The Tower: Book One of the Legend of the Artificer

Chapter 5

Two weeks later, the storm was still raging and coming closer and closer, and he was annoyed beyond measure with the whole ordeal.

"My plants aren't getting any sunlight like this," he complained as he hauled up the rock that had been thrown through the tower defenses onto his balcony and nearly took out a window.

"Tragic, to be sure," Teacher agreed as he lashed down the rope and checked the enchantment he'd etched into the stone before activating it with a flick of his wrist. The artificial sun hummed to life over the poor, neglected plants and he collapsed in a chair, flexing his engraved hands for the millionth time to make sure the gold he'd inlaid into his palms was still appropriately flexible.

"If I ever find what wizard did this, I'm killing them myself," he declared and threw an arm over his face. "My basements are starting to flood, Teacher. Flood."

"Well, to find the wizard that did it, you'd have to actually leave the tower," Teacher muttered rebelliously, and he peeked out from under the arm over his face to glare at it.

"I'll get there when I get there," he snapped, and Teacher huffed.

"You study the curse on the door maybe once a week, young zygote. You're not getting anywhere fast. It's been a year."

"Has it?"

"Yes, it's been a full year, and you're fully capable at this point of unwinding the spell, but no, you're focusing on utterly pointless body modifications for an adventure you're never going to go on. I'm bored."

"That sounds like a 'you' problem."

"It is very much a me problem! And you are not helping!" Teacher squawked. "Every day, I slave over your education! And what do I get for it?"

"Watching me nearly get my limbs bit off by fish," he replied with a huff of a laugh. "Honestly, I can't leave! Who's going to feed Bob and Ted while I'm gone, huh?"

"You can't keep calling all the fish Bob or Ted on a whim!"

"There's also Bill, sometimes."

"And there are enchantments for that!"

"They need their enrichment, Teach! They'll get bored if they don't have someone's limbs to try and chew off!"

"Well, you could spell a bag to connect to their farm and enchant them to..."

He straightened up with a gleam in his eye as Teacher trailed off as it realized what it had just done.

"Enchant them to float and breathe out of water so I have attack fish?" he asked gleefully, and Teacher's silence was probably devastating. "New project!"

"I shouldn't have said anything."

"No, you shouldn't have, but it was your grave to dig, and boy, did you jump into it."

"You have five more enchantments to do," Teacher reminded him, and he paused and looked at himself in the mirror. Healing, limb regeneration, pain nullification, strength, speed, heightened intelligence, which hadn't seemed to do anything but make him even worse, luck, a circle to place enchantments, and a circle on the other palm to unravel the ones he made and take apart the ones he didn't to figure out how to dismantle them. He really had been busy, hadn't he?

"A disguise charm next, then?"

"If you think that's a good idea," Teacher agreed, and he rose to his feet and sauntered to the mirror.

"I mean, I'd get some weird looks, wouldn't I? I should be able to hide them," he said and lifted his shirt to study the healing circle curled around his navel. The charms on his limbs were tied to the limb regeneration charm on his lower back, so when they were inevitably hacked off, the limbs would regrow with the charms still embedded. At least all of the gold looked good. "I should probably pick a weapon to start learning, too. What do you have on gunsmithing?"

"You come to a high fantasy realm and you want to learn gunsmithing?"

"Why not? I'd look hot with a pair of revolvers and some attack fish, wouldn't I?"

"There is nothing remotely aesthetically pleasing about those terrible fish," Teacher said flatly. "You won't even eat them. You've gone a full year in a carnivore's body without any meat."

"Good thing I'm not an obligate carnivore then, huh? Maybe we should get some chickens."

"You would have to leave the tower to be able to do that."

"You know, I never liked camping," he said suddenly, and there was silence from Teacher at the tone of his voice. "It was always dirty, and I always got bit by bugs, and my dad was always really overbearing and it always ended up more stressful than a vacation had any right to be. We had itineraries for it, you know. We had to keep to schedules. We couldn't just enjoy it."

His eyes grew a little distant, because he had done this to himself, but he couldn't say he missed it.

The shirt was dropped, and he turned his eyes to look out at the pouring rain outside.

"They probably buried me under the wrong name. I should have gotten a will."

"I'm sure he loved you," Teacher said carefully, and he barked out a short laugh.

"Love isn't some kind of cure all. It's rarely ever enough."

"Do you miss it?"

Thunder shook the tower, and he closed his eyes and tilted back his head.

"Sure."