By midday, Seymour had struggled to develop anything resembling an efficient routine. He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of a curio with its glass-paned door wide open. This particular curio had been stuffed full of magical paintbrushes and pencils and other art supplies, all of which he had removed from the display and laid out in rows on the floor. The key thing here—and the key to holding onto his sanity in the face of this ridiculously tedious task—was to only inventory all of this stuff once. To do the work one time and one time only. And to achieve this end, the best method he’d come up with so far was just to strip these cases of all similar merchandise, returning each individual item to its display only after he’d scanned them with his Catalogoggles.

  The third floor consisted of a web of cubbies joined by hallways, all of it essentially formed by stuff – like the home of some hoarder straight out of reality tv, the kind of show where a too-handsome contractor would stage a shirtless intervention to clean out all of the crap the hoarder had been collecting over the years. If not for all the stuff, Seymour thought this floor might have been wide open, like a low-ceilinged warehouse. There weren’t any actual, permanent walls. Instead, the various pseudo-rooms were roughly divided by curios and desks and corner cabinets and—

  “Just a shit-ton of stuff.”

  He intended to go area-by area as best as he could. He’d empty the various display cases to catalogue the contents and the stray merch surrounding them—including all the crap hanging from the ceiling—and most of all: he’d be as careful as could be not to backtrack. How this plan would play out in the days and weeks to come was anybody’s guess. The possibility that he’d have trouble keeping track of the areas he’d already inventoried seemed very real, even just by the time he reached the midway point of his first day.

  “What I need is a map or something, so I can mark off the areas I’ve already done.” There was no way he’d ever get through this gig without talking to himself. A lot. “I mean, how am I ever gonna remember what I’ve already inventoried? Like, I’m gonna go back to Chester’s place tonight, have some brews, and straight up forget everything I’ve done today, aren’t I?”

  Aside from these sort of self-imposed mental setbacks, other, more concrete obstacles, continued to present themselves, too. Mostly in the form of customers. They had a habit of picking items up and then deciding they didn’t want to take them home, so they just stuck the damned things back wherever they could. This was going to screw up any system he might attempt to devise. And the customers who favored the third floor felt more like thrift store shoppers than the adventuring-types he’d seen downstairs in the showroom. Doddering old people and mothers with four or five kids in tow, mostly. People who had zero desire to get in and get out; who preferred to browse and browse and browse.

  But he couldn’t control any of that, so he focused on the three or four dozen enchanted paintbrushes laid out on the floor in front of him.

  “One thing at a time, Little. Just keep pushing.”

  The first seven brushes he examined were all the same:

  However, the eighth Portraitist’s Paint Applier was different. Its condition was listed as Poor, and Seymour could see why. While the handle was smooth and unblemished, the bristles were slightly splayed and kinked. He set the damaged brush to the side, safe within a large, woven basket which Eusebio had provided before leaving him to his own devices. Once this basket was full—which would take awhile, because it was big enough to be a laundry hamper—Seymour was supposed to bring it back downstairs to the depot’s captive artificer, whose job was to repair items to their original, immaculate condition.

  But the fact that this magic paint brush could be the same as the others and yet its physical imperfections would evidently cause it to function less effectively gave Seymour an idea. Using the Sigil of Greed on his right palm, he captured a Sacred Schematic from one of the paintbrushes that was listed as being in Fair condition. Since he was alone and on the clock, he took his time studying its impossibly ornate inner-architecture.

  The whole ordeal felt bizarre. He could view the schematic in his mind’s eye, and he’d always had a decent ability to visualize things – but this was on another level. It went beyond mere visualization. The schematic felt somehow tangible, as if it was a physical object; a thoughtform which somehow had substance, filed away in a cabinet within his mind which he instinctively knew as his Object Memory.

  After capturing that first Sacred Schematic, Seymour swapped the fair-conditioned brush for the Poor one from his basket. While outwardly they looked almost identical aside from their bristles, upon viewing the inner-workings of the second brush, he discerned subtle differences between the two. An obtuse angle here where the other brush was acute; a slight curve where the better brush was straight. He would have guessed that the two schematics were more than ninety-nine percent identical, but those little differences reflected the Poor condition of the second brush; the haggard state of its bristles.

  Though fascinating in its own way, Seymour didn’t know what he was supposed to do with this knowledge. Surely his Infringement power could be used for more than simply scanning the geometry composing various objects – but how? And to what end? He wasn’t sure he’d ever discover its true purpose without the guidance of someone from this world – someone more familiar with his specific, so-called magic power.

  “Try not to think about that right now,” he told himself. “Just get back to work.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The following hours blew past. The number of items whose condition was Worn or worse surprised Seymour, and by mid-afternoon his basket was filled. He lugged it back downstairs and found Eusebio chatting up a stunningly beautiful, blue-hued woman who appeared to be some sort of lady-golem made from glacial ice. At the sight of Seymour, Eusebio sent the woman on her way, which it turned out was back to work on the salesfloor.

  “Done already?” he asked. “Looks like a fine haul.”

  “Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff up there in bad shape.”

  “I’ve let it go too long, to be certain. You’re a lifesaver. Come along and I’ll introduce you to Ridley.”

  The shop artificer’s workshop was located behind the main sales counter, through a door at the very rear of the showroom. There were actually four doors arranged side-by-side here, and Eusebio gave a quick knock on the second from the right before turning the knob and heading inside. Seymour followed, still carrying his basket full of less-than-perfect magical merch.

  The walls of the workshop were a mix of wooden slats and the huge, blocky stones which made up the shop’s exterior. A pair of workbenches and an oddly fancy roll-top desk occupied three of the walls, making the space feel cramped. A bearskin rug covered much of the floor but Seymour had to do a double-take because this was a two-headed bear with six legs.

  When Eusebio led him in, there was a man wearing a beard of soapy lather, sitting in a comfy-looking chair on wheels, staring into a mirror like you’d see on the cosmetics counter of a department store while he shaved himself with a straight razor.

  “Ridley,” Eusebio called as they entered. “You couldn’t have groomed yourself at home?”

  “Afternoon, Sabes.” He carved off a hunk of lather. “I did have a shave before I left home this morning. But I often require a second as the day progresses. Whattya need?”

  “Just letting you know you have a new helper. This is Seymour Little.”

  “Alright then.” Ridley at last paused his shave and turned to assess Seymour. “Riftborn?”

  Seymour blinked. “How could you tell?”

  “You’re still filling your initial mana pool.”

  “For real? You know that just by looking at me?”

  “Well boys, I’ll leave you to it.” Eusebio turned to Seymour as he started out the door. “I’d like to have a talk with you before you leave tonight, just to see how you’re fitting in and to answer any questions you might have, but for now I leave you only with this earnest warning: if Ridley here asks you to join him in games of chance, know that he is a cheat of some ill renown.”

  Ridley had already picked up his shave where he’d left off and countered Chester’s claim without turning around. “You impugn my good name, Sabes. I’ve but a knack for the cards and the dice; an inborn talent.”

  “I’m a helluva bridge player,” Seymour chimed in. “Or so I’ve been told. By my grandma.”

  Eusebio exited and Ridley quickly finished up his grooming. When he was done, he put away his razor and gestured impatiently for Seymour to give him the basket he’d filled with items in need of repair.

  “Alright, let’s see what you have for me.”

  Seymour handed over his hoard of faulty wares and Ridley poured everything out on one of the workbenches. The sight of all that assorted merch piled up chaotically put Seymour on edge. He’d been working so hard all day to organize this crap, but Ridley didn’t seem to care at all about the order of the objects. He spread the items around—spectacles with bent frames, figurines with hairline cracks, that paintbrush with the kinky bristles—and then he stood and looked down on everything with his hands on his hips.

  “This shit is going to take me forever.”

  A laugh slipped out of Seymour, which he immediately regretted when Ridley wheeled around to face him. “Sorry.”

  “You think this is funny?”

  “I mean, a little bit.”

  “I guess I can see that.” Ridley turned back to the mess of stuff covering his workbench. “After all, you can’t even begin to fathom the amount of work you’ve just dropped on me, and which you will no doubt continue to darken my door with in the weeks to come. As a Riftborn, you simply have no concept of sacred geometry, and what is required to bring it back into its proper, working configuration when it has become misaligned.”

  “Maybe I know more than you think,” Seymour practically growled. He immediately regretted his tone. There was no good reason for him to let this guy get under his skin.

  Ridley slowly pivoted to face him. “What do you mean by that? What does someone like you know about how magic works in the Realm of Heschia?”

  There was something about the look on his face—the skeptical furrowing of his brow juxtaposed against the mischievous twinkle in his eye—that sparked a fleeting thought in Seymour’s mind:

  I’m being baited.

  “I’m just saying, I have a little experience with the, uh, sacred geometry and whatnot.”

  Ridley suddenly moved closer and took him by the wrist. He turned his hand over to reveal the pig-faced design on his palm.

  “You bear the Sigil of Greed.” He released his grip. “And it must have only been last night when you manifested your first power, judging by the shallowness of your mana pool. You have been given an Essence of Invention, haven’t you? You’ve manifested the power of Infringement. That’s how you’ve been introduced to the geometry underpinning the magical qualities of our matter.”

  “Well that’s one helluva good guess.”

  Ridley ignored the sarcasm in Seymour’s voice. “Does Eusebuio know?”

  “How should I—”

  “Of course he does.” Ridley paced the floor. “Dragon Dan would tell him.”

  The feeling from early that morning—the feeling that Seymour hadn’t been called to the depot on accident—came roaring back.

  “Hold on a sec,” he said. “You think the dragon could somehow sense that I have this power?”

  “Of course. Nothing occurs without his knowledge. I’d even go so far as to wager that your manifestation of Infringement was the reason he chose to bring you on.”

  “But I only won the essence just last night,” Seymour recalled. “From my roomie at the labor cabin – he’s Riftborn, too. And I got the assignment to come down here like three seconds after I used it.”

  “That can’t be a coincidence. I’d wager further that Dan is likely the one responsible for the catalyst coming into your possession in the first place.”

  Seymour’s head swam. Ridley was suggesting that this entire assignment was some kind of set up. And that would mean that Dragon Dan had somehow been the one who gave Dathon the Essence of Invention, wouldn’t it? And that Dathon—his roommate and literally his closest acquaintance in the world—had lied when he told Seymour that the leader of the guild where he'd been assigned to work had given the catalyst to him.

  “But why would he do that? Like, why would a dragon give a single shit about little old me?”

  “Might have something to do with wherever you come from.”

  “I’m from Earth.”

  Ridley shook his head. “Never heard of it. Is there anything unique or exceptionally powerful about the type of magic you wield there?”

  “We don’t have any magic at all.”

  “How odd.” The artificer scratched his freshly-shaved chin. “Perhaps his interest is unrelated to your homeworld, then, and has more to do with wanting you to replace me.”

  “What? How?”

  “Using Infringement, of course. Surely you can see how it could be used to repair these misaligned items far more quickly than I’ll manage using only my sculpting wand and artificer’s loupe.”

  “I’m gonna keep it real real with you now, Ridley. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Like, any of it.”

  “You don’t even know how to use it do you?” The artificer laughed and turned back to his workbench. “Come here – Seymour, was it? And I’ll show you the true power of Infringement.”