Bog Standard Isekai

Vitor grabbed Brin by both of his shoulders. "Who? Who's been hurt? And where is she now? Speak, man! We may still be able to save her if you can bring me there in time!"

Brin tried to pull Vitor's hands away, but they were like steel bars. "It was Bia, but she's fine now. She managed to fight them off."

Vitor instantly relaxed. He let go of Brin's shoulders, and even tried to smooth the wrinkles, somehow tearing the seam of Brin's collar a little. He shook his head. "Lady Bia of Guven? That's impossible."

“How so?”

“I mean… It seems impossible to me that anyone could be in danger here in the Tower. I know nothing of these Shroudlings,” said Vitor. He tried to move past Brin but somehow ended up tangling their legs which caused him to stumble forwards a few steps. He put his hand on the hallway wall to steady himself, and missed the first time before finally stabilizing.

“I know you know what I’m talking about. I know all about Duke Xander’s little blacksite,” said Brin.

“Water ghosts, you say? I’ve truly never heard the like,” said Vitor. He tried to lean casually against the wall, but put his hand on one of the magical lanterns on the wall, fashioned to look like a glowing torch. He broke the end off, showering himself with magical sparks.

“Bia… lost… a great deal of body fluid… no, that sounds worse. I’ll stop euphemizing. She puked a rainbow, and then it turned into these invisible monsters. They nearly killed her, and she’s not low-level. This is just hours after returning from Duke Cobol’s mysterious little blacksite. The location of a disaster from which you–”

“Hold up.” Vitor waved frantically for Brin to stop talking. “Alright, I get the point. But believe me when I say this, for I tell it true: I don’t know anything about your Shroudlings.”

Brin tapped his chin. “So it’s a coincidence that you have a Class that is exactly perfect for killing these creatures.”

“No. I don’t know,” said Vitor.

“You know better than anyone else in the world. You were the sole survivor.”

Vitor winced and then leaned forward and spoke softly. “I never faced any ghosts. And you’re wrong about one more thing: I wasn’t the sole survivor.”

“Who else survived?” asked Brin.

Vitor’s friends took that moment to interrupt. They’d hung back a little, waiting for Vitor and Brin to finish up, but when they noticed that they weren’t talking about having another duel, they came back.

Instead of apologizing or speaking to Brin at all, they simply grabbed Vitor by the shoulders and ferried him away. Actually, were these Vitor’s friends or his minders? The two of them were senior students, and both level 40 [Mages of Water].

“Who?” Brin demanded.

“Don’t say a word!” ordered one of the [Mages of Water].

Then Vitor was away and safe from Brin’s questions. Brin waited until they were completely out of sight, and then started smiling so big he thought his face might crack. Sure, he hadn’t gotten everything he could want, but he’d gotten more than he could’ve expected. Of course Vitor would be the weak link. Why had Brin been so fixated on getting answers out of Bia? She was a [Scout], and had clearly been trained in counter-intelligence. Vitor was just a muscle-head with one little magical trick.

Brin wanted to go straight to Hogg with the news, but didn’t actually know where the old guy spent his time here in the Tower. Hogg’s new [Mage] variant was making him a little more open with his secrets, but not nearly open enough. So he headed towards Lumina’s apartments, but Bedelia caught him before he made it to the elevator. “Master Hogg will meet you in his office.”

Brin sighed. “I guess that’s fine. It’s a little early to be heading home, but–”

“Oh, no, that’s not what I mean! His office on the fourteenth floor. Come! I’ll show you the way.” She flounced forward, not waiting for Brin’s reply.

“He has an office on the floor that’s being haunted by that ghost?” asked Brin, following along behind.

“I suppose he does! What a coincidence!”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” said Brin.

“Well, you would know!”

“No, you would. Don’t you need to work for the Circle of Fire to have an office up there? Or is he in one of the other sections?” asked Brin.

“No, no, he’s Fire,” said Bedelia.

“What’s he do for them?” asked Brin.

“Now, now, you know I can’t reveal my Master’s secrets,” said Bedelia with one finger tapping a dimpled cheek.

“You can literally do anything he can do,” said Brin.

Bedelia giggled.

“You’re certainly in a good mood,” said Brin.

“I like Vitor. He’s so dreamy. I like the way he breaks whatever he wants all the time but no one scolds him for it. Spying on Vitor always gets me feeling high as a kite!” said Bedelia. “That’s a metaphor. When someone says that, they don’t want me to tie a string around them and throw them into the air. I learned that this morning.”

“I’m happy for you. You really seem to be figuring things out,” said Brin.

Bedelia hummed happily and stepped into the elevator.

Brin didn’t see any sign on the fourteenth floor, and idly watched the floor indicator as they climbed. He wondered for a moment if the Tower had the same superstition that lots of hotels on Earth had where they skipped the thirteenth floor and just went from twelve to fourteen. That would mean that the ghost was haunting the real thirteenth floor, which would just be perfect. Sadly, there actually was a floor thirteen. It was floor seven that they skipped.

It was a short, ghostless trip down the hall, and then Bedelia opened the door to Hogg’s office to let Brin in. He went in, Marksi by his side, while she stayed in the hall.

Brin would’ve wondered if this office were even being used if Hogg wasn’t sitting in one of the two chairs. The decorations were sparse. A locked cabinet, an empty desk, and two chairs. There was no sign of writing material, no smudges or indentations on the perfectly lacquered [Bog Standard Writing Desk], and no sign that he did any kind of work in here at all.

That didn’t mean anything, though. Hogg might spend half his days here; he was a tidy person by nature and he didn’t like to leave anything behind for a spy or a snoop to find even at home. The lack of decoration was unusual, though. Hogg preferred to live in luxury when given the chance.

“Ethics,” said Hogg.

“Come again?”

“I’m on the Ethics Review Board. I review especially unusual experiments and all experiments involving sapient or semi-sapient test subjects for ethical concerns,” said Hogg.

Brin laughed. "You. You're the ethics guy."

"I can be ethical!"

"Oh, no doubt." Brin squinted at the short-sightedness of Tower leadership. “You’re getting the details on all of the strangest and most powerful projects in the Tower. And they’re just giving it to you?”

“They’re not just giving it to me. They’re paying me for the privilege,” said Hogg. “But enough about me! Rainbow Puke Ghosts, let’s start with that!”

Brin took the only other chair, so Marksi hopped up on the desk. “How much do you already know?”

“I was only watching you talk to Vitor, there. So start from the beginning,” said Hogg.

“Alright, so it all started when I saw Iola Neves. Remember her from Oud's Bog?” Brin quickly recounted the whole story, and was only interrupted once when Marksi wanted him to make sure and tell Hogg about how weak and pathetic the water beams were compared to his lasers. Drab, too. Marksi’s lasers were much more colorful. Brin tried to recall every detail of the fight, and by the time he was done, Hogg was pacing the small office, grinning nearly as big as Brin had.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“I knew it! I knew you’d crack this open for us! I thought for sure it would take weeks or months and that you’d leave a long trail of corpses behind you–”

“I don’t always leave a trail of corpses behind,” said Brin.

“I thought it was part of your process,” said Hogg.

“Well, we’ve only just gotten one more clue. There’s still plenty of time to watch the bodies stack up,” said Brin.

Hogg nodded. “Good point. But I think this is enough to start developing counter-measures.”

“Great! Where do we start?”

“No, I mean, I’m going to start developing counter-measures. You’re going to go back to thinking about classes and girls and that dance that’s coming up,” said Hogg.

“Come on. You can’t treat me like I’m not part of this!” said Brin.

“You are. If I learn anything more, anything at all... About this one specific thing, don’t look at me like that, I’ll let you know. In the meantime if you want to help, you should befriend Vitor,” said Hogg.

“You know what? I think you’ve got this Motley Shroud business covered from here,” said Brin.

“He can’t be that bad. And go ahead and let your cult know about this. These aren’t our secrets, so no reason to protect them. Maybe they’ll dig up something useful,” said Hogg.

“Got it,” Brin said with a nod. "Are you sure I can't help with your preparations for the Motley Shroud?"

"I'm sure. I'm thinking this problem will have an alchemical solution, and you've never been all that interested in alchemy," said Hogg.

"I'm interested in everything. There just aren't enough hours in the day," said Brin.

"Exactly. So focus on the thirty things you're already trying to manage. Starting with Vitor."

Brin watched for a moment as Marksi idly scratched circles into the pristine polish of Hogg's desk. "Hey! Cut that out! You're ruining it!" said Brin.

Hogg waved it off. "It's fine."

"It's not fine! We can't let him get in the habit of scratching people's furniture," said Brin.

Marksi hopped down sullenly. He curled his tail up beneath himself, acting like he was being unfairly maligned, but Brin refused to give in.

Hogg smirked and wiped one of the scratches with his thumb, completely buffing it out.

"It's the principle of the thing," said Brin. But it was already too late. Marksi was already looking smug. He'd known the desk could repair itself.

"Oh, before you go. Are those water ghosts at all related to the ghost here on this floor?" asked Hogg.

"No. I'm absolutely certain they aren't related at all," said Brin. He'd gotten a good taste of the Wyrd in both of them, so he was sure.

"Good. Let's let everyone think otherwise," said Hogg.

"Naturally."

"I honestly have to take your word for it that there even is a ghost on this floor. I haven't seen a single sign of the thing," said Hogg.

Brin spent his evening catching up on his reading for classes, and the next day everything seemed back to normal. He found a moment to catch up with Bia. She looked happy and healthy, like the event yesterday had never happened. She was true to her word that she was happy to talk to him, but she kept the conversation firmly on ordinary things. Classes, teachers, gossip, and griping about all the inefficient ways that Chaos ran his school.

He kept an eye on Vitor while he could, but had a hard time figuring out how to approach him. Vitor was friendly with a lot of people, but didn't seem to have a lot of close friends, and no one that he spent much time with was a natural part of Brin's social circle. The only thing they really had in common was duels, and Brin had already decided that he was going to try to avoid shattering all his bones again.

Maybe Vitor would go for a duel under [Mage's] rules. That line of thinking brought Brin back to Ares, who he'd already promised a duel to.

He brought it up at lunch with Ares and Sancha. Ares agreed to show Brin how it was done, and Sancha came along just for the excuse to see the Fire Track rooms.

Ares took them to the dueling rings in the Fire track. The places set aside for [Mage]’s duels were actually larger than the others. Their ring was actually a box, a big stone room with twenty yards of space between the two ends. There were circles set on the ground on either side, and four targets, two on either side. They looked like regular archer targets.

Ares excitedly walked to the other side of the square while explaining the rules. "So you turtle in the circle. The room will pick up if you attack the other circle directly, and that's a loss. It's got no shielding, though, so best not to play this game with someone that actually hates you, yeah? A win's a win, but dead is dead."

"It is not so great a hazard as he saith. The law is gentle to ordinary duels, but if thou killest someone in a [Mage's] duel, thou art like to be hanged," said Sancha.

Ares turned back to face Sancha, and with full earnestness said, "An astute and delightful insight, my lady. You truly bless us with your presence here to witness us in our triumphs and our failures."

"Oh, desist."

Ares hopped back into his circle. "Each of us go for the other guy's goal. Each of us know to defend our own. You ready? Let's go."

"Hold on," said Brin. He moved over to stand in the other white circle, facing Ares. "Now I'm ready."

"Zippity zap, zap, pow!" said Ares, and punctuated each statement with a lightning bolt that cracked the air and struck Brin's targets straight on. Rather than breaking, the targets lit up. Two shone green, for bullseye shots, and one yellow for a shot on the edge.

"Wham!" yelled Ares with his last lightning bolt, but Brin managed to summon a plate of glass in time, which completely blocked Ares' directed lightning.

Ares spoke a few words of language and summoned another bolt of lightning. This one curved around in the air, went around Brin's shield, and hit the last target.

The white circle at Brin's feet turned red, signaling a loss.

"Ha! Yes! Did you see that?" Ares shouted.

"I saw. And what of it?" Sancha tried to play it cool, but she couldn't hide a slight smile.

"I could have warned you, but I didn't want to. A duel like this isn't exactly fair, what with you being an Earth [Mage]. Earth is slow. It's Fire, Air, Water, Earth at least when it comes to speed. But also when it comes to winning duels."

"I cannot safely say he is incorrect," said Sancha. "For this reason, I have never troubled myself to learn the combat arts."

"Let's go again," said Brin.

"Gotta wait for the room to reset," said Ares.

It took five minutes for the colors on the targets to reset back to normal, maybe to force [Mages] to talk about the match rather than just fight one after another. Or maybe it was to give them time to clean up. There was a door in the wall that opened to a chute for disposing leftover summoned elements. Ares said it was technically the standard that both sides should start with nothing, but he told Brin he would let him keep some glass ready if he wanted. Brin disposed of his glass shield. He wanted to win without a handicap.

When the next round started, Brin immediately summoned shields over each of his targets, fully enclosing them in a shell of glass.

Even though Brin was summoning at top speed, Ares was quicker and broke two of them before Brin got the shields in place. But after that, Ares was stuck. Glass was a terrific insulator, and Ares couldn't get his lightning to make more than a scorch mark.

Brin summoned four glass bullets and levitated them in place a moment before shooting them. All four struck something invisible and stopped, giving Brin his first glance at a shield made of Air. It was Ares' primary element, so of course he'd have something for defense as well.

Brin summoned a javelin, imbued it with biting power in the Language, and launched it. It blasted through the shield, and broke a target. Then he just had to repeat the process, and Ares could do nothing to stop it or harm Brin's targets in return. On the last throw, he managed to strike the javelin from the side with a jet of air, which pushed Brin's missile to the side. He still hit the target, though. Yellow, instead of a green bullseye.

You have defeated: Ares

Experience reduced for a nonviolent duel.

Sancha clapped. "A marvelous showing, Brin!"

"I could've warned you, but this duel wasn't quite fair. Since I'm a genius [Glass Mage] and you're just a puny [Lightning Guy]," said Brin.

"Yeah, yeah, I guess I deserve that," Ares said in good humor.

His loss didn't discourage him, and they dueled several more times. Ares never managed to find a way through Brin's glass barriers, and he couldn't seem to speed up his lightning bolts more than about one per half-second. He did find progress in nudging Brin's glass javelins to the side at the last second with jets of air, which Brin found extremely impressive due to the sheer skill involved in catching something moving that fast.

Marksi graced them with a duel as well. At first he was put off by the fact that he wasn't allowed to use his claws, but Brin eventually talked him into it. Then it was a matter of deciding who Marksi would face, and Ares insisted on deciding with this world's version of "Rock, Paper, Scissors." It was "Snake, Spider, Hawk" here, and the fact that there were spiders in this world that might catch a hawk in their webs was a chilling reminder of some of the wildlife he'd seen in the Boglands.

Ares won, his snake eating Brin's spider, and gleefully took his place in the circle facing Marksi.

Brin counted down and called a start.

Ares said, "Zap!" at the same time that Marksi said <Laser!>, and both of them immediately lost a target.

"What?" Ares said with a laugh, too distracted by the menacing beam of rainbow light to block Marksi's next shot.

They were bright and mighty, but Brin could tell that Marksi was portioning his strength. Normally, he'd shoot his first laser with everything he had, and by the second laser he was spent. This time, he was being careful with his Mana to make sure he'd be able to shoot four of them.

Ares created a barrier of air to stop Marksi's next laser, but Marksi shot straight through it without any visible diminishing of power.

He stopped to pant after his third, so Ares shot another bolt of lightning at Marksi's target, and then another. Then Marksi shot his last, and the match ended four targets to three.

Brin really wanted to see if Marksi could shoot through his glass. He'd make sure to win Snake, Spider, Hawk next time.

Ares was extremely impressed by Marksi's laser, he really couldn't stop talking about it, even after the five minute wait for the room reset finished. "You get it. You really get it. If the winner in a duel is the quickest, then you don't look for fast. You look for instantaneous damage. Boom! Dead. Just like that. And you got there with a Fire element? Fire and something else? I wish you could talk..."

Brin was saving his own laser for after Ares figured out a counter to his glass, just as a nice surprise.

Sancha surprised them all by agreeing to a duel, too. She didn't have any stone on hand, and didn't have the Skill to summon it, but she was able to use [Shape Stone] on Brin's glass enough to lift it into the air.

Ares went easy on her and dragged the duel out, just to see what she could do. If left completely alone, she was able to launch a stone of glass with sufficient power to hit the target on the other side. Her aim wasn't the greatest, and she kept repeating that she was a better crafter than she was a fighter.

Brin was pleased with the result. With this, he'd be able to start agreeing to some of the challenges he was offered. Not that he'd be doing any of those in the first day or so; Lumina's lessons would be starting soon.

Which reminded him. "Hey, my mother is putting a little study group together. You two should come."