of Magic thrives on order. Weeds must be plucked."
Bennett hid a smile. Let them pluck. I'll plant forests in the shadows.