Chapter 14

The hero talks to his maid about the absurdity of the world

After the elf village thing was taken care of the group went in search of the magic key, finding it after various trials inside a pyramid, whatever that is. They backtracked, looking for any doors they could now open, and dropped off their medals. Loto tried to ask the guy why these things were seemingly scattered all over the world, who had done it, and why they were under bushes and such. He didn't get an answer. Their next stop was to find a ship (ah, there's where all the sailing begins and his musings on water wheels attached to ships) which the king of the land would gladly allow them to use. In exchange for, and I had to read this passage several times to make sure I had it right, pepper. As in the spice? Like salt and pepper? But that's what it said, so I had to believe it. I mean it was more generous a deal than I had gotten from my king, which was a bit of gold and being yelled at because I hadn't realized he had tried to stop the Dragonlord before my arrival. But it was still pretty weird. Not as weird as the situation they faced when they got to the town of Baharata where they learned the owner of the spice shop had recently been abducted by bandits. Yes, bandits. This pepper stuff must have either been really something in the past or it was more rare. But wait they didn't steal the pepper, as one might expect, they stole the person that sold it. That makes no sense. Here Loto began to muse on how improbable it was that the one person they needed to talk to should need rescuing just as they arrived. This bandit person didn't move against the spice shop the week before, or the week after, which I did have to admit was a bit coincidental. Like doors being locked which forced me to go to a certain town, or that magical barrier springing up when it did. I sat and thought about what I had gone through thus far, looking for other examples.

Every town had a blacksmith, nothing odd there. The princess was a big one, being in a place I could somewhat easily reach and behind a door just as I went to buy keys to open doors. The lady selling "fairy water" seemed to be going out of her way to make it difficult to buy her product, so that wasn't really related to me that I could see. Finding the shop owner who just happened to be knowledgeable about the world and had a suit of armor that could greatly help could be one. I went back to reading.

With the ship "in hand" the group started their quest to track down certain magical orbs, six of them. I had to wonder where these orbs had gone, if they were so powerful and useful in the defeat of evil, one would think they would be around somewhere! Maybe I'll find out what happened to them. But first the group needed to find the "final" key, and yes he referred to it by that name several times so it seemed that was the official name for the thing. I shook my head, wondering who had named it that, and looked up to find "my" maid bringing me lunch. As she had been assigned to me there wasn't much for her to do at present, so I invited her to eat with me, and I showed her the journal.

"This is Erdrick's journal?" she asked, clearly surprised. "It doesn't look very old, are you sure you're not being scammed."

"It's a copy of it. I left the original with the tool shop owner, who copied it for me. If I'm being scammed it's by Loto himself, as I found the book in his grave-site to the west."

"Must be the real thing then," she agreed. "Did he really do all the heroic things the stories say?"

"I'm not sure about stories, but the most heroic thing he's done up to this point in his travels is find a bunch of keys and rescue an abducted shop worker."

"Oh."

"But I haven't read that much, maybe he'll do more heroic things as I get through it." Apart from musings about the shape of ship's sails or whatnot.

"He did defeat Baramos though, right? All the stories say that!"

"Not single-handedly, he had help. But presumably, as he survived to leave the journal and Baramos isn't wandering around anymore."

"Wait, that can't be right. If he had help then the others should be just as famous as he is! But you never hear stories about them, do you? It's just Erdrick, Erdrick, Erdrick!"

I had to admit she was right. "Maybe they died?"

"Oh no!" She covered her mouth in shock. "I hope not! Read me some and let's find out!"

"You want me to read to you?"

"If you don't mind," she replied, looking away and fidgeting. "You didn't call me for anything so I've been kinda bored all morning."

"Called?"

"The rope." She pointed to the rope that hung in the room. "You pull it and it rings a bell and I would see what you needed."

"I see! Well, honestly, that seems a little over the top for me. If that's the right phrase. I mean I don't need any special treatment or anything." I suppose everyone just assumed I knew about it, but having never lived in a castle before I did not.

"Tell that to the king, he assigned me to you, so you're stuck with me."

"In that case, let's see what happens after Loto got his ship then, shall we?"

"Thanks," she said with a small smile.

To find the "final" key the group had to solve a strange puzzle by pushing boulders around a cave, and the maid (Who said her name was Clarissa) grabbed the book away from me claiming I was lying.

"You're not lying," she said, scowling at the page. "There's a diagram and everything."

"You know," I said dryly, "if we have to stop every five minutes because Loto does some weird thing we're never going to finish."

"Seriously? It's been that sort of thing the whole journey?"

"It's not completely out of the realm of possibility, believe me. It's been mostly mazes, if I'm being honest, not puzzles like this, but I'm not surprised to see one."

"Okay," she relented, handing me the book back.

"Thank you. Where was I? Shoving rocks… Right."

Their "reward" for shoving the rocks around was not the final key, but a vase. They were all quite confused about this, but the wizard of the group said it felt magical and thus, important. Loto by this time agreed with him, saying that if something was put in their path it was no doubt vital to their mission.

They soon learned where the key was, and as Loto had predicted, the vase was put to use draining a pond so they could walk down to the no longer underwater shrine and pick it up.

"What did they do with it after that?" Clarissa asked.

"Book doesn't say. Just that they went back around the world opening 'final' doors with their 'final' key. Why?"

"I just hope they put the water back, and then destroyed that thing."

"Destroyed it?"

"Of course destroyed it! A vase that could drain a whole lake? What if they accidentally dropped it into the ocean? Would it drain the whole thing? Think of the damage that would do. Baramos didn't need anything fancy to destroy the world, just that one magical item. Who made such a dangerous thing anyway? And why?"

"Good question. They never explored that. At least it was hidden in the rock pushing room." He was a magic user, why didn't he just make something like that? She's right, it would have been devastating.

"Which took them, what, a half an hour to figure out?"

"Well..."

"So not really all that hidden, was it? How did the key get to the bottom of the lake? Who built the shrine down there? Why not just not do that, hide the key in the cave, and not make the most dangerous magical item in the world?"

"I have no idea, but it seems like you two would have gotten along. He asks questions like that all the time in here."

"Really?"

"Yup. You'll see. It should be right about this time, as they've started to sail everywhere."

"Read on then."

I did. The group got the green orb from some random person in a random town, which was convenient for them. But all this sailing left Loto a lot of time to think, and here he started musing about how inefficient life around villages was.

"For a start," I read out loud, "why is magic used so little in day to day life? My friend the wizard can roast an enemy with a fireball, why does the blacksmith not use magic to heat the iron he wishes to work with? Keeping a forge fire going must be costly, as the fuel is consumed quickly. But perform the same task with magic and that cost is eliminated. Plus if the metal can be kept hot he doesn't have to stop work every few minutes to reheat it. This would raise his productivity, allowing more to be made in a single day. This means he has more to sell, making him more money. I'm sure it could be done, heating metal up slowly with magic must be easier than calling up enough heat to create a ball of fire that incinerates a monster. He says it takes many years to become a wizard but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about simply learning a single spell or two, by rote if you must, to make your chosen profession easier. Cooks use fire to prepare food, everyone has a fireplace to heat their homes. Torches and oil are burned to light the way in the dark. It seems like everyone knowing a simple fire spell would save countless trees and expense from many professions. Yet this is not done. Why?"

"That's a good point," said Clarissa. "There must be someone in most towns that studies magic. Even if the blacksmith knows none, having their shops next to each other when the magic user wasn't busy they could be helping the blacksmith. Then they share the profit on the finished product. You don't know if it was heated with fire or magic, nor should you care. You'll pay what he asks or go without."

"Both get to do something during a time the magic user would just be waiting around for a customer," I mused.

"Exactly. Why wouldn't they want to earn extra money?"

"It seems to me they would."

She nodded.

"What would happen if I lost the final key?" I read next. "What if it should be stolen from me? If one of the orbs is behind a locked door would that be it for the quest? Could it no longer be completed, dooming the world? Losing the key does not seem likely, but the world is a dangerous place. It could be dropped without me knowing. Whoever has set this all up is counting on many, many things going exactly right. It seems dangerous to me."

"I wondered where my keys went, after I bought them," I admitted. "I wasn't sure where I put them, but when I needed one it was there."

"That happens to me!" Clarissa told me. "Like right now if you wanted me to dust your room I would get out my duster and do it. But where is my duster right now?" She spread her hands, showing me she wasn't carrying anything. I looked her over, as it seemed she was giving me permission, after all. She was quite pretty, with shoulder length brown hair that was somehow styled to hang in swirls. Her nose was just the right size, and she had all her teeth, a bit of a rarity even among nobles and royalty. She had on her maid's uniform, with the cute little skirt and the cute little apron and the cute little cat ears on top of her cute little-

I blinked a moment. "Are you wearing cat ears?"

"Oh these," she sighed, reaching up to touch one. They were on a headband on her head, and they looked like cat ears made of some sort of fabric. "Yeah, the king-" She stopped and looked around the room. She leaned over and checked under the bed. I certainly didn't steal a glance at her legs as she did this, which were covered in high, white stockings. With a scowl she hopped off the bed, checked the closet, the wardrobe, under the bed again, behind the mirror, and behind the curtains by the window. She leaned close to me, putting her hands around her mouth to whisper to me. "The king makes us wear them. Personally I think he's going nuts in his old age, but don't tell him I said so. I'd be fired for sure, or worse!"

"I won't," I promised her. And I'm not saying you're wrong either. After that breakfast with him...

"Good." She climbed back on the bed, settling her legs under her. She smoothed down her dress, folded her hands primly and looked at me expectantly. "Long live the king. Go ahead."

"What were we talking about?"

"Things going right?"

Was that it? "Right. The same happened to me. If that door hadn't been locked and if the king hadn't used his last key, forcing me to go halfway around the world to get more I never would have been there in time to rescue the princess. If any one of those things hadn't happened, she would be dead."

"It is strange. What else does he say?"

At this point the party had reached Zipangu, a town under the watchful eye of the mayor Himiko, who turned out to be a monster in disguise. They beat up the monster and claimed the purple orb, which we both agreed was a stroke of luck that they had it.

"But how did the monster get into town?" Clarissa asked. "I thought towns had special magic put on them or something to keep out monsters. I mean how would be not be overrun otherwise? Have you seen how many monsters are out there? Oh, of course you have, silly question. Sorry, duh!" She hit her head with her palm.

"According to my sources it's the smell," I told her.

"Smell?"

"I guess they have a better sense of smell than we do. Human towns just smell bad to them and they stay away. Maybe this monster was born with an immunity to it or something?"

"A monster with no sense of smell who liked being a mayor and just happened to have the orb they needed, which they found by ransacking the room after killing them? They seem to go around poking into cabinets and such wherever they go, and it seems it's a good thing they did. Even if it does seem kind of creepy, are they just swiping stuff they find from the real owners? If they hadn't they would have just walked out and never found this orb."

"That's true. Maybe the real mayor had the orb and the monster just kept it around not knowing what it was?"

"Okay, I see what you mean about bizarre things happening. What's next?"

The next thing they did was help a newly created town get on its feet and go back to a town called Lancel, using the Final Key to unlock a door with another maze and at the end, an orb.

"I've never heard of any of these towns," the maid complained. "Where did they all go? Towns should stick around more than a few hundred years."

"I agree," I told her, thinking about it. Where have they all gone?

The next adventure they found themselves in was meeting a group of pirates who insisted they had once discovered an orb among their treasure but had since lost it. None of the party actually believed them, and waited around for the pirates to leave and then ransacked the place. (I guess that's true to form, for them. They do an awful lot of stealing stuff from towns despite being heroes. What is up with that?) To the surprise of none of them it was found in a chest at the bottom of a staircase behind a boulder.

"Good thing they had all that practice from earlier," Clarissa said with a grin. "Pushing rocks around, I mean."

"At that point I'd imagine they went around shoving everything that looked even mildly suspicious." We both laughed.

"But they did steal it," she went on, sobering. "Doesn't seem very heroic."

"I was just thinking that too! Counter point, they didn't attack the pirates and kill them all in an attempt to get them to reveal where it was."

"So they're heroic because they didn't do a more awful thing?"

"I guess when you put it that way, but they were trying to save the world. The pirates were only hurting themselves by not giving it up at the start."

She sighed. "I suppose they had stolen it themselves, so it was justice, of a sort. Read on."

The group headed to Samanao Castle and for reasons Loto didn't make clear the entire group was thrown into the dungeons at the bottom. It didn't really take as the guards didn't even bother to search them and so using the Final Key they left the cell-

"Wait a minute," interrupted Clarissa. "Let me understand this. These people found thief keys and magic keys and then this final key, right? They searched the world for special doors after finding these keys so they could be opened."

I had told her about the other keys, of course. "Right," I answered, I could see where she was going with this.

"But there must have been other keys in the world, for example the guards would presumably be able to unlock the cell these guys were just thrown into, right?"

"One would assume that, yes."

"So then how did keys work in the past? Did they not vanish at all like today? Were there special ones made for special doors? Like you couldn't use the key that opened the cell door to open the door to the kitchens?"

I shrugged. "All I know is what I'm reading here, don't ask me."

"Life back then must have been so confusing, people wouldn't have known if the key they had could open the door they wanted!"

But is our way of vanishing keys really any better? The only thing that keeps me from opening the treasury of the king is wanting his good will in the future. I have my own keys now, so it's not really all that secure. And with the door to the other wing of the castle open, anyone could buy a key and do the same. It's pretty weird. "Maybe that was the point," I suggested. "Greater security."

"Obviously not, if these guys got thrown in jail and then just walked out a second later. You couldn't have two keys that opened the same door, only the cell key should have opened the cell door."

"Maybe the final key magically changed shape to be whatever would open a door?"

"Then why bother keeping the magic or thief key?" she asked triumphantly.

"I have to admit you've got me there. It doesn't make sense."

"Just so we're both on the same page."

"Well, yeah, I'm reading it to you, we have to be on the same page."

She just groaned and rolled her eyes. But she was grinning too.