The Chained Watcher

Backstory: The Mysterious Shopkeep

Probably the most recent (timeline wise) backstory chapter so far. 11k words in this, and I have no idea why the backstory chunks have gotten so long compared to how long I made chapters when I started this book. 

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The Watcher tapped his fingers rhythmically against the surface of the worktable in front of him, tapping his foot on the floor as he did. He pushed the spinny chair he was sitting on away from the table.

As the chair slid across the floor while rotating slightly, he stared blankly at the ceiling. There's no escaping it, he's bored.

He's lately found it quite interesting to observe the ways mortals interact with each other, but every time he tries to linger around a specific mortal for a long period of time something happens to keep him from staying. Usually it's the Listeners nosing around, but one time the fortress-city the subject of his observation lived in fell under siege and was eventually overrun.

That one in particular had held his attention for a long time, so when the entire city fell he was a little miffed. The enemy leader might or might not have mysteriously died the day after conquering the city and slaughtering its occupants, though the killer was never found.

But that doesn't really matter in the end. Even if he follows a single mortal throughout its entire lifespan, that's still only about a century of entertainment, and most die of something before exhausting half their lifespan. At least he can mess with the Listeners when they start poking around too much, that's always fun.

He'd even tailed a pair of fairly new Listeners once, arranging numerous coincidences to mildly inconvenience them wherever possible. It had taken them a while to realize there was something suspicious about their sudden stroke of bad luck, but once they did their paranoia started growing. After that he would occasionally weight his gaze ever so slightly, fueling the paranoia and sowing the seeds of fear.

By the time their mission was completed, they ran back to the nearest base without letting themselves rest even once. Just sprinting the entire way, not daring to look over their shoulders until they made it back to civilization. Yeah, that was pretty amusing.

Come to think of it, while just watching mortals go about their days is a way to pass the time, he's had a lot more fun when actually interacting with them in some form. Not only does that tend to spark inspiration for new enchantments with decent frequency, he just enjoys seeing his actions have long-term results.

The only problem with that is, well... he's a Watcher. Even counting the mortals who had lived in his retreat once upon a time, there's only ever been one mortal that didn't hold some level of fear towards him. That one doesn't really count though, since it didn't know the slightest thing about Watchers to begin with.

Wrapping an invisibility spell around himself, while it will let him walk among mortals without them fleeing in terror, doesn't really help if he wants to interact with them. He can't speak to them either, not with the obvious echoing trait his voice possesses.

His chair bumped into a precariously stacked pile of mechanical bits and bobs, almost sending the entire thing cascading down over his head if not for him swiftly bracing it with magic.

A single oddly shaped device bounced down from the top, and he caught it in one hand. Going to set it back on the pile, he accidentally pressed a button on the side and a small light turned on. He sighed, going to turn it back off when it made a noise. The device parroted back his sigh, but pitched several octaves higher, making it sound somewhat squeaky.

What followed was something no Watcher would consider doing, nor would any Listener believe their senses if they were present. He started making funny noises at the little device in his hand for it to pitch up and parrot back, before mimicking that noise for it to process again. There's no real point to doing this, but it's funny so why not?