“Dathon-Dathon-Dathon.” Seymour burst into their shared room at Hedwick’s Home for Wayward Aliens. “You gotta come see this.”

  “Where have you been?” The squid-faced alien had his pillow folded over to prop him up in bed while he read, and didn’t look up from his book. “The hour grows concerningly late and I have been waiting to hear how the first day of your new assignment went.”

  “It was great. Better than great, and I’ll tell you all about it.” He gestured frantically for Dathon to follow. “But first, I really need to show you something.”

  “As you wish, I shall be right there.” Dathon finally closed the book he’d been reading and set it on his nightstand. “Wait for me in the tavern room. I must attend to some business first.”

  “What ‘business’?”

  “Personal business.”

  “You keeping secrets from me now, roomie?”

  “Fine, if you really must know,” Dathon began, “I have consumed several of Hedwick’s special brews while awaiting your return, and I now require a visit to the washroom.”

  “You need to piss?” Seymour laughed, nodding. “That’s perfect! I’ll come with you.”

  “I would not like that.”

  “Don’t be so quick to assume,” Seymour warned, waggling his finger. “I’d bet anything that you’re gonna love the surprise I have in store for you.”

  “An assertion which I strongly doubt but, alas – my business will not wait a moment longer.” Dathon rose from his bed. “Come along if you must.”

  They headed down the hall toward the community washroom where the community chamber pot was kept. Seymour hurried past Dathon to enter the room first. The aforementioned chamber pot was seated in a rustic, wooden throne-thing. He snatched the porcelain bowl up and held it at chest-level.

  “What mischief are you up to now?” Dathon’s chin-tendrils wrung over one another like the hands of a nervous old woman. “I fear deeply that which may come next.”

  “Oh ye of little faith,” Seymour preached, grinning.

  He lifted the chamber pot higher still like he was showing off a newborn lion king and closed his eyes. There was no real reason for doing so aside from appearing as dramatic as possible—he could have just as easily accessed the necessary sacred geometry with his eyes wide open—but he was playing up the spectacle for Dathon. Concentrating, he accessed his Object Memory and selected the desired schematic:

  In the moment which followed, the chamber pot began to warp in Seymour’s grip, as if it had suddenly come too close to a black hole. And in a way, he figured that was exactly what had happened. The pig-mouth of his Sigil of Greed was limited to the size of his palm – but it turned out the materials he could vacuum up didn’t need to conform to that same limitation. The community chamber pot emitted an audible hum as it twisted and swirled like the smoke spiraling up from the nearby Everburning Incense – and then the pig-mouth slurped it up with shocking force.

  Dathon’s tentacle-beard suddenly froze at the sight of Infringement in action.

  “By the Reefs of Golundron,” he muttered, mystified. Seymour couldn’t help but chuckle.

  Then the sigil lit up with silver sparks, and after only a moment a new chamber pot emerged from Seymour’s palm, at first pliable as a massive wad of chewed bubble gum. It quickly morphed into its final, complete form, and Seymour set it back on the throne.

  “Okay,” he began, “we’ve got five minutes.”

  “Seymour, I – I do not understand.”

  “I know,” he soothed. “Just watch.”

  He’d come prepared to demonstrate—having already stopped by Chester’s kitchen—and he pulled a fingerling potato from his pocket. He held it over the hollow of the pot, and dropped it in. As soon as the potato crossed an invisible dividing line within the recently-produced Sir Hector Horatio’s Self-Cleaning Chamber Pot, it got straight up vaporized in a quick flash of green light. Seymour lifted the pot once more and flipped it upside-down to prove to Dathon that no trace of the potato remained within its bowl.

  “No more emptying and scrubbing our own pots, my man.” He winked. “We’ve got magic for that now.”

  “You have learned to activate your new power,” Dathon deduced. “And you have used it to the noble end of enhancing the community chamber pot.”

  “You sound less than impressed. This is a major quality of life upgrade!”

  “My apologies. This is possibly the most magnificent use of magic to ever be implemented anywhere, across all universes.” He shifted uncomfortably from hoof-to-hoof. “Now, may I please be afforded a moment alone to take advantage of your incredible creation?”

  “Sure.” Seymour once again set the chamber pot back in its place. “But first, tell me the truth about the Essence of Invention I won off you last night.”

  “The truth?” Dathon’s tentacles writhed over one another at an increasingly agitated pace, each performing a little piss-dance of its own. “What ever can you mean?”

  “You know you can’t bluff worth a damn, bud, so don’t even try.” He remained firmly planted between Dathon and the chamber pot. “I know something’s up. I think it has to do with the Guild of Artificers, where you’ve been working. You said the directors gave you the essence for a job well done, right?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Well I call bullshit. I think they gave it to you so you’d lose it to me. So you’d get it into my hands somehow and I’d get hooked up with Infringement. I don’t really know why, though.” Seymour’s tone had shifted to something much less friendly than he typically used when addressing his roommate. “But I think you might.”

  Dathon’s deception was written all over the guilty writhing of his cthulhu-coded chin.

  “I beg of you, Seymour – allow me to relieve myself and I will tell you everything I know.”

  Seymour gave him a curt nod. “I’ll be waiting in the tavern.”

  “Yeah, I forgive you.” Seymour took a drink of his beer. “But it’s gonna take some time to rebuild the trust we’ve lost.”

  “An understandable response.” Dathon’s shoulders slumped. “I should have told you upfront. Clearly, greed has gotten the best of me.”

  The tavern echoed with stomping feet. A rowdier-than-usual crowd had gathered to take in the performance of a legit bard-dude named Handsome Gentry. His signature sound was what Seymour could only describe as a jig on bath salts. It wasn’t his favorite, but the crowd loved it and Chester Hedwick did too, because this was a heavy-drinking crowd – and they danced like it. But if nothing else, Seymour was grateful for the noise since it lent him and Dathon some cover for their conversation.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “Tell me more about the directors of this guild.” Seymour had been taking notes on a ragged piece of parchment. He held his quill at the ready. “You said their names were Magnus and Melvina?”

  “The Malveaus, correct. I honestly don’t have much more to tell. They have struck me as honorable people, though strict in the maintenance of order within their guild.”

  “They didn’t tell you why they wanted me to pick up Infringement?"

  “No.” The tentacles swayed as Dathon shook his head. “And I did ask. They would say only that you would gain a power which would benefit not only themselves – but also, you.”

  “And you, of course.”

  “Indeed,” Dathon admitted. “It must be this world. I have succumbed to the prevailing atmosphere of avarice.”

  Seymour couldn’t argue with that. After all, he’d awakened on Heschia with a tattoo on his palm that turned out to be a literal Sigil of Greed. The little evidence he’d observed did seem to suggest that this world was a place where most everyone was out for themselves; to take everything they could get.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “Only this: the Guild of Artificers possesses great power and reach.” Dathon leaned in to whisper the next part, despite the raucous crowd granting them ample cover: “if you intend to pursue some sort of investigation of their operations, you must proceed with utmost caution. Please, Seymour, for the sake of us both, promise me you will act with extreme discretion.”

  Seymour smiled easily. “You ever known me to tip my hand?”

  “I have not. That is true. But you do often favor the riskiest of propositions.”

  “Go big or go home.”

  “We have no way home.” Dathon hung his head. Then he turned up his mug and had a long, deep guzzle.

  “Alright, I’m gonna turn in early.” Seymour rose from the table and gulped the last of his beer. “Gotta catch that shuttle at the ass-crack of pre-freaking-dawn again tomorrow. You’re seriously gonna hang out here for the rest of the show?”

  “Aye,” Dathon said, foam dripping from his chin and down along his tendrils. “I am finding this performer—Handsome Gentry, I believe they call him?—to be a most-fascinating act. And because I am not assigned to work tomorrow, I believe I shall kick up my hooves late into the night. Perhaps even until Mr. Hedwick’s last call.”

  “Alright then, have fun.”

  Despite what he’d told Dathon, the day had actually left Seymour too wired to sleep anytime soon. But he was pleased to have some time alone. The fact that his roommate planned to stay in the tavern for the entirety of the show worked out perfectly, because Seymour had some experiments to conduct and knew it would be best to do so in private. After a quick detour into Chester’s kitchen to gather up some supplies, he headed back to he and Dathon’s room.

  Something strange had been happening – something he could only peripherally perceive. It felt as if some long-blocked memory was trying to surface from the depths at the back of his mind. But every time he used Infringement it became a little more clear.

  He needed to conjure more objects. Some instinct told him that the ideal course of action would be to use Infringement to copy and reproduce as many Sacred Schematics as possible. And it would be best if the items were unique to one another. He didn’t need to create fifty copies of the same thing; fifty different mundane objects would be better than fifty reproductions of the lone magic item he had access to:

  Not that popping out a bunch of these rings was really a possibility right then, anyway, with its precious metal material requirement. He’d turned up surprisingly little metal of any sort while searching around the boarding house, and not a single speck of silver. In fact there were very few raw materials, period; no logs or balls of clay or bars of metal or whatever. The best course of action that Seymour could come up with was to recycle items which had been crafted from the same materials.

  The kitchen, then, had quickly become his best repository of recyclable objects, as he slurped up wooden spoons and turned them into wooden forks and transformed copper mugs into copper ladles. And as he performed a number of these transmutations, the sense that a repressed memory wanted to resurface became stronger and stronger. But it wasn’t exactly a memory, per se – it had more to do with his Object Memory.

  With each use of Infringement, the concept became more-and-more clear. His Object Memory evolved into something less esoteric; something more tangible. And before too long, he could actually see it in his mind’s eye, like one of the Sacred Schematic labels he’d now viewed many times over at this point, but different:

  But there was more. As he became increasingly familiar with Infringement, he realized he could now internally call up its description, as well:

  Gaining renewed access to the details of his weird power came as a welcome relief, but that alone wasn’t the key piece of information conveyed here. The bigger revelation had to do with the progress made with each new item he conjured. After some experimentation, Seymour came to a satisfying realization:

  “Every time I produce a new object from a schematic I haven’t used before, I advance Infringement one-fifth of one percent toward the next rank.” He searched his mind for what Ridley had told him about the various ranks of magic. “So after five-hundred total uses, it’ll move up to Adept.”

  He had no idea what that would actually mean, but his gut told him that his power would evolve in some way to become even more useful.

  “More powerful.”

  The idea of this kind of linear progression proved instantly addictive. He suddenly felt like he could better understand what Dathon had earlier called the prevailing atmosphere of avarice. Something about leveling up like a character in a video game hit so different from climbing the ladder back on Earth, where it felt like getting ahead relied as much on dumb luck as it had to do with dedicating effort toward any of his goals. Something about possessing such a concrete path to increasing his power—an inevitable path, if he simply kept using Infringment—caused him to yearn for more.

  “Is this what it’s like to be a gym bro?” He quietly wondered to himself, “am I becoming addicted to gains?”

  Unfortunately, ranking Infringement up to Adept meant he’d need to find replicable items at the depot, most likely, because Hardwick’s Home didn’t exactly possess the kind of varied inventory the grind was going to require. Much to his dismay, conjuring up one wooden fork was the same as conjuring up any other wooden fork, regardless of minor irregularities in their crafting, meaning no matter how many different wooden forks he reproduced they all had the exact same schematic.

  He needed to learn more. What if he was still missing something vital here? What if there was some other way to level up his power? He knew one fact for certain, there existed exactly one person in the world he could go to for more information about Infringement:

  “Ridley James Ridley.”

  The Adventure Depot’s artificer had actually felt a lot like someone Seymour might have known back on Earth. Ridley’s shifty eyes and slippery demeanor reminded him of any number of small-time con men he’d met at the speakeasies. A guy who would try to lift wallets at the poker table; a guy who was always running his own side-hustle.

  A guy you absolutely can’t trust to have your back in a pinch.

  Not even to mention the fact that Ridley had already maneuvered Seymour into helping him produce a Sculpting Wand with someone else’s mana signature on it – and he didn’t believe the explanation he’d been given for one second. Ridley had been ready. He’d known Seymour was coming. It gave Seymour the sense that he was likely working for someone else.

  “Probably the directors of his guild, Magnus and Melvina Malveau.” Seymour reasoned. “But you can’t assume that’s right just because you see a pattern. You know coincidences do happen, so it might be someone else.”

  It might be the dragon.

  The thought sent a shiver down his spine. Wizards and warlocks and sleazy artificers felt like they might be possible to deal with – but that big-ass dragon he’d seen sleeping outside the shop earlier that morning?

  “There’s no dealing with a goddamn dragon.”

  He could see no way around it. He had to get some answers. So tomorrow, when Seymour got to work, he’d somehow need to trick Ridley into revealing what he was up to – and who he was working with.