Sporemageddon

It was going to take a while to get the combined mushrooms I’d picked up along the way to grow into something I could properly examine.

For that matter, it was going to take a while to see if any of the combined mushrooms were even viable. I no longer had the Fungal Grafter {Uncommon} skill. I’d lost that when I replaced Ageric Cleric some time ago, and ever since I’d kind of missed that skill.

I had others that let me fill in the gap, however.

Mushroom Magic {Rare} was worth more and was a lot more flexible as a skill overall, and both Knitting {Common} and Aura of Growth {Rare} combined pretty well to bridge the gap.

There was still something to say about specialized skills.

The average person off the street had, usually, five class skills and five general skills. That was a fair amount of things to be supernaturally good at... for a certain definition of supernatural.

A quick survey of the girls in my little team showed that most of them were, at best, halfway to unlocking their second class. Bet actually had the lead there, which wasn’t too surprising. She’d been guided a little from a young age.

The others had invested far too much in survival-related skills. Things that reduced hunger and allowed them to be a bit tougher, or heal faster. Good skills, certainly, but unfortunately skills that would only grow with continued hardship.

Not that there was a lack of that.

In any case, something like one in two of the adults in my life reached the kinds of levels necessary to unlock a second class as I had. Most of them only had more {Common} options, and so that’s what they took. A person with a single, {Uncommon} and highly specialized skill might find themselves finally able to tug themselves up by their bootstraps.

Heck, wasn’t that what I was doing? My mushroom growing skills were enough to let me start a small business, one that I could very well support with just one or two more common, less specialized skills.

Aunt Nicole, the older woman who worked as a cook at Ratesco’s Union was one such person. She had a {Rare} cooking skill, and it allowed her to create delicious stews. She supplemented that with a few more {Common} abilities, and all together it made her someone valuable enough that she could carve out a space for herself in the union’s community.

Ah, but I was thinking too hard again.

Strangely, the time spent in a more academic setting had done me a bit of harm. I could more easily fall into the trap of overthinking things, of studying something without directly working on it anymore.

A few days after the trip that Bet and I took to the pharmacist, after a long day of checking up on the freshly tended to mushroom strains I was trying to combine, I had a small meeting at the Ratesco’s Union headquarter for the area.

Specifically, I was meeting Markham, the leader in a building that I wasn’t entirely familiar with.

As usual, the union had packed up and moved. I wasn’t sure why they had chosen now to move again, but I supposed that there was some logical reason for it. Maybe the union had too much attention on it, or too many people had gotten comfortable? In any case, I arrived not at the old building where they’d been, but in a space only a dozen blocks away from home.

It was a fire station.

A former one, at least.

The station was long, with a three storey square of a building to one side, and a long, low section that had several roll-up doors before it. The signage calling it a fire department was still there, on a nice brass plaque out front.

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Whitcombe’s Fire Office Brigade

There was a symbol above that, of a half-sun with long, white spokes, though some of the lacquered paint around the spokes was chipping away.

I walked over to the front of the office, taking in the state of the building. It was clear from the crumbling mortar and the faded paint that this place wasn’t in as nice a state as it may have once been in. Still, for a building that was well within the bounds of the slums it wasn’t all bad.

A few of the union members sitting around or tidying up just within one of the rolled-open doors recognized me. I even caught sight of a familiar hobgoblin, Dregs, who gave me a nod and a grunt as he shuffled by carrying a small crate. From him, that was as good as a polite ‘how do you do?’

Moving up to the second floor, I met with a secretary who had me wait for a few moments before I was allowed into Markham’s office.

The space was nearly identical to his last, though perhaps the room didn’t stink as much of old cigar smoke. Markham was sitting on the edge of his seat, shuffling some papers on his desk. He didn’t even look up as I entered. “Close the door behind you, if you would.”

“Certainly,” I replied before doing just that. “Busy?”

“A little,” he replied. “The moving always reshuffles things. You’d be surprised by how much paperwork and accounting goes into a union.”

“No, I think I wouldn’t be,” I said. “My business is much smaller, and there are lots of ledgers already.”

“Hmm,” he replied before finally looking up. I felt his gaze on me, literally, something poked through the thin veil of the concealment magic I kept up--if only at a low simmer--and scanned me. I shivered. “You look well. Did the academy’s food help?”

“And their nurse,” I replied before pulling up a seat. “Why a fire department?”

He chuckled. “Curious, or just making conversation?”

“Curious,” I admitted.

Markham and I had... a strange relationship. I don’t think he trusted me. I didn’t trust him. But he had paid on time, and for the most part, the Union was an ally. Some of our goals aligned, at least in the short term. My long term goals would likely terrify the man, but they were some ways off.

“The station was sold off about two years ago to someone with more money than sense. The union purchased it, legally, just about six months ago. Since no one came to sniff around, we decided to move here. It’s a little more central in the slums, but that’s not all bad.”

“Is the station functional?” I asked.

There had been a few fires in the slums. Not right now, but in mid-winter they were relatively common. Good stoves and fireplaces weren’t cheap, and most people warmed their shacks with cheap coal or scrap wood, since that was the least expensive option for something to burn.

Obviously, that led to fires breaking out. When so many of the homes in the slums, actually most of them, weren’t made anywhere close to code, it wasn’t surprising to see them light up like bonfires.

People died all the time in some of those fires. That and carbon monoxide poisoning, though the latter wasn’t as well understood.

“It can be. We’re hoping to get it somewhat functional. Not like we lack the lads to keep a few engines working, and it’ll give people a good reason to donate to the cause.”

I nodded along. Fire stations usually demanded either a constant insurance payment, or they worked off of a local tax. If someone wasn’t paying, they’d often just not show up. Especially in the slums, where charging after the fact was pointless.

“It’ll earn you some favour,” I said.

“Let’s hope so. I think there might be other uses as well, but that’s a concern for another time. What did you reach out to me for?”

I sat up a little in my seat. “You’re familiar with my little agricultural business?”

“Yes,” he said. “You grow your own produce, if mushrooms count as such, and then cook and sell it. It seems like you’re making a small--very small--but tidy profit from it.”

“Yes. I plan on expanding in a new direction. Did you know that there are certain mushrooms with... psychoactive elements to them? Potentially addictive ones?”

Markham stared at me for a few long, long seconds. “What are your intentions, exactly?”

“Not to sell in the slums,” I clarified. “But outside of them, in the nicer areas of the city. Both because the product might be worth more, and because the negative effects of spreading something like that would best be targeted at certain neighbourhoods.”

“Interesting,” he said. “And you have this product now?”

“Not yet. But if you give me a few weeks... well, before that, I wanted to see if there was interest in the venture at all.”

“I think I can see some potential.”

I smiled, sweet and charming and innocent. “That’s great! I’m sure if we work together, we can spread a little joy across this city.”

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