“Oh Nev, good. You’re still here.” Carter found me two days after he told me to wait for him. Time here could be reckoned by the personal room timers. You had to spend twelve hours outside the room for every time you entered.

  I looked up from where I was seated on a folding camp chair I had exchanged for a lighter and an empty water flask. “Carter. You look better.” I had a book on fletching open on my lap.

  In fact he looked nearly handsome with a little color on his cheeks. He was still undernourished.

  He chuckled self consciously. “So. I have something for you. Oh. Are you planning to stay long enough to study all the books you acquired? That would be a good idea, but I’m not sure if it is strictly necessary.”

  “I was waiting for you, but now that you mention it, I might do that for a while.” I stowed the book away, stood and clipped the stool to the back of my pack. I had followed through on my plan to tie the smaller bag to the larger one but I had been hauling it around by the straps, not wearing it on my back.

  “Then let me show you the secrets of this common room. But first…” he held up the sheaf of envelopes he was holding. “I made something for you.”

  “You didn’t have to.” I am well known for giving things away to people I like. I would give the necklace around my neck to someone if they complimented it. I especially love to feed people. I’m a good cook.

  He held up the first one. “Talismans. There’s only twenty of them, but if you study one and have the right ink you can draw them on almost anything.”

  The envelope said Showers in a beautiful flowing script.

  “All you have to do is put a dot of blood in the center to activate it and tear it over your head. Oh. That reminds me. You can use your own blood as an ink if you have enough mana, so try that.”

  He handed me the showers and held up a second envelope. Sleeping Wards.

  “These are the same concept, it’s just a motion sensor that will wake you up before anything can creep up on you. You can learn to draw them if you want. Bleed on it, tear it and sleep. Once you can manipulate mana you just push a little into it.”

  “Thank you.” I held them to my chest.

  The paper smelled like vanilla and ink. What does ink smell like? I’m not sure, but it seems distinctive. I inhaled the scent like I was smelling a new book.

  He smiled. “Simple enough for me and barely used any of the ink you provided.” He shook his head slightly.

  “This one you won’t be able to replicate. Sorry. It’s too complicated, the runes were scribed on clay in layers and fired.” The envelope clanked with a ceramic sound as he held it up. Storage tokens.

  “I should mention that you should not place these inside one another. The other talismans are fine to store.” He bit his lip nervously. “Do you mind if I sense your mana core capacity?”

  “As long as you tell me about it after.”

  He grinned and touched my cheek in what almost seemed like mind meld position. He closed his eyes, his smile faded to blank and I could feel his presence invade my body. Not my mind, just my body.

  The sensation was intimate, unnerving even, but not unwelcome. I don’t think I had considered him a friend with benefits prospect until that moment. I even felt that I could read a bit of him as well. I sensed no duplicity. He still felt like he had practically robbed me when he took my mage gear.

  A brief interminable time later he opened his eyes, smiling again. “You will have no mana capacity problems when learning magic. Your blood will be sufficient for simple talismans. Now I wish I’d done that before I scribbled all over the spellbook. Never mind. So. These are much like the paper talismans. Initiate using a drop of blood and the intention to store one item inside. As long as it is all tied together, a pack with things tied to it counts as one item. If the token is crushed or broken it will fail and your belongings will tumble to the ground.”

  “You are brilliant. Where did you get clay and a kiln?”

  He licked his lips. “That’s why they’re one use tokens. The clay was summoned and fired using magic. Let me show you where I got the paper.”

  He handed me the heavy envelope. I took it, already planning to wrap the disks in gauze and keep them on me at all times.

  He started walking and he kept pace.

  “What would you need to make us both permanent storage objects that we could put things in and out of forever?”

  He stopped suddenly and stared at me. I mean in my general direction because he had that distant look again. He shook his head.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Mithril, platinum or a suitable platinum alloy and gold.” He frowned. “About six inches off your staff, a lump the size of a ring and a small coin.” He hesitated. “But it can’t be off your spear, that would destroy the rune work.”

  I nodded slowly. “After you show me around we should get a room-“

  He cut me off. “There are crafting rooms here. You can lock a booth door and stay as long as you are crafting. You can’t sleep there.”

  “Show me around.”

  There was a small kitchen with no food or utensils in it. There was a little quartermaster shop where you could ‘nonessential supplies’ for free.

  There were a plethora of non magical stationary supplies from colored pencils to pen and ink; from loose paper of various properties to bound books of blank or lined papers.

  You could get ‘mundane quality’ craft items as well. Cloth and clothes; needles and thread; clay, leather working blanks, rope, yarn, and tools for working them all. There were even some esoteric tools like carding, spinning and weaving supplies.

  QUANTITIES ARE NOT LIMITED BUT BE AWARE OF THE NEED TO TAKE YOUR BELONGINGS WITH YOU.

  “The talismans are on the thinnest of these papers and I tried the clay for the tokens but it wasn’t high quality enough.”

  “Oh.” I considered that. “Do people ever just decide not to leave here?”

  “Yes. The librarian rarely leaves his spot. He’s definitely human though. He takes payment in satiation pills or books he doesn’t have. But you have to bring your own materials from here and scribe the information you need for yourself if you want to take it with you. There are some long term crafters. Honestly it’s hard to stay. You have to avoid violence and both the violent and victim are banished from here. It’s not written many places, but they are both sent to high danger places. The possessions of the violent one are left with the victim and they will never meet again.”

  I stared at them, processing the implications.

  “And crafters can have some tempers.”

  I smiled. “So. The workshops?”

  They were close. We passed the librarian who sat on a beanbag chair surrounded by piles of books. He nodded at us. We nodded back.

  There was a hall with a bunch of closed doors then a big workshop space with numerous doorways in all directions.

  “We need a room where we can craft privately.”

  Carter smiled. “This way.”

  I set my big pack-which I had not yet stored in a token- on the work table and pulled out the booklet that was the code key to my gear haul. I had taken time while I was trading to cross out things I traded away and even removed a few pages of completely absent items.

  One of the first things I had done with the weapons was sort all the four star items into a pile and choose which I would take with me if I couldn’t drag everything. There were no five or six star items, even though those symbols were outlined in the information section. The people who had six star weapons had chosen offense and high quality.

  I used the comparison chart to quickly identify the metals in items I still had.

  I had a platinum orihalcon dagger, a mithril short sword and the studs on another dagger handle were pure gold. I set them in a row on the bench and moved my things to the floor.

  “If you don’t mind doing the work…”

  He touched each of them. His eyes were wide. “Uh… yeah. Should take me about six hours. I’ll make a batch of ten rings and you can have half of the ones that succeed.”

  “Is that better than doing one at a time?”

  “Oh yeah. Loads better. I’ll just… get started copying the patterns and instructions down. Having the information and using the information can be quite different.”

  I smiled and nodded agreement. I pulled out the book I was reading and sat down as far from Carter’s work space as I could.

  I find it a little strange to say that I had used small carving knives like the ones in the fletching kit before. I took a printmaking class in college. I loved doing linoleum block prints. I loved making three or four component blocks that came together as one image.

  These tools aren’t really for making things. They’re for decorating things.

  I looked up as Carter cast a spell that caused a small but hot fire at his station. The burning metal smell seemed strange but familiar on some instinctive level.

  I went back to reading, looking up every time he made a noise or a new smell.

  The rings he was crafting eventually stood in the air in front of him, possibly molten. I tried not to move as I watched him work, the carving book forgotten.

  He seemed to finish but he didn’t stop. This time he used more material per ring but only made two at once.

  I caught him swallowing a food pill halfway through the second batch. I still didn’t interrupt.

  Finally he finished. I’m not sure how long he worked. There was no clock. I hadn’t even seen a clock since I arrived.

  He sat down, clearly exhausted. “They need to sit a few hours. I…”

  I took out a few pill bottles. He hesitated then he dosed himself with the lowest quality healing, best mana and one of the rest replacement pills.

  He closed his eyes for a few moments. “Right. I am going to write you some manuals for the talismans I gave you.” He opened one of the blank books he had grabbed from the shop.

  I considered several responses but ultimately I opened my bag and picked a different book.

  Hours later, Carter closed the third of the books he’d written out from memory. He looked at me. I had looked up at him when his motions had changed.

  He smiled wanly. “So. These are yours.” He slid the books to me. “I still haven’t gotten close to the value of what you’ve given me. These are yours too.” He picked up five of the smaller rings and one of the larger ones.

  I took them.

  “Don’t store a ring inside another ring. Don’t put the tokens in a ring. Use the big one. It’s a little clunky, but the volume inside is ten times the volume in the smaller rings. Usually you should have only one bound ring. Keep the spares for your future friends or to sell.”

  I nodded and slid the rings into unused weapon pockets on my ninja pajamas. There were sooo many pocket on this outfit, and they were all enchanted to prevent theft or loss, especially from just having things fall out.

  “Let me guess, bleed on it to bind it?”

  He gave a tired lopsided smile. “Yeah. Pretty much the best way to bind them.”

  I reached out and pricked my finger on my spear. I should really make a sheath for that blade.

  I touched the blood to the big ring and slid it on my finger, right hand. I have worn clunky jewelry before, but this was big. The band was slender enough but it fit over two fingers like a sling ring. At least it adjusted to my fingers and seemed nearly weightless.

  Carter bled on his own sling ring and the bag he always carried disappeared.

  I took the cue and put my bags in my ring, spear included.

  Suddenly the room was as empty as before we arrived.

  “I’m going back to the sleep rooms. I… if I don’t see you again good luck. If I do… I’ll feel blessed and I’d probably write more knowledge down for you.”

  “Thank you, Carter. I mean it. This ring… it means the difference between crawling and running.”

  He smiled briefly. Then he was gone.