NOVEL NEXT Ch. 16: Aren’t You A Little Short For A Ruffian?
“Fiona, how much is in that bag?” Greg asked a short time later, on their way back to the shop to set up the displays. She wasn’t keen on lingering on this side street, with a literal fortune in her nearly unbreakable dimensional bag.
“Well, a lot of it is gold, or little gold baubles. Actually, you know what, it’s kinda light,” she commented. She also rubbed at the small gold bangle she’d had for a long time, from one of her first treasure dives. She had found a forgotten ruin just north of the kingdom, on the eastern side of the lake.
She set the bag down, and it made an extremely loud clang from all the metal and items stored inside. The bangle didn’t seem to have…any weight to it. “Greg, remind me. This thing’s gold, right?”
“I don’t have an inventory for every item of yours, but…I think that is,” he affirmed. He peered closer at the bauble. “Why?” She took it off, and then grabbed it with her other hand, and frowned.
“You know what’s weird? It doesn’t weigh a thing.” Greg stopped, and examined it closer.
“Did you pick up some strange magic trick from Bonnie? I know women love to not be encumbered by their jewelry–”
“No, Greg, I didn’t. Here,” she replied before she offered the bangle to him. He raised an eyebrow at this, wearing his too-serious face, but nonetheless took the offered item, and gave it a heft with his hand, lifting it up and down. “Well?”
“Are you just that strong? It’s pretty heavy, actually,” he stated with an air of observance. “Fiona, why do I get this feeling that something happened yesterday, when you got your license? You were looking off all of today, and yesterday.”
“Um…maybe?” she said in a high-pitched voice. He returned with his face of marble expression. She needed him to stop looking like a silly sculpture about now. “Okay, Greg? Something did happen. And I just had a long discussion with Bonnie on the roof, earlier today.” Greg however, was peering at the bangle. Then, the bag.
“How heavy is that?”
“The bag? Eh, it’s not that heavy,” she shrugged. Greg, handed her back her bangle, and attempted to lift it. He grabbed the pullstring, and attempted to pull it up–but staggered and almost fell over. Her ears tilted out sideways at this spectacle. “Uh, Greg, we really have to work on your string bean physical profile.”
“I’m not weak!” he huffed, with an air of irritation that she’d rarely heard from him. “I do calisthenics. I row in the morning on the lake. When it’s frozen, I skate. I’m lean, but not lacking strength. This is absurdly heavy, Fiona.”
“I mean, it should be, it’s a lot of brick gold. I mean I’d melt it down into coins, but, guess what? That’s an actual crime King Lack-of-hugs can nail me on,” she added with a roll of her eyes. Greg tried again to lift it, but he might as well have been trying to lift a building. “Greg, lift with your legs, don’t strain your back. I have to teach you guys some ergonomics in this magical candy land!” she complained with a resigned sigh.
After a few more seconds, Greg was panting, and sat back on his haunches. “I can’t lift that.” He stared at her intensely for a few seconds. “How can you lift that?”
“Greg, I work out,” she replied nonchalantly. Then, a thought came across her head–why was her bangle practically weightless? “String-bean, dig through the bag, pick up one of the bouillon bars. Give me an estimate on how much it weighs.”
“I do accounting and other math. I better know how much it weighs,” he grumbled, before undoing the drawstring and peering inside, and frowning. “Didn’t Bonnie tell you to not stuff this thing? I don’t think you want this stuff violently ejected out of here if you overfill it.”
“Oh man, that sounds like a really improvised bomb. Death by hoarding. Not very practical, either.” She kept peering around in the street, where they were by the corner of a building. There didn’t seem to be anyone around at the moment–then again, it was getting late, and people were already home from work. She saw Greg pull out a bar, shining bright gold, and her skin tickled at the sight of it. “Seriously, Barry’s a dick. You know how many gold coins that’s probably worth it, but we can’t convert it without going through eight million hoops at the banks?”
“From what I’ve gathered through history–and other summons accounts,” he added with emphasis, “Is that Cepalune is richer in certain ore deposits, compared to other worlds. Gold, chiefly. Other elements are also plentiful, or more readily accessible, plus various magical ores.”
“Greg…are there other people from Earth here?” she asked softly. He looked up from his search, silently going through his mental indices.
“Earth has been mentioned a time or two, from my readings. I can’t say I know precisely when the last summons came from there. Why?”
“Because…” she trailed off. Why was she hesitant to tell Greg, but not Bonnie? Because he had the emotional range of a slab of marble? Or, because he was the one who had helped her get her collective act together, and was still trying on that front? “Because…I'd like to meet some of them. And deliver some news to them on current events, back at home.”
“That could be challenging if census records weren't properly kept. Plus, summonings are outlawed in the unified kingdoms, due to the principle of consent. It is traumatizing to pull someone away from their entire way of life for something as asinine as ‘saving a princess’ or ‘battling a giant monster.” Greg sounded nonplussed at this. "Of course, if some goddess decided to do it, not much we can do about that, and it has been known to happen.
“This has happened a lot, huh?” she asked with a bit of annoyance. She still didn’t have a fundamental clue about who pulled her here. And she was all but sure that someone had.
Her body was similar, but not the same. She had the same green eyes and the same facial features from what she remembered on Earth. A few things had received a…generous upgrade, but she didn’t feel like a foreigner in her own body, after a little adjustment.
"Yes, it has." Greg hefted the gold while she was thinking, and nodded after a moment of contemplation. “Standard weight. Ten kilos. Give or take a few milligrams.” He tossed the small but heavy bar to her–
But catching it felt like it weighed nothing. It had almost no weight in the palm of her hand, and her ears went vertical at this. He looked surprised. “Fiona, how much does that weigh–”
“Barely anything.” She tossed it upwards lightly–and it went far higher than she expected. When her hand caught it, she felt the gentlest of taps on her palm, and she stared at the shiny golden bar. “Is this a trick bar?”
“I don’t think so. There’s no magical item stamp on it.” This spurred another idea, and she looked down to her hip.
She reached out to her gold pouch, and pulled out a gold coin. “Dragons or settlers?” she asked with confidence.
“Um…okay, I’ll entertain this. Dragons,” he finally chose. She flicked the coin into the air with her thumb…
…and promptly lost sight of the coin. “Oh, shindigs,” she breathed. Greg stared skyward, then at her, then back up at the sky.
“Um…where did it go?”
“Dunno. Hang on. Two Mississippi, three Mississippi…” She slowly counted off, and the coin eventually came back into view, and fell like a meteor, many seconds later. She caught it without any effort, and stared at the coin. Greg stared at her.
“Greg, do you know calculus?”
“I know what calculus is,” he strained, and regained his composure. “How long was that in the air?”
“About…a good twenty seconds? How high did it..." She did the math, and came out to an astounding number.
He frowned, and his eyes widened. "It went up almost half a kilometer. not accounting for air resistance. Good gods woman, how strong are you?” he asked in a complete breakdown in composure, eyes wide in disbelief. “Fiona, are you even human? Or, is there some magic that I don’t know about? I’ve never heard of this one, and I know a lot.”
“Greg, I know a couple of cantrips from Bonnie, but so doesn’t everybody!” she protested. “This is…different. Hang on. Greg, give me something else. Not made of gold, though.”
After a moment, he handed her what looked to be a pair of metal gauntlets that were tinged green. “Adamantine armor. Part of a set. Probably not as good as the one you’ve got at home, though, but quite corrosion resistant.” He handed them to her, and while she noticed they did have mass, they didn’t seem quite as heavy as she expected. “So, anything?”
“Feels lighter than it should. But has actual weight to it. Gold weighs nothing!” Her eyes went wide at the conclusion, and she grinned madly. “Oh, this is just awesome! I can carry all the loot in the world, and never get tired! Fiona, the loot ninja!”
“I would like to point out, that you can only carry so much gold in those bags. They have physical limits,” Greg pointed out, but was still alight with this revelation. “I have never heard of this kind of oddity of magic. Fiona, what happened at the office when you got your class?”
“I–can we talk at the apartment?” she said suddenly. “We need to talk, definitely.” her ears twitched, too–someone was sneaking nearby, and she tilted her head subtly toward the direction of the source.
Greg narrowed his eyes, and glanced casually out of the corner of his eye. “Yes. Let’s take the shortcut.” He was on alert, and put on a pair of gloves from his coat pocket–ones suited for very ungentlemanly warfare. They proceeded with the bag in tow–and the sound of two pairs of scuffing boots could be heard behind her.
“Your call. Bloodied or–”
“Humiliated? I love the way you think, Greg,” she whispered with a smile. That pair of shoes could be heard behind her–not worn, fresh-cut leather. Something new. Something pricey, too. She could also hear someone lurking just ahead, by an alcove in the street where housing blocks intersected. No one was outside, and the arcane lights were flickering on. But this side street was dimly lit.
One man in a dark cloak and wearing a black porcelain mask stepped out of the alcove. She peered back, and two more people were behind them–a woman with bright red hair, and a white-furred catfolk with dark ear markings.
The man in front of them put a hand up–a man with purple hair. “Oh, look at who wandered into our alleyway! Glad you could make it through. It’s a little rough this way. You look like you could use an escort, little lady!”
“Yeah. An ‘escort’," the catfolk purred, with a twitch of his whiskers and bright blue eyes. “We uh, provide a specialty service.”
“Let me guess. It's gonna cost me some gold?” she asked aloud, and grabbed her coin purse. Greg stood tense by her side. “Okay, guys, thanks for the offer, but you really should be going. It’s late. The kids are all supposed to be in bed by sundown! We’ve got this.”
“I’m afraid that it is quite dangerous. These services are a premium offer,” the man said with a calm voice.
“Alright, buddy, I get it, you need to be a hustler these days to make a well-earned coin. But seriously, I need the name of your company, so I can file an invoice for travel expenses,” she added, while Greg played to the beat and clicked out a pen. And she figured, it was his mightiest weapon. “You guys are, uh…”
“Rock,” the man answered.
“Ket,” the woman answered with a leering smile.
“You idiots, they know our names!” the catfolk hissed.
“It’s not like knowing our names is going to do much,” the man said, hands out to signify peace. She could hear the woman drawing a blade, and the catfolk tensed their claws. “Well, I’ll make it simple for you two: your gold, or your lives, are the price of admission.”
Fiona laughed mockingly as she sized up the targets with a glance over her shoulder. “Buddy, don’t you know who I am?”
“Just some dumb elf waving around fancy things,” the man retorted, and her ears flattened at that–this guy was so rude just now! “We don’t care who you are. The worms don’t, either.”
“Seems like the guards of the town are a little slow on the response time, the second Barry took the throne,” Greg stated with remarkable restraint. His gloves creaked with the tension of fury in his hands, and he still held his pen against his paper. “Fi, take the ones in the back?”
“Nah, let’s just…give them our gold,” she said with a smirk as she fingered the gold coins between her fingers, after reaching into the still open coin purse. The gold felt reassuring and warm against her skin. She hefted the coin purse into a throwing motion in her other hand, surprising the man at the reaction, and she gave him a lecherous smile. “Here you go, buddy. Time to flash some cash.”
These robbers have made a terrible mistake...
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